Man this was a depressing experience. The car was ok though.

We had originally tried to get our cynical grubs on the newer 3-row VF9. But apparently the last one was sold a month ago, so instead we clambered into the infamous VF8 excitingly anticipating the worst.

If you know anything about the “upstart” (in the U.S. at least) Vinfast, it’s probably to do with the litany of scathing reviews towards their cars and the VF8’s reputation for poor quality and borderline dangerous “unique driving characteristics”. It really hasn’t been easy for this Vietnamese company to set up shop in the U.S. They’ve been trying to crack that market since 2023 and so far it just isn’t working. These cars are a rare sight, even in the few states that have dealers, let alone planned to build factories.. like here in North Carolina!

People just don’t seem to want one, and if they do any minimal amount of digging into cheap EVs to buy, you’ll find 1000 reasons not to put money down on the big Flying V.

So let’s dig in, although over an admittedly overly short window, into what we have here:

The wondrous woes of a Vinfast VF8

Oh yeah. It’s Vinny time. And just behold that sight! What a face! What a… design! It… uh… certainly is its own thing!

Whatever that thing is…

Style is subjective, and subjectively I’m both correct and not really sold on whatever the hell is up with the front end of this thing. To its credit, the fascia is only somewhat offensive to my eyes. The sides are less of a frontal assault and more of an affront to my senses, because after coming in swinging with the 4-eyed beaked behemoth, it then becomes “some modern SUV”.

The more inoffensive side profile blends harmlessly into a finely styled rear. I think the most impressive thing they’ve done here is actually making it look 90% like its own thing. Once you’ve been made aware of its existence, you’re not mistaking it for anything else.

Got enough exterior talk bullshit? Hope so, let’s enter this beast.

You’ve got generous leg room in the back, though the truck space suffers a little for this. The seats are lined with “vegan leather”, and honestly it’s kinda fine in here. And comfy.

The same goes for the front.

The material choice is also a bit funny. The leather feels fine, and you have actually bits of aluminum in the door cards. But the the plastics are all out of a 90’s Chevy Cavalier. And then the build quality kinda flip-flops a little. Behold, premium vegan leather:

Mmmm, the ass folds and bum creases already taking shape in my brand new car. Love it.

The front follows the trend seen in the Radical SR1 and Tesla Model 3 by doing away with a gauge cluster behind the steering wheel. But unlike those two cars, the VF8 gets a HUD you can use to still keep track of speed, range, and other relevant information within your line of sight. Which is nice.

What isn’t as nice (or convenient), and honestly kind of odd, is the the rest of this interior space. Back to the materials, there is a liberal use of that crappy piano black plastic that’s smudges really easy. Good thing they put in a hard to reach place by the cup holders and gear selection happy trail.

And is it me, or are those buttons not centered? The “direction selection” buttons don’t really feel like anything and are a little obtuse to use, though maybe if you’ve lived with the car for longe you’d get used to their kinda out of sight location. Additionally, the volume control nipple is inconveniently paired along with the hazard light button. Both are somewhat awkward to reach and not within your line of sight.

Now back to the “drive control conga line”, while technically the buttons work ok for a car with no gearbox or engine, the Polestar 2’s little cyberpunk cockring shifter was more intuitive and didn’t feel like it was made from a recycled C4 corvette power wheels.

And then you stumble upon these funkily shaped stalks, only to learn they came straight from BMW’s 10 year old leftovers bin. You own a i3 or x3? Well your fingers will feel right at home in this Vinfast!

The interior doesn’t immediately feel poorly built. The Ford Edge “awd platinum shart” I already forgot I drove had more rattles and chunks of interior that didn’t feel securely fastened compared to the Vinny-V-F-8. Though J haven’t quite seen such a stark mix of fine, mediocre, and terrible materials since Subaru put “Alcantara” on the armrest of a doped up Impreza and called it an STI.

Some other bits of housekeeping before moving on, the trunk space is not as big as you’d think, with the rear seats taking up residence. Legroom and occupant space for the most part is pretty good in here even though the floor of the car is set almost uncomfortably high up. Additionally, the frunk is a little small compared to the size of that car. It’s probably no smaller than the one found in a Polestar 2, but theoretically, the VF8 should have more room to play.

Regardless of that, you’ll still be able to fit the charging cables, maybe some first aid gear, and a backpack snugly under hood.

The door handles also have these weird scalloped out indents that make me feel uncomfortable and we’re going to move on from that.

Ok, I’ve dragged this out long enough, let’s go drive the damn thing.

The VF8 was… well nothing that special honestly.

The steering was unremarkable. I’ve read people say that the EPAS gives up under hard loads, though from my brief time with the car I didn’t really feel anything that off yet. It just… steers. It’s not great. But it’s also not world-endingly awful, especially compared to a lot of other garbage out there. Put forth by Vinfast was “an amount” of effort that wound up shitting out “eh” mediocrity. Nothing really stood out that much compared to other SUVs. Though keep in mind that buying one of these for its dynamics is a fools errand.

Over rough pavement the car didn’t feel like a particularly terrible over sprung mess. Maybe I need to find more of those awful parking lot speed bumps. But over a patch of crappy Rayleigh tarmac, the VF8 didn’t feel any worse than a number of forgettable crossovers. This one specifically wasn’t too terribly crashy, but that could also be down to the car not being punished like a rental in the Everglades.

Through the few turns we had, you kinda feel a bit more confidence from the lower center of mass than, say, the aforementioned Ford Edge maybe? Don’t mistake that for good cornering capabilities. It’s a fucking Vinfast. But it’s also a modern EV, and the laws of physics are not easily motivated by upset opinion.

Unless it’s mine, and I declare turbulent flows to be made up.

Did you know that this VF8 was the top of the line model with awd, 400-ish hp, and 457 lb-ft of torque. If it really does have all that, then the car feels like it weight 8000 lb. This sour-faced blob doesn’t really feel particularly quick. That instant response of a punch to the spine you get in most EVs is dulled to almost nonexistent in the VF8. The numbers show an increase in speed but my tummy just don’t feel it.

Maybe it’s that throttle lag people mention, maybe it just wasn’t feeling it that day. Whatever the case is, 400 hp has never felt so underwhelming.

Regen braking is also not particularly strong in its highest setting. In the Polestar 2, you could actually one pedal drive, in this it feels like half-assed deceleration. Also its 240-ish mile range isn’t particularly compelling, especially when we realized that the trip from Kannapolis to Raleigh and back would require us to recharge at some point. Granted, it wouldn’t need to charge to 100% again to get back, but the ~260 mile trip is still outside of its capabilities.

Overall, it’s not a particularly special vehicle to drive. Nothing really stands out above any other generic 5-seat SUVs. During our short time, we really didn’t notice anything too egregious, but other sources who get to drive the car for longer and push the limits more do note that it’s “unique dynamic characteristics” start to shine though.

So that’s the mediocre drive done. What more could possibl–

THE BULLSHIT SCREEN

Ayo you got games on yo Vinny?

The UI sucks, it’s laggy, it’s kinda ugly, it throws way too much information at your face, and navigating through it is like digging through a government archive. Sure you will eventually find what you’re after, but lord help you til then.

Like one too many of its modern counterparts, the Vinfast Bullshit Screen is in fact loaded to the brim with bullshit. And my favorite of the turds is this game: Baja Big Air

Wow. What a game. What a name. Let’s spoil ourselves shall we?

Any man with such defined forehead wrinkles has my immediate trust. Let’s go racing!

Wow. What gameplay.

I think I can feel my life slowly slipping away…

The Infamous Warnings…

The car was constantly have a nervous breakdown over some random bullshit. If road lines disappeared, then the lane keep monitoring would start to have a panic attack in the background. Over the course of our short little test drive, bumpy roads, traffic, unclear lanes, and a bunch of other crap triggered warning notifications that flashed on the screen or HUD. And while nothing shouted at you annoyingly (I believe the salesman disabled the noises), we did watch in amusement as flashes of orange light appeared over seemingly nothing. You can dig through menus and shut some of that off, but it will only go so far.

Lane keep assist can be easily overpowered unlike earlier cars. So if you change lanes without indicating, you feel a pathetic resistance in the wheel for a millisecond before you can proceed to cut people off to your hearts content. Also the “advanced cruise control” seemed to be pretty lax about having your hands on the wheel.

Stfu and finish already:

Now, after all that it needs to be said that we only got our hands on a VF8 for a quick little test drive. And from that experience, the car really wasn’t that bad. Hell, I’d probably lease one over some depressing boringly Nissan. Look at the leasing:

Even my dumb grad-school ass with a part-time job could afford this! And it had a warrantee!

But.

Most sources who’ve been around the first Vinfast to make it stateside paint a different picture. An unfinished and unintelligent car made by a clueless bunch engineers for a market they have no business trying to break into. A car with numerous bugs, flaws, and failures that come to light after either owning one or just being left alone with a VF8 for a few unsupervised hours. Common complaints have included a laggy throttle, awful spring and damper pairing, a really buggy and slow UI, inane and spastic safety systems, and numerous human factors miscalculations. Some of that we didn’t pick up on or notice, others started to creep in right before we left the car behind. But if for some ungodly reason you decided to use a website with “into my ass” in its name as a source of Vinfast knowledge, I feel it’s only right that I mentioned this wee long disclaimer.

And that’s the Vinfast. It’s “a car”. Not a particularly great one, but from behind the wheel, also not the worst. That’s not enough to move inventory, as we learned, because the dealer we visited was apparently getting ready to close its sales department and become a service shop run by a skeleton crew. Go lease a VF8 for dirt cheap if you really want one. Don’t for the love of god buy it new, you’ll be throwing away $20,000 instantly on depreciation.

For all its faults and history, I am still happy the VF8 exists in the U.S. The more weird ass cars on the market and road, the more fun it is to be into cars. Maybe one day they’ll figure it out.