Chery’s internal product line up is not exactly coherent, one one side of the dealership you have the ‘premium’ Chery products such as the Chery A3 that were designed by international designers, on the other hand you have Chery’s low cost economy products that look like they were designed within an hours time frame. The A3 falls into the premium category, the hatchback and sedan line up were designed by Pininfarina who did an excellent job in making one of China’s best looking cars, consumers seemed to agree although the A3 soon ran out of steam. May sales for the A3 series were at just 644 units for the hatch and 629 for the sedan, giving them total sales of 8175 units from Jan to May this year, far from the glory days of 2009 when 10,000 units per month wouldn’t have been a big issue.

For 2012 the Chery A3 is receiving an update, the corporate grill seems to be getting some changes with it receiving an extra pair of chrome strips, not a bad effort by Chery but it is something that needed to define the brand a long time ago. On the inside, nothing much has changed. For Chery to go forward and improve brand recognition they are going to have to introduce a unified style that is echoed across the Chery range, having some designs done in China, others in Italy by a myriad of different designers seems to be watering down their range .