Western and Japanese car manufacturers like to launch a core series of vehicles every few years, and focus on their development until its time to swap the car for a newer, or updated model, this is essentially based over a two or three year time line (at the most). Chinese manufacturers in their eagerness, like to launch what seems like a dozen different models every year, whilst this shows that they are improving rapidly, its also a marketing disaster! In 2009, and 2010, Chery have plans to launch nearly ten new cars, although this shows that they are very eager with their plans to become a world wide automotive player, its also very hard to market ten new cars and get them all air time in the media at the same time.

Chery is currently working on the Q22, which appears to be a ‘bread van’ type vehicle

These type of kei vans are very popular in China, and with this particular segment being highly competitive, we wonder if Chery can get in on the act and actually turn a profit on each van sold. Dongfeng, Chang’an, Changhe, Hafei, and a whole host of other companies make these minivans, all of which appear to be priced from 20,000rmb and higher.

Chery QQ5:

The Chery QQ5 is an extremely ugly vehicle, we’re not sure what Cherys thoughts were when they were designing this car. Were they going for ‘cult classic‘ vehicle, like the VW Beatle, or the mini (MINI)? Either way, we think its so ugly its beautiful. Paired to a 1.3l engine and an AMT transmission. The concept car was called Chery WOW (rumors about the name actually being WOW thats ugly have yet to be denied)

The QQ5 was supposed to launch in the second half of 2008, but that seems to have been put off until 2009.

Chery A6CC

Although the Chinese economy is looking set to slow from an impressive 10% growth to a mere 8% growth (although some say 9%) the market for sports cars and SUVs may dwindle, but Chery seems eager to launch the mystical A6CC in 2009. We say mystical, as its been due to have been launched for quite some time. The exterior is quite pleasing on the eye, and the interior isnt shabby either. The engine is reportedly a 3.0l V6, and the platform design was aided by the British motoring experts, Lotus. Should the A6CC pack the afore mentioned 3.0l V6 engine, it will surely make its nearest competitor, the Brilliance Coupe 1.8T look rather feeble.

Chery Faira

The Chery Faira range exploded onto the show floor at this years Shanghai Auto show, nobody was expecting Chery to launch another range of small cars to go against their QQ range. The Faira range has been codenamed S18、S18A、S18C and S18D respectively. The S18 is expected to go on the market first, followed by the others.  Chery now has the QQ range, the Chery A1, and the Faira range, thats nearly ten small cars under their belt, usually most car companies offer up one or two cars in each market segment, but Chery has decided to put ten cars in one segment, at least it gives the consumer plenty of choice!

Chery A13 – the new Chery Cowin

The A13 is set to replace the Chery Cowin in 2009 in both hatch, and sedan forms. The Chery Cowin, as we all know, is based on the Seat Toledo with engines that were built on an old Ford UK engine plant. Its the first car that brought Chery sucess, although they did build it without state approval (despite being a state owned company), a quicky sale of some stocks to SAIC got around the licensing issue. The new A13 hatch looks a lot like the Euro Honda Civic hatch, especially around the front end:

More pictures:

Chery A6

The A6 is set to replace the rapidly aging Chery Eastar, the design overall looks excellent, and is certainly more appealing on the eye than the box like Eastar. The interior also looks to be a vast improvement over the previous Eastar.

If the Eastar is priced correctly, and does not venture into VW Passat pricing territory, it could win itself a nice market share.

Here in this article, we’ve mentioned Cherys mini cars, sedans, and sports cars, but we havent even touched on the range of SUV’s that Chery has up its sleeves. Chery is reportedly using Lexus SUV’s to benchmark its SUV’s suspensions, so its possible that upcoming Chery P11 SUV will be a premium SUV, but at that Chery price we’ve all come to know and and love!

Despite the myriad of models that Chery are keen to launch next year, it seems that there are a few gems amongst them, with Chery previously stating they want to enter every niche market that hasnt been opened yet by Chinese auto makers, it seems that there plan will see some fruitation in 2009. Just one last problem, how do you market the launch of a dozen new cars?