If there is ever a trojan horse sent to trick the local population into a false sense of security, the Ora Good Cat is probably one of them.
That retro modern styling that makes it almost sickeningly cute hides a series of potentially lethal weapon that could take the competition by surprise.
If you don't know it already, the Good Cat is an electric car and a few hours with it last week gave us a valuable insight into how the Chinese automotive industry is looking at the transition to electron drive.
For many detractors, electric cars today are just too expensive to become mainstream and they don't expect prices to become competitive for another five, 10 or even 20 years, depending on how attached they are to engines, engine oil or possibly their mechanic.
Tesla certainly had a hand in this price argument. The California carmaker designed and built electric cars that offered impossible performance and technology so futuristic, some still argue if it is real and as a result their cars live firmly in the luxury segment.
And because there are so many videos online showing luxury sedans from Fremont thrashing livestock from Maranello, S'ant Agata and Zuffenhausen, they became sort of the standard bearer and every car company wants to come up with a Tesla killer.
Since most buyers don't particularly want to part with limbs in exchange for personal transport, electric cars have remained firmly in the domain of those who have extra limb to spare while the rest of us just sit on the roadside and simmer.
Chinese automakers had a different thing going.
Instead of focusing on Tesla, they decided to take advantage of the government grants for electric cars and make as much money as possible by selling as many battery-powered vehicles as possible and they did that the old fashioned way, by making them affordable.
As a result some of the cars that came out do a very good impression of golf buggies, while others were simply quietter versions of Chinese cars.
While we probably would have liked the quietness, the average Chinese car then looked terrible and had even worse build quality. So no thank you.
The Good Cat, on the other hand, offered such niceties as styling that didn't make you want to scratch your eyes out, pretty consistent panel gaps, decent paint quality and a cabin that would put the average Japanese car to shame.
That's right, Great Wall Motors, the company that churns out this car has upped their game to such an extent that there is very little to complain about the physical aspects of the car, except perhaps that the boot is rather small.
The interior design may not be to everyone's taste what with diamond quilting on the seats and doors and two tone simulated leather and soft touch plastic everywhere but it is hard to fault the execution.
Even the toggle switch in the centre console, which shamelessly copies the style of the Mini, is nice to the touch and solid in operation.
The driver's seat even came equipped with massage function and that was the source of my biggest complaint, that there was no button on the side of the seat to operate it. The massage function was buried under two layers of menu on the centre screen.
It took all of 15 minutes for me to figure it out.
During that 15 minutes I was forced to stare at a high-definition centre screen that actually has very few layers of menu, but it's quite easy to navigate, perhaps because most drivers would simply connect to apple car play or android auto and continue to live on their phone.
This idea of continuing to live on the phone is quite an important concept among Chinese EV makers as their cars seem to be well designed to be connected to the virtual world, not just in functionality but in the presentation of information.
Things like maps and entertainment and messaging all run seamlessly because they decided, quite wisely, that it's not worth it to develop an expensive operating system for the car when they can licence the same thing from Google or Apple, companies that spend all their time doing exactly that.
The other big thing that I kicked up a fuss about with Daniel, the chap in charge of PR at Great Wall Motors Malaysia, was that there is no permanent soft button on the side of the screen for the air-conditioning system.
Speaking of air-conditioning system, first time electric car owners will find it a bit unsettling when they get in the car and cool air just starts blowing without any prompting.
The Good Cat does not have a start button anywhere, the car just detects the key and turns itself on and because nothing shudders or vibrates it confuses our mechanically-trained brain for a second or two.
As all the screens light up and all vital information is presented and a small light that says ready is lit, we just twist the selector into drive and resist the temptation to mash the throttle.
I say resist the temptation because during my first few times in an electric car I just wanted to play with the throttle a bit, rev it up in the morning, like we do our normal engine car.
With electric cars, it is always a good idea to feather the throttle, because electrons don't wait for the optimum rpm to start torquing the driveshaft.
While this feline has only about 140 metric horses and 250 dead English scientists on tap, it delivers it from the get go.
This was clearly demonstrated to us on a very large empty car park with some cones on it. At one point, the driving instructor made us line the car up to two cones and asked us to kick the throttle like it was the nut of our favourite bully.
The tyres scrabbled for grip but thankfully the traction control system was pretty good and it launched energetically despite the rather slippery damp surface.
There are those who say electric cars are not as much fun to drive, I suspect most of them are talking from assumption rather than experience.
Instant torque means overtaking on back roads are fun, instant torque also means finer throttle modulation and when you couple that with extremely low centre of gravity, you get a car that corners flat.
Cornering flat is not a guarantee of good handling but if the suspension is well sorted out, it does give the driver a better feel of what is going on as our inner ears do not have to worry about matching the pitch and roll of the car itself to our visual cues.
On the drive we did find the ride to be firm, more like a continental machine than Japanese or Korean and there is a good reason for this, according to Newton.
Battery electric cars are a bit heavier than gas cars, and in the case of the Cat it weighs about 1400kg, which is about 150-200kg heavier than an ICE car so the springs have to have more Newtons per millimetre to stop the car crashing on bad roads.
Thankfully the ride is not overly firm and on the plus side it helps with the handling.
In the afternoon we had a chance to drive on our own and the car is a fun little machine.
My co-driver, who admitted that this is his first time in an electric car on public roads, was initially sceptical about the cat, but after 10 minutes became heretical and started spouting things like; "If this car is RM150K, I would never buy another compact or hatchback."
So in short, well after 1,200 words anyway, the Ora Good Cat is not just the first Chinese electric car to be offered in Malaysia, it is a broadside against established brands here.
When it comes to market there will probably be three versions with two battery sizes with prices ranging from RM150K to RM180K, and at those prices they could start edging into the traditional car market quite quickly.
By the way did you guys read about the Thais queueing up at night to place orders for the BYD Atto 3? Just saying.
