08/06/2025

theSunday Special XV ON SUNDAY JUNE 8, 2025

Interior stitching and appointments feel luxurious.

Denza D9 Premium AWD

Perhaps it is just me. Perhaps some people make better passengers than driv ers. But I certainly do not, and for me the Advanced FWD felt better. IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU SHOULD KNOW? Both variants are brilliant from the driver’s seat. So, if you just want a com fortable MPV for your family without breaking the bank, the Denza D9 Advanced AWD would be the better choice. It is not only cheaper, but it also comes with a better warranty package than any parallel importer can offer you. You see, both variants come with a six year or 150,000km warranty on the vehi cle, eight-year or 160,000km warranty on the battery, eight-year or 150,000km war ranty on the drive motor and controllers. And the best thing is, the warranty package is valid in Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, making the Denza D9 ready for epic road trips. On the safety front, both variants also offer the same armada of safety nets – eight airbags and the usual package of active and passive safety systems. So, unless you simply want to flaunt your wealth, I feel the Denza D9 Advanced FWD may just be the better buy between the two variants. And with the money saved, you could fund the kind of three-country road trip the D9 seems purpose-built for.

sure that the suspension was set to com fort instead of sport. And it made a huge difference. In traffic, I couldn’t feel what the road threw up at the car and neither could I hear the dozens of motorcycles zipping around the MPV. The refinement levels of the Denza is said to be as low as 64.6 decibels at 120kph, and that is equivalent to a quiet office space. This is where you can really immerse yourself in the Denza experience. Sink into the soft leather, let the massage func tions soothe the aches and let the 14 speaker Dynaudio sound system sere nade you. I do wish for more USB ports though, in this age of multiple devices, one port per seat seems inadequate. Then came the part where I got a head ache. At highway speed, the suspension once again did a stellar job at isolating the cabin from the road. The refinement lev els were brilliant again. But my mind couldn’t take it. Unfortunately, I experienced kinetosis – essentially motion sickness. It occurs when the brains receives conflicting sig nals from the eyes, ears and body. My eyes were seeing the world zip past, but my body couldn’t feel it and my ears couldn’t hear it either. So, my body freaked out and made me feel nauseated, again. So, I slept, for as long as I could until traffic slowed us down at the Sungai Besi toll. What I experienced is nothing new though. This is what Rolls Royce custom ers experienced as well when the new Phantom was introduced. And the com pany responded by reducing the insula tion so that some ambient noise could be heard inside, which then reduced motion sickness. So, though the Denza D9 Premium AWD has plenty to offer for its price, I preferred driving it than being a passen ger simply because of the tuning of the DiSus-C adaptive suspension, which is either too firm in sport, or too soft in comfort mode. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ADVANCED FWD VARIANT? I was given the chance to pick up the Advanced variant the day after returning from Desaru. I jumped at it because rarely is one

given a chance to drive two variants back to-back. This was the perfect opportunity to sample both in a real-world environ ment. And besides, I had a family trip to Kuala Selangor scheduled that weekend anyway, and itwas the perfect opportu nity to try out the D9 in a family setting with a four-year-old unleashed in the back seats. You can probably predict what hap pened next. The kid went wild with the control pad on the captain seats. Opening and closing the driver’s sun roof multiple times, skipping music tracks and generally raising hell with so much space to run around. The good thing about this? The D9 fea tures four Isofix mounts, so you can buckle in your child in the third-row seat so that you don’t have to deal with him or her for a while. The good thing about my little adven ture with the D9 Advanced also revealed another thing about MPV that I did not notice during my drive to Desaru. Because I now had to ferry my family and their two dozen bags for a three-day getaway, I naturally needed more space at the back. This is where I noticed that when you fold the third-row for added space, the second-row seats have to move forwards and that means you have to sacrifice leg space. It’s not intolerably bad, but it is still a sacrifice. In more traditional family MPV’s like the Kia Carnival, there are special dedi cated compartments for the seats to fold into.

But because the D9 is battery powered and the batteries are located underneath the car thus taking up valuable space underneath, the engineers could not cre ate that space needed to fold the seats into. Hence the sacrifice of second row legroom is a necessary evil. Personally though, that is a small sac rifice because in my humble opinion, the Denza D9 Advanced FWD is more com fortable than its more expensive sibling. I know that is quite a claim considering that there is RM70,000 separating the two variants. But at RM259,000, the D9 has the Toyota Alphard and Vellfire squarely in its cross hairs. Not the new one of course, but those Japanese spec, parallel imported ones. The ones where you never know whether they have been in an acci dent prior to reaching Malaysian shores, or not. SO WHY IS THE ADVANCED FWD MORE COMFORTABLE? This is of course my own opinion, but the Frequency Selective Dampers (FSD) in the Advanced FWD variant feels better sorted. It feels more compliant, and I also felt more in control of the car at high speed as I knew exactly what the road was throw ing up with nothing to dampen feedback. The suspension also seemed to react to Malaysian roads better, and more impor tantly, I did not feel sick when sitting in the second row. There is nothing else to it, just the omission of the adaptive dampers and the car feels a lot better.

SPECIFICATIONS: Denza D9 Premium AWD Price: RM309,000 Motors: Twin Motors Power: 374PS and 470Nm Battery: 103.36 kWh Blade LFP Range: 480 (WLTP)

Charging: 166kW DC / 11kW AC We like: Plush interior trimming. We don’t like: Adaptive suspension is too soft. Denza D9 Advanced FWD Price: RM259,000

Motors: Single front motor Power: 313PS and 360Nm Battery: 103.36 kWh Blade LFP Range: 520km (WLTP)

Charging: 166kW DC / 11kW AC We like: Suspension feels better. We don’t like: No rear entertainment screen.

The Captain chairs of both variants are comfortable and nice to look at.