Archive for October, 2011
Skoda Fabia Crossover breaks cover in China
The Skoda brand has gone from strength to strength since its relatively late (re)entry into the Chinese market in 2007, no doubt the Skoda brand is giving hope to other manufacturers such as Renault and Subaru who are also plotting local production at some point in the future, if they can get the permission to [...]
This is the next generation of Chery QQ
The Chery QQ set the Chinese automotive world alight, and to some extent it burned the fringes of the traditional auto makers in the West and the East, the QQ was the start of the clone wars which would hit the Chinese market until…. well, the clones haven’t yet entirely stopped with some smaller auto [...]
Are Buick planning to put 2.0T into Buick Excelle to give us a three door hot hatch?
The Chinese hot hatch market is a desperate place, on one side you have the VW Golf GTI, on the other side you have exactly nothing. VAG has stolen the lime light with hot hatches, they introduce the Golf GTI, the Skoda Octavia VRS and the Polo GTI is expected to join them soon, God [...]
How many faces can the old Mazda 323 have?
When it comes to automotive platforms in the Chinese market, Chinese manufacturers seem to run with the ‘waste not, want not’ mantra, this old school train of thought has lead to such legacy models as the Mk2 VW Jetta and the Santana and pretty much every Passat since then to remain in production whilst newer [...]
Next generation Roewe 750 inside and out
The current Roewe 750 is a little long in the tooth, as it is based on the Rover 75 which itself debuted in 1998 but saw production in China under the Roewe brand in 2006 – 14 years on the market is a long time for a car even in China. The next generation of [...]
BMW cutting up to 19% to keep consumers onside.
Perhaps Bloomberg would be better off looking at car prices anywhere else other than Beijing, Beijing Municple Government’s Iron Grip on car registration plates has limited sales to just 20,000 new cars per month, meaning that prices will drop just to get people through the doors. From SFGate via Bloomberg. China is turning into a [...]
Saab still waiting on Chinese cash, Geely not interested
The longer Saab waits for its long promised investment money from its Chinese partners the closer it gets to closing the doors, but the rumor does not wait, last week it was rumored that Geely were interested in taking on the Saab-story, but it seems that Geely are quite happy with just the one Swedish [...]
China to be world’s biggest EV market by 2015?
According to American consultancy company, Pikes Research, China will be the world’s largest EV market by 2015. Theoretically, it could be, but real world conditions indicate that for China to become the world’s largest EV market in the next three years they are going to have to do a lot of ground work on building [...]
Geely’s WCar is a GX2 in disguise for Taiwan
Despite warming ties between The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (RoC aka Taiwan), RoC cars are few on Chinese roads, and likewise PRC cars are few on Taiwanese roads, that is until Taiwan’s Yulong signed a joint venture with Dongfeng and produced the new Luxgen 7 SUV in China, and [...]
China Car Times resumes normal operations
You may have noticed that China Car Times has been a little slow on the news front over the past two weeks, for this there are two reasons. First of all, when the editor leaves for a week of sun shine in Sanya and can’t find a decent internet connection that doesn’t cost 300rmb per [...]
Chery flounders in Australian crash test
Chery Australia may have to kick its crisis communications plan in to action later this week owing to the two star award that the Tiggo (aka the J11 in Australia) received in the recent ANCAP testing: The latest Australasian New Car Assessment Program (ANCAP) crash test gave the Chinese Chery J11 compact SUV a two-star [...]
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