Even late in the the afternoon of the first Press Day, it was evident that the World stand was generating quite extraordinary interest – there was barely standing room, and queues to sit in the two 3 sedans. By comparison,the adjacent Mercedes Benz and BMW stands were like ghost towns. The Chinese and Israel Corp. top brass who were at the press conference we no longer inevidence, but the top-level Europeans were still on stand, and forthcoming with answers.

We found out a bit more about the European ambitions. Still to be decided ‘small country in Eastern Europe’ working with a local distributor, rather than setting up a directly owned company. Very much a test bed operation, but
they understand the need to promote the brand seriously and make it visible in their chosen territory. If this is a success, larger territories willfollow. At the stand they had already had serious interest from a potential distributor in France.

Moving on to engineering matters, we received confirmation that the present 1.6 four is a stop-gap, but is considered well up to the requirements of the initial markets. The forthcoming 1.2 triple and 1.6 four, designed with AVL, will feature direct petrol injection and will be the equal of theme most up to date European equivalents. Fuel efficiency of there upcoming engine family is so good that there are no plans to develop a diesel, contrary to some previous reports.

We also asked about future model plans. Nothing official,but predictably a compact SUV seems to be in prospect.

There’s no doubt that the eyes of the automotive world were on Qoros -camera crews were hard at work every time we visited. A good launch -the next task for Qoros is to capitalise on the publicity and translate it into sales.