What's the difference?
Zeekr is making waves in Australia at the moment but it's not because of the car you see before you.
Nope, it’s the 7X mid-size SUV that’s captured a heap of attention and a whole lot of sales. In fact, of the 1832 sales the brand has managed over the first three months of 2026, just 54 were for the X.
But that was the old X and this is the new one. With more power, more performance, faster charging and a whole heap of pretty special equipment, especially for the small SUV segment.
So, is that enough to finally put the X on the map?
It is hard to immediately think of a country more suited to the convertible life than Australia. Even our coldest states (you know who you are…) are blessed with more warming sun than almost anywhere else on the civilised parts of the planet, so you’d think we’d be swanning about in dropped-top bliss almost year round.
But it’s actually in the UK (despite being cold, grey and almost always underwater) that convertibles really fly out of dealerships, with sun-starved Brits buying more than anyone else in the world. Weird, right?
Still, here they remain something of an oddity, sold in small numbers to drop-top diehards. At least partly because the convertibles of old were almost always slightly worse than their hardtop equivalents.
But Mercedes - which makes more convertibles than most - claims to have mastered the soft-top formula with the E400 4Matic, a car it says offers all the perks of open-air motoring without any of the dynamic or practical downsides.
It's a good thing in a small package, this Zeekr X, and there are a lot of things I like about it. In fact, the only sticking point for me is the price. But that's all about perspective. If you see this as a newcomer Chinese brand, then yes, there are a lot of more affordable options out there. But if you see it as a premium player, it's really a more affordable version of a Volvo.
Note: The author, Andrew Chesterton, is a co-owner of Smart As Media, a content agency and media distribution service with a number of automotive brands among its clients. When producing content for CarsGuide, he does so in accordance with the CarsGuide Editorial Guidelines and Code of Ethics, and the views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
A convertible that doesn't feel like one when the roof is in place is no easy task to build, but it's one Merc's engineers have pulled off with the E400 4Matic Cabriolet. Effortless power, a tonne of technology and a comfy, leather-wrapped cabin all make Merc's drop-top E-Class a strong proposition.