Coolray vs Coolray Lite vs New Coolray: Which Car Are You Actually Buying?

Short answer: five different engines have worn the Coolray badge since 2019, and the horsepower figure cannot tell them apart. The torque figure can. 152, 205, 235, 255 and 290 N·m each belong to exactly one engine, so one number on the specification sheet identifies the car you are being offered. Get it wrong and you pay New Coolray money for a first-generation three-cylinder.

This matters most in Latin America and West Africa, the two regions where all three current versions of this car circulate at once — new Lites and New Coolrays in the official channels, first-generation cars all over the used and grey market. Everything below comes from the Chinese configuration sheets covering 42 Coolray trims from model years 2019 to 2025, cross-checked against published model histories.

Quick answers

• Coolray Lite = naturally aspirated 1.5, 93 kW, 152 N·m, 4,330 mm, manual or CVT.
• New Coolray = turbo 1.5, four cylinders, 133 kW, 290 N·m, 4,380 mm, 7-speed wet DCT.
• First-generation Coolray = turbo 1.5, three cylinders, 130 kW, 255 N·m, 4,330 mm, same 7-speed DCT.
• The two turbos are 3 kW apart and are both marketed at roughly 174–181 horsepower. Power will not separate them.
• Length will not separate them either: four-cylinder turbos were also built in the short 4,330 mm body in 2023 and 2024.
• Two more engines wore the badge — a 1.4 turbo and a 1.0 turbo — and a plug-in hybrid version also exists.

Why the horsepower figure is useless here

Look at how the current turbo Coolray is quoted across markets. Chinese homologation says 133 kW, which the Chinese sheets print as 181 PS. Published model histories convert the same engine to 181 hp and 184 PS. Peruvian dealer material advertises 172 HP. Regional listings across Africa and Latin America commonly say 174 hp.

Those are not five engines. They are one engine, measured under different standards, converted between metric horsepower and mechanical horsepower, and rounded by whoever wrote the brochure. Now put the older three-cylinder next to it: 130 kW, printed as 177 PS in China and 177 hp in the model histories. A buyer comparing “174 hp” against “177 hp” against “181 hp” has no way of knowing that two of those numbers describe a four-cylinder built in 2025 and one describes a three-cylinder built in 2020.

Torque does not have this problem. Newton-metres are the same everywhere, no unit conversion sits between the factory and the brochure, and the five engines that have carried this badge have five distinct figures with no overlap. It is the cleanest single identifier on the sheet, and it is the field almost nobody checks. The same trap runs through Chinese exports generally, which we set out in Chinese model names versus export names.

The five engines, and the years each one was fitted

Note the two engines in the middle of the table that both get called “1.5T” in a listing. The three-cylinder is 1,477 cc and the four-cylinder is 1,499 cc — 22 cc apart, both rounded to 1.5 litres on every badge and in every advertisement ever written about them. The displacement badge is as useless as the horsepower figure. Published model histories also record a plug-in hybrid version of this platform, rated around 258 PS and 415 N·m with roughly 62 km of electric range, which does not appear in the current Chinese petrol configurator and which we have never been asked to quote.

The three cars you will actually be offered

Of those five engines, three matter to a buyer in 2026: the two currently in production and the one that fills the used market.

Two rows in that table are worth stopping on.

The most powerful version is also the most economical. The 133 kW turbo with a dual-clutch returns 6.35 L/100 km on the WLTC cycle; the 93 kW naturally aspirated engine with a CVT returns 6.89. Forty kilowatts less, half a litre per hundred kilometres worse. If a customer is choosing the Lite to save fuel, the specification sheet does not support the decision — the argument for the Lite is purchase price and simplicity, not running cost.

The cheap car has the worst departure angle of the three. The current Lite is rated at 21° at the rear. The first-generation car it replaced managed 27–27.8°, and the New Coolray manages 28°. So on the one geometry figure that decides whether you scrape a steep compound entrance, the newest cheap version is the weakest, and it is seven degrees behind the car sold alongside it. This matters in exactly the markets where the Lite sells best.

Length will not identify the engine either

The convenient rule — short car means the cheap engine, long car means the turbo — is wrong, and it is wrong in the way that costs money.

The 4,380 mm body arrived in 2022 with the Binyue COOL, which added 50 mm to the ends of the car and later became the Binyue L. But Geely kept building four-cylinder turbos in the old 4,330 mm shell alongside it: the 2023 model year offered 290 N·m cars at 4,330 mm, and so did the 2024 model year. Meanwhile the 2019 to 2021 three-cylinder turbos were all 4,330 mm, and today’s naturally aspirated Lite is 4,330 mm as well.

So a 4,330 mm Coolray can be any of three completely different engines depending on the year it was built. Measuring the car tells you which body it is, not which engine is in it. Only the torque figure, or the engine code stamped on the block, closes the question. Where model year and build date disagree — and they frequently do on Chinese cars — the VIN is the tiebreaker, which is part of why every unit we sell carries its VIN and its condition on the page, as described on our inspection and condition report page.

The same car under eight names

None of the confusion above is helped by the naming. In China this car is the Binyue, then the Binyue COOL, then the Binyue L. In export markets it is the Coolray, the Coolray Lite, the New Coolray, and in Côte d’Ivoire the Coolray Sport. In Ghana, where Japan Motors assembles it locally at Tema, the range includes a Coolray Neo. In Malaysia the same platform is the Proton X50. In Belarus and Russia it is the BelGee X50.

The model has been introduced market by market over seven years — the Philippines in 2019, Malaysia in 2020, Vietnam in 2025, South Africa and Indonesia in 2026 — and each launch pinned a name to whichever version was current at that moment. That is why searching a foreign review to check a specification is unsafe: a Philippine review from 2020 is describing the three-cylinder car, and a South African review from 2026 is describing the four-cylinder one. Both are titled “Geely Coolray”. The mechanics of this problem across Chinese brands are in our naming guide, and the market-by-market picture for this specific model is in the Coolray in Peru, Bolivia and Chile and the Coolray in West Africa.

What the confusion is worth in money

Take Peru, where all three cars are visible at once. Local listings in August 2026 put the Coolray Lite from about US$15,990 and the New Coolray from about US$18,990 for the entry turbo trim, rising to roughly US$21,990 for the higher one. Alongside those sit used first-generation cars, advertised simply as a Coolray, at whatever the seller thinks the name is worth.

A buyer who cannot tell the three apart is exposed twice. Paying New Coolray money for a first-generation three-cylinder is the obvious loss. The quieter one is ordering from China against a foreign brochure: quote the cheap end of the Chinese price ladder, expect the turbo car, and your landed arithmetic is out by an entire engine. Those are retail figures in one market, quoted here only to show the size of the gap — they are not export prices, and the FOB figure for a factory order is a different and lower number that depends on trim, quantity and the day we quote. The full trim ladder and what each level actually adds is on the Coolray export page.

How to verify a Coolray before you pay for it

1. Ask for the torque figure in writing. 290 N·m is the current four-cylinder turbo; 255 N·m is the first-generation three-cylinder; 235 N·m is the old 1.4 turbo; 152 N·m is the Lite. One line settles it.
2. Ask for the engine code. BHE15-EFZ, JLH-3G15TD, JLB-4G14TB or BHE15-AFD. It is stamped on the engine and printed on the conformity documents, and it cannot be rounded or converted.
3. Ask for the VIN and the build date, not the model year. Chinese cars are frequently sold as a model year later than the month they were built, which matters wherever an age limit is measured from the manufacture date.
4. Ask for the overall length. 4,380 mm confirms the COOL or L body. 4,330 mm narrows nothing on its own, which is the point of this article.
5. Ask for photographs of the plate and the engine bay, not the brochure images. Anyone who will not send them is telling you something.

We run the same checks before we ship anything, and we publish what we find rather than what sells — the reasoning behind that is on the China car export supply chain and in how to verify a Chinese export company. If you are buying used rather than ordering new, the checklist in seven traps in Chinese used-car imports covers the rest.

Which one should you order?

Order the New Coolray if the customer will notice the difference: 290 N·m against 152 makes it a genuinely different car to drive loaded or uphill, it uses less fuel than the Lite despite the power, and the 28° departure angle suits poor surfaces. Order the Coolray Lite when purchase price governs, when a manual gearbox is wanted, or when local workshops are more comfortable with a naturally aspirated engine and a CVT than with a wet dual-clutch. Buy the first-generation car only knowingly and only at a first-generation price, with the three-cylinder engine accepted as part of the deal.

If you are still comparing this against other Chinese subcompact and compact SUVs for the same customers, the pieces worth reading next are Jetour T2 versus Dashing, the Jetour T2 engine choice, the BYD Seagull at the budget end and our 2026 export shortlist. Factory-order models are listed under new cars, current used stock is on the vehicle pages and the Geely brand page, and you can put any two of them side by side with the comparison tool. What we handle between the factory and your port is on the services page.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between the Coolray and the New Coolray?

The New Coolray is the current four-cylinder turbo: 133 kW, 290 N·m, a 7-speed wet dual-clutch and a 4,380 mm body. A car sold simply as “Coolray” is usually the first-generation model with a three-cylinder 1.5 turbo, 130 kW and 255 N·m in a 4,330 mm body, built between 2019 and 2021. The torque figure separates them; the power figure does not.

Is the Coolray Lite the same car as the Coolray?

No. The Lite is the naturally aspirated version: 93 kW and 152 N·m from a non-turbo 1.5, driving through a five-speed manual or a CVT, in the shorter 4,330 mm body. It shares the wheelbase, width and height with the turbo cars and almost nothing else that affects how it drives.

How do I tell a three-cylinder Coolray from a four-cylinder one?

Read the torque. The three-cylinder JLH-3G15TD is rated at 255 N·m and the four-cylinder BHE15-EFZ at 290 N·m. Both are called 1.5 turbo and both are advertised at around 177 to 181 horsepower, so the power figure will not help you. The engine code on the block confirms it.

Does a longer Coolray mean a more powerful engine?

Not reliably. The 4,380 mm body always carries the four-cylinder turbo, but Geely also built four-cylinder turbos in the shorter 4,330 mm body during the 2023 and 2024 model years. A 4,330 mm car can be a three-cylinder turbo, a four-cylinder turbo or a naturally aspirated Lite depending on when it was built.

Which Coolray is the most economical?

The turbo. The New Coolray returns 6.35 L/100 km on the WLTC cycle against 6.89 for the naturally aspirated Lite with a CVT, so the more powerful car is also the more frugal one. The Lite’s case rests on purchase price and mechanical simplicity, not fuel.

What fuel grade does a Coolray need?

RON 92 as a minimum, declared identically on all 42 Chinese trims we checked across every engine and model year. In markets where the standard pump grade is RON 91, the knock sensor protects the engine by retarding ignition timing, at some cost in power and economy.

Is the Proton X50 the same car as the Coolray?

It is built on the same platform and sold under a different brand in Malaysia, as the BelGee X50 is in Belarus and Russia. Local specification, equipment levels and homologation differ by market, so treat a Proton specification sheet as a guide to the platform rather than as a description of the car you would receive from a Chinese factory order.

Specification figures are taken from Geely’s Chinese-market configuration sheets covering 42 Coolray trims from model years 2019 to 2025, cross-checked against published model histories. Retail prices quoted are local listings in one market at the time of writing and are not export prices.