Geely V’s Chery – Why Geely is king, and Chery have lost the plot

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For many years it was Geely that was the national laughing stock of the Chinese automotive world, they made cheap cars, they had a corny name (in English and Chinese) and at the time were getting completely blown away by their biggest rivals over in Anhui Province. Their rivals of course being the state owned Chery.

Geely have worked hard on their cars in the past two years, heading up their R&D dept is the charasmatic Frank Zhao who has a million and one plans for the Geely brand, not all of them great, but not all bad either. He has succesfully steered Geely away from that cheap and cheerful brand with the latest range of Geely cars, however, he has been let down by the marketing department that have given his cars the most awful names to date. Geely is an excellent name, it rolls off the tongue easily, but why the Geely marketing department had to come up with the brand name ‘Gleage‘ is beyond me. Chinese consumers are quickly going to become even more despondent to Chinese manufacturers. Geelys latest vehicle line up is compact, and is comprehensive, the concepts they’ve shown at the last two automotive shows in China have been a range of MPV, SUV, sedan, compact sedan, hatch, and truck. China Car Times did get a chance to check out two of these models recently, and will post a review soon (A little hint: they were much better than Geely’s current cars)

Chery on the other hand started great, and had a promising future but the speed of their development has essentially derailed them. Their last outing at the Shanghai Auto Show was a branding, and engineering disaster for the Wuhu based automaker. They launched their new brands, Riich, Reely, and Karry, as well as their usual Chery line up (consisting of their excellent A3 range). Chery’s break into three different sub brands was an odd idea, perhaps they got wind of Geely’s sub brand plans and went along with their own branding exercise, but the results were not as good. Over on the Reely side of Chery, we saw the Reely X5 SUV – a 1900kg SUV with a 2.0 gasoline turbo assisted engine, it sounds like a sweet deal, however the technicals are let down by the execution, simply put this SUV is rancid. Looking further around the Chery stand at the Shanghai Auto Show, it was clear that Chery is planning to flood the market with car choices they have hatchbacks competing against hatchbacks or compact sedans competing with compact sedans. This might look great in the showroom, where the traditional Chinese mantra of ‘strength in numbers‘ looks great for Chery executives, but it makes Chery look an amatuer player on the world stage. Chery should focus on the one single brand, Chery, and perhaps the Karry subbrand for trucks and vans, anything else is superflous and detrimental to their plans to become a world automotive player.

Chery did run out of operating cash in 2008 which sent them to their government owners for mild bail out. Geely on the other hand, as a privately owned company is pinning its future on R&D, as without R&D a privately owned company will quickly die without consumers coming through the doors to buy cars. The future is firmly Geely, Brilliance, BYD and to a lesser extent, Great Wall. Chery will remain as a large player in China but for those companies which plan on setting foot outside of the PRC  should have a comprehensive line up of cars that are well built, well designed, and above all resolve any matters of safety.