GWM has brought its Haval H9 to the UAE market from AED 119,900 before VAT, in a bid to take a share of the seven-seat family four-wheel-drive class.
This is not a raised crossover. It is built on a separate ladder frame and runs a two-litre turbocharged petrol engine producing 214hp and 380Nm, through an eight-speed automatic gearbox supplied by ZF.
Those power figures are not the highest in the class, but the off-road hardware is what GWM wants the car measured on: four-wheel drive with front and rear locking differentials, 224mm of ground clearance, an 800mm wading depth and seven driving modes through a terrain control system.
Four-wheel drive with front and rear locking differentials, 224mm of ground clearance and an 800mm wading depth.
Inside, the seven seats are arranged 2+3+2, alongside a 14.6-inch infotainment screen, a 10.25-inch digital instrument panel, a panoramic sunroof, ventilated front seats with a massage function and a ten-speaker audio system with a subwoofer. Load space extends to 1,598 litres with the second and third rows folded.
The driver-assistance list is long for the price tier: six airbags, adaptive cruise control, a traffic-jam assistant, blind-spot monitoring, lane-departure warning and lane keeping, autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, and a surround-view camera.
The natural comparison is with the Toyota Land Cruiser Prado and the Nissan Patrol, the reference points in this Gulf class for decades. That is precisely where Haval’s offer rests: the price gap is wide enough to make a buyer recalculate what they are paying for the badge and for resale value.
In Saudi Arabia the H9 is listed from SAR 124,900. That market is readier for the car than most: Haval was one of only two gainers among the kingdom’s top ten marques in the first half of 2026, growing 48% in a market down 23.5% overall, and finishing eighth with 14,800 cars.
GWM is also offering a six-year extended warranty and finance from AED 1,799 a month before VAT. Both are familiar tools among Chinese marques for addressing buyer hesitation towards a badge the market has not tested for long.
The open question in this class is not specification. A body-on-frame family car is bought for ten years rather than three, and what settles the experience is parts availability, the density of the service network outside the major cities, and how resale value behaves after the first cycle — none of which Chinese marques have yet accumulated in the Gulf to the degree their Japanese rivals have.
Gulf Auto will track actual delivery prices and specification differences between Gulf markets, and whether the model reaches Qatar and Kuwait with the same equipment.
