GWM Tank 500 Vanta 2026 Review

Two grades, two numbers – a very different strategy to the 2026 GWM Tank 500’s toughest opponent, the Ford Everest. The Tank 500 Lux 3.0TD is $65,990 drive-away and the flagship Vanta tested here is $71,990 drive-away.

Drive-away means the number on the poster is the number you pay – no dealer delivery costs, no stamp duty surprise – and anyone taking delivery before October 30, 2026 also pockets a $2000 cash bonus or fuel card.

Put those prices against the establishment and it makes compelling reading – on paper.

The base Toyota Prado GX starts at just over $73,000 plus on-road costs (ORCs) and only seats five, while V6 Ford Everest variants run from about $67,000 to north of $80,000 plus ORCs. The Isuzu MU-X is the one that undercuts the Tank, opening at $49,990.

The diesel Tank 500 also slots in below GWM’s own Tank 500 Ultra Hi4-T plug-in hybrid at $79,990 drive-away, and sits alongside the Cannon Alpha 3.0TD ute, which shares the engine and kicks off at $58,990 drive-away.

GWM hasn’t skimped to hit the price, either. Even the base grade Lux version rolls in with a 14.6-inch touchscreen, a 12.3-inch digital cluster, seven seats, an electric sunroof, three-zone climate control, power-adjustable heated front seats and front and rear diff locks.

The Vanta we’re testing here piles on Nappa leather, massaging front seats, ventilated first- and second-row seating, a heated steering wheel, 12-speaker audio, electric retractable side steps, 19-inch Continental tyres and a triple-locking 4x4 system – plus the big one, a 131-litre fuel capacity made up of a 78-litre main tank and a 53-litre auxiliary.

Infotainment runs on a new operating system (Coffee OS) and it’s quick – sharp response to touch, and even with wireless Apple CarPlay running there’s hard-coded icons at the bottom of the screen for primary functions.

Drop lane keep, driver monitoring and the rest into a customisable shortcut there and it’s one tap to silence the lot.

There’s also 50W wireless charge pad for your smartphone, connected car telematics, a 220-volt outlet in the rear storage area and a 360-degree camera system. Safety is a five-star ANCAP rating from 2024.

But the headline act is an all-new 3.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel – engine code GW4F30 – producing 170kW and 620Nm. It’s hooked to a nine-speed automatic and a mechanical 4x4 system with low range.

Peak torque lands at about 1400rpm and holds flat to 2400rpm, there’s no AdBlue to think about and claimed combined fuel use is 7.1L/100km. Australia leads the global debut of this engine, which tells you where GWM wants to succeed.

Let’s start with ride and handling, because this big bertha doesn’t feel doughy or lethargic on winding country roads.

Rob Trubiani, the former Holden ride-and-handling engineer who now leads GWM’s Australian-Tuned Driving Dynamics (AT-1) program, has reworked the dampers, the springs and the steering across roughly 25,000km of local testing on the Tank 500.

You can add about 40,000km when you fold in the Cannon Alpha.

On the freeway it sits flat and planted at 100km/h. On a chewed-up Gippsland B-road it soaks up bumps and lumps with a suppleness that surprises a body-on-frame wagon this heavy.

Yes, there’s body roll – it’s tall and it’s 2705kg – but it’s nowhere near as pronounced as expected, and the steering gives you a genuine connection to the front wheels rather than the vague, rubbery distance you usually get from Chinese challengers.

Hardware is cheap. Calibration is not – it requires time, effort and experience. Sitting there waiting for the telltale signs of rushed Chinese chassis engineering, you don’t find any. This car didn’t need to be this satisfying to drive – it’s a long-distance cruiser and a tow rig – so the fact it is? That’s icing on the cake.

The engine backs it up. Roll on at 70km/h with about a third throttle and that’s the sweet spot: easy, endless, glide-along shove.

Ask for full squeeze and the nine-speed doesn’t go hunting, it slots the right gear and gets on with it. There was the odd sense of hesitation once or twice but overall it feels suitably calibrated.

More impressive is how quiet it stays. There’s very little clatter from the long stroke engine, minimal tyre roar, mild wind noise off the big mirrors. The acoustic materials employed in the body of the car does good work.

Historically these big 3.0-litre four-pot diesels – the ZD30 Patrol, for instance – have been about as refined as a cement mixer full of spanners. This one isn’t.

The hardware helps. This engine was built fresh from the ground up – it’s not a stroked version of an existing engine. You get a water-to-air intercooler to keep charge air cool and dense (which should help during hot climate driving) with a caravan on the back, and it’s got short intake piping to reduce lag.

We did notice a whiff of turbo lag off the line but it’s not chronic.

The torque curve is the interesting bit – a fat plateau from about 1400 to 2400rpm, where the Everest V6 doesn’t arrive until 1750rpm and lets go at 2250rpm. So the GWM makes peak torque sooner and holds it longer. It’s 14kW down on the Ford but 20Nm up… with two fewer cylinders and no AdBlue.

On the flats we saw between about 7.0 and 8.5L/100km, which suggests the claimed 7.1L/100km might be a touch optimistic. With 131 litres aboard, the Vanta’s theoretical range is around 1800km.

That’s not Sydney to Melbourne. That’s Sydney to Melbourne and back. Theoretically.

Off the bitumen it’s just as composed. It runs in rear-wheel drive on the freeway to save fuel, and shifting to 4H and then 4L is a button press – no clicking, no crunching, and on the way back out of 4L it didn’t even need neutral.

The Vanta is triple locked (front, centre and rear), boasts 220mm of ground clearance with 28.5-degree approach, 22-degree breakover and 25-degree departure angles. It quotes 800mm of wading depth.

Throttle calibration at walking pace is soft in the first few degrees of travel, which is exactly what you want, and with 620Nm from 1400rpm you never need to rev it – just breathe on it and it hauls. This is particularly useful on a super-slippery, boggy trails we encountered. That it only had highway-terrain (and not all terrain) tyres suggest its off-road fundamentals are sound.

The surround-view camera fires up automatically in 4L – low range – with wheel-arch and chin-spoiler views. The head-up display swaps to an off-road mode with compass, altimeter and pressure gauge, and the digital cluster serves up clear pitch and roll angles.

Then there’s the touring kit. Every Tank 500 comes with a brake controller fitted as standard, along with a dedicated towing drive mode, towing-calibrated cruise control and a 12-pin connector.

A handy trailer-reversing top-down camera view is also part of the standard kit and it switches off the rear sensors when you’re hitched so it isn’t beeping at your own van. Braked towing is 3500kg, unbraked 750kg, and gross combined mass is 6545kg.

Three separate cruise control systems is another AT-1 nicety: intelligent cruise that reads the speed signs and uses radar, adaptive cruise that just uses the radar, and plain old traditional cruise control for people who tow and don’t want to be held to ransom by the traffic ahead.

GWM added that last one because Aussies asked for it. The indicators are on the right, too. Good job.

Finally, the aftersales. Seven years, unlimited kilometres, with 12-month/15,000km servicing.

Ford and Toyota both give you five years, and the Prado wants attention every six months or 10,000km – twice as often as almost everything else in the competitive set.

It won’t out-drag an Everest. At 170kW the 2026 GWM Tank 500 gives away 14kW to Ford’s 184kW 3.0-litre V6, and the Ford will walk away from it every day of the week.

It doesn’t sound as good doing it, either – there’s no character to this engine, no charismatic note, just competent, quiet effort.

The Vanta’s touring hardware also costs you capacity. At 2705kg kerb it’s 70kg heavier than the Lux, and payload drops from 760kg to 690kg. So the more expensive version, with the bigger tank and longer range, leaves you less room for people, luggage, accessories and tow ball load.

By comparison the Everest V6 offers 793kg, the MU-X 660kg and the Prado 620kg.

Space is the second trade.

GWM calls this a seven-seater and it is, but there’s only 98 litres behind the third row – enough for a couple of soft bags, not a family’s worth of luggage.

Fold everything flat and you get up to 1489L, which is more useful. Massage seats and Nappa leather don’t count for much if the third row is miserable or the bags have to stay home, and we’ll reserve judgement on the cabin until we get one on our own turf for a more detailed look.

The 19-inch Continental tyres are road-biased rubber (H/T), which showed up as impressive quietness on asphalt.

How it tows is still to be tested and and the big unknowns remain the big unknowns: this is a brand-new engine with no runs on the board, so long-term reliability is unproven.

Nobody has cracked the Chinese-brand resale question yet either. The Prado is basically a term deposit with a tow bar. That’s the trade – the Tank is cheaper to buy but unproven to sell.

If you tow, tour, or spend your weekends where the bitumen runs out, yes – put it on the shortlist. Not the sympathy shortlist. The real one.

The Tank 500 3.0TD sells on value and it delivers on it – seven seats, three diff locks, a brake controller, 3500kg of towing, seven years of warranty and 131 litres of diesel for less money than a base Prado GX that only seats five.

But the reason to actually want one is Trubiani’s tune. GWM didn’t have to make a 2.7-tonne value proposition ride and steer this well, and the fact it does is what lifts this from a spreadsheet win to a car you’d happily drive to Darwin.

Whether it’s still this good at five or 10 years old, nobody knows yet. We’ll just have to play the waiting game.

Should Toyota, Ford and Isuzu be worried? A year or two ago the answer was not yet. We’re not saying that anymore.

2026 GWM Tank 500 Vanta 3.0TD at a glance:
Price: $71,990 (drive-away)
Available: Now
Engine: 3.0-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel
Output: 170kW/620Nm
Transmission: Nine-speed automatic
Fuel: 7.1L/100km (ADR Combined)
CO2: 187g/km
Safety rating: Five stars (ANCAP 2024)

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