According to Shanghai Daily and the China Daily, Zhonghua Autos, English name Brilliance, plans to export 3000 cars to Germany in 2007, and then reaching up to 180,000 cars within 5 years! Ambitious plans for a company thats controlled by a mobile phone battery maker!
Zhong Hua/Brilliance are based in Shenyang, Liaoning in North East China. Under a deal with BMW, Zhonghua would get engineering and design help from BMW, and BMW in return would have a partner to help it produce the 3 and 5 series BMW’s in China. A …

Xinhua, the Chinese state broadcaster , often called Skinhua due to the large enormous amount of pretty girls on its website, has posted the 8 prettiest models from Beijing Car Show

When China Car Times was at the Beijing Car Show, I was able to snag some information on how the actual entire engine works. Being the talented individual that I am, I’ve translated the diagram from Chinese into English, but its not perfect English mind. Its pretty big image at 150k, but its worth every penny. Click it to see a bigger image.

Hopefully this will answer some of the many questions that China Car Times has received over the past few weeks since we first wrote about the hybrid Roe …

We havnt posted anything about ZhongXing as of yet, thats not to say theres nothing good to say about them though. China Car Times finally caught up with ZhongXing at Beijing Car Show where we saw a few of their new models.
The Grand Tiger
The Grand Tiger (Wei Hu) looks a bit like a Mitsubishi Triton, actually quite a lot. ZhongXing also had a Grand Tiger done up like a Monster Truck, complete with a foreign guy modeling it for them. The Grand Tiger will be sold for 90,000RMB once it …

At the Beijing Car Show, the new Beijing Jeeps were unveiled, the Brave Warrior which is meant for military use plus a newer updated version of the original 2020, except this one is called the ‘Gladiator’ (角斗士 – jiao dou zhan)

The Brave Warrior:
China Car Times commented on the Brave Warrior before, but once you get up close to it, you can clearly see that this jeep is no where near as good as the original 2020 – it feels too plasticy, especially when compared to the combined Soviet and American …

China Car Time has been confused, confused ever since we first laid eyes on the above new Dong Feng Coupe. It looks okay I guess, nothing super special from the front, but once you start to move towards the rear of the car you see:

Just what is the need for that plastic bellows? China Car times has posted before about this Dong Feng Coupe, but even then we were confused, but a poster on China Car Forums has said
This is a new concept in hybrid vehicles. It uses compressed air …

A car show wouldnt be a car show without girls draping over them, China Car Time has brought you a small selection of what was one offer at Beijing Car Show, if we took too many pictures of pretty girls then my prettier half would no doubt cease performing her matriarchal duties i.e. cooking and laundry, this would leave China Car Time in quite a pickle! So here is a small yet modest collection of hot chicks from Beijing Car Show 2006. Click here to view the full post!
Chery A3 …

Since SAIC bought Rover they’ve been busy squirreling away in their Research and Development departments, presumably busy making these utterly stunning, beautiful new cars. China Car Times was awed by the beauty and quality of these cars at the Beijing Car Show, although China Car Times will do well to keep in mind that these are only samples and it would be better to wait for a test drive before commenting further on the quality and design of the cars but we are impressed by the general design! …

I think the Rover – Roe We car is really going to take off as a mid range luxury car in China, and its certainly looking like Roe We is going to push its cars as such. Now in China Volkswagon Passats and Audi A6’s are the staple car for any budding Chinese wanting to flout themselves as mid to upper class, but these Passats and A6’s were largely purchased 3 to 4 years ago when there really was no other alternative in the mid to upper range car market, …

China Car Times has been in Beijing at the Beijing 2006 Car Show – Normal service will resume. In the mean time, China Car Times finds itself sitting in the lobby of the Japanese embassy in Beijing. Can you believe they close at 11am and open again at 2pm ? What kind of crazy consular staff take a 3 hour lunch break?

I was talking about this with my friends back in the UK, and they never seemed to believe me that the Austin Maestro and the Austin van were still being produced in China after almost 15 years of not being produced in the UK. I once saw an entire factory full of them in Qingdao， I was shocked beyond belief. In China the Maestro is called ‘lu bao‘ meaning land treasure, or rather Chinese treasure as Lu is often used to refer to the Chinese mainland, in English its called …

Excuse the terrible pun.

The Red Flag, or Hong Qi as it’s known in China, car company a part of First Automotive Works (FAW) has finally produced a new car. The original Hong Qi was based on an old Audi 100 design. You see FAW and Audi have had a relationship going back to 1986. FAW used Audi’s 100 design to make their ‘own’ cars for use by the Chinese government and rich Chinese folks. You can still see the old style Hong Qi come Audi 100 on the streets today, …

China Car Times was very shocked  today to discover from various sources that the Shanghai Automobiles has produced a new Rong Wei/Roe We/Rover 750 (take your pick of name) and its a hybrid car! The press release from Shanghai Autos (SAIC) says:
This hybrid Roe We 750 is fully independently developed by Shanghai Automotive Group, its core technique and components are developed independently by Shanghai Automotive Group according to leading V processes. This car is capable of saving 20% fuel compensation under integrated loop and meets European IV standard emission standards. …

This Geely King Kong could well be leading the Chinese automobile invasion of America sometime in 2007! Geely released the King Kong a while back, even I was a bit stunned by its named ‘Jin Gang’ the rough phonetic translation for the giant gorilla that terrorized Manhattan on the big screen. ‘Jin’ means gold, and ‘Gang’ means hard or unyielding, a pretty decent name you might think – except in the USA it will be given the name Geely LSG1, a bit boring when compared to King Kong. Enough with …

Malcom Bricklin, the entrepreneur who brought the Yugo to America and then much more successfully brought the Subaru to the US, was planning to export Chery automobiles to the USA  on the basis of them being top quality at a low price, rather than bargain basement quality at a low price. The exported Chery’s were planned to be sold using Bricklin’s Visionary Vehicles brand. However, it seems that the plan has now been derailed for reasons which are currently unknown, Bricklin was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying …

Here at China Car Times I’ve found myself rather bored of late, other than writing articles for China Car Times I dont seem to do much else （Oh,thats right, I manage a company as well). I’ve been thinking about buying an old Chinese Car for quite some time and restoring it or beefing it up a little. I’ve looked at lots of cars both Chinese made and Russian made, for example Suzuki Alto, Beijing Jeep, Lada Niva etc (and a Fiat 126!) A while back I thought about taking a …

It seems Chery is jumping into the hybrid arena to take on the hybrid heavy weight giants, Honda and Toyota, at their own game! Chery’s latest offering, the Chery A5 ISG (pictured below) is a gasoline/electric machine.

The gasoline part of the engine is a tiny 1.3litre engine, the other half being electric battery powered, although Chery has yet to specify what kind of battery the Chery will actually use, but it has specified that the engine was designed by the Austrian company AVL. The A5 ISG, uses a high-powered integrated …

LIMA, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) — Chinese auto brands Great Wall, Hafei, Geely and Faw debuted in the Peruvian car market, importing company Zona Motors announced on Wednesday. “Our plan is not to hide the cars’ origins, but instead to show them off as a sign of (Chinese) innovation (which is) constantly advancing its technology with giant steps,” said Constantin Lerner, the company’s director general.
Source: Xinhua

Beijing Jeep has finally redesigned their original model ‘Beijing Jeep 2020′, its only been 23 years or so since Daimler Chrysler first hooked up with Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Corp to create the Beijing-Benz DaimlerChrysler Automotive Co Ltd (what is it with these car companies and their names?) Try saying that 30 times in a row!
The first car that Beijing Benz produced was the Beijing Jeep 2020, a cross between the Russian military jeep, the UAZ and the American Wrangler, it wasnt a bad 4×4 you can still see plenty …

Note: China Car Times wanted to post this article this very morning, but found itself at the mercy of China Telecom.

At the weekend one of Shanghai Automotive executives, Phil Murtaugh, commented that Chinese manufacturer has postponed plans to export the Rovers to the US and European markets as they first plan to focus solely on the Chinese market to begin with, depending on the outcome of Chinese sales will they they export to foreign countries. Shanghai Autos had previously stated that they wanted to start selling cars in Britain …

4.0 litre, V8 engine. More news as China Car Times can find it

BYD Autos, the company that is owned by a mobile phone battery maker and is based in Xi An, central China released its F8 soft top today at the Beijing Car Show. BYD first came about in the late 1990’s when they started to assemble the Suzuki Alto for the Chinese market in cooperation with Suzuki.
It seems that BYD have actually come a long way, although many of their new offerings look a lot like existing car designs, take for example the below F8 – does it remind you of …

I cant deciede if this car is cool or crap. I mean look at the front – it looks muscular, butch and just a tiny bit feminine. Then look at the rear and it looks like one of those foot pumps for inflating air beds, or one of those instruments – a whats it called again? I first saw these photos and thought, what happens if you press down on the hood/boot? Will it make a noise? What if you were driving and the pressure from the wind flowing over …

Check out more photos here

This new model from HaFei, named ‘Sai bao’ meaning Race Leopard (hope they dont use that English name though) was released today in Shenzhen China. The car was designed with the helpful input of both French and Italian design companies, so it doesnt look half bad! It comes with a 1.8 litre engine as standard, and has a top speed of 180km with an option of manual gearing or automatic. When the car is fully released in China, it will be expected to cost between 80,000rmb and 10,000rmb depending on …