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Hi {name},
The month in review
We skipped the last newsletter as it was Guangzhou Auto Show and it was fairly busy running from stand to stand, but what did we learn from those hectic few days in Guangzhou? Well it seems that Chinese manufacturers are growing up, maturing in a sense. 2009 Auto Beijing was a shocker of a show, Chery launched three new brands, and Geely not wanting to be out done pulled a similar manouvre and launched a few brands as well as 15 concepts. Except they weren’t concepts, they were actual production cars that showcased how Geely was planning to move from a low cost to a mid range auto maker. Looking back over the past few years, it seems both Chery and Geely have done a great deal of maturing, the odd and far out concepts that they claimed were actual production cars have come and gone, by the end of 2011 it seems that their stands are offering global products, low level to mid level cars that could be accepted in Europe, the US and the world over. Even on the engineering side of things Geely has managed to come up with a trump card, in 2008 Geely’s Zi You Jian which roughly translates into ‘Freedom Vessel’ was roughly terminated in a Russian crash test, it received zero stars and was quickly called the ‘Death Vessel’ by Russian press, three years later Geely gained a 4 star Euro N-CAP score with the EC7 sedan, if only they had better pedestrian safety that 4 could have become a 5, still 4 stars is very admirable for a relatively small company.
Elsewhere at the Guangzhou Auto Show it seemed that super car manufacturers were doing swift business, the old anecdotes about wealthy and filthy rich people buying the cars on the stand are not rumors, but fact. Most super car stands had staff on hand to greet potential consumers and give them an introduction to their car models.
More from us, later in the week!
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Seat’s sales for China in 2012 has been set at 4,000 units, this is not exactly an ambitious goal for SEAT in their starting year. China is the largest car market in the world, and some models are claiming sales of 4000 units per week so obviously there is plenty of scope for Seat to [...]
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BAIC’s automotive division maybe a little bit of a mess from an outsiders point of view but the company are making big gains in their Saab based cars. The first of the Bei-aab’s are set to be produced this month with the C70 sedan being one of the first to hit the production lines, the [...]
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Either SAIC likes to show off its cars way ahead of their launch, or they are very bad at hiding their new cars, the next generation of Roewe 750 has been spotted out testing yet again but this time its giving away the most about its future styling. The new 750 apparently shares its platform [...]
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Toyota’s goal of selling 900,000 cars in China this year seems slightly out of reach for the world’s biggest auto producer, the Chinese market delivered 81,800 vehicles in November which was down 1.3% over the same period in November 2010. Total yearly sales for the first 11 months have reached 775,500 which was an increase [...]
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Car tires have been black since the car production began, of course North America and to some extent the rest of the world went through a white wall craze but that tapered off eventually, so why are tires black? Why can’t we have red tires, pink tires, or fruity loopy colored tires? These are the [...]
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Aiming to be an “International Brand”, Qoros, a joint-venture established by Chery and an Israeli group with half-half ownership ratio, held its unveiling ceremony in Shanghai earlier this week. After the failed alliance between Subaru, and an unclear joint venture with Jaguar Range rover, Qoros, may be a incentive to thrust Cherry into the premium [...]
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From Market Watch: General Motors Co. GM -0.47% said Wednesday it remains skeptical about a Chinese rescue plan for Saab Automobile even as one potential Chinese investor said taking control of the troubled Swedish car maker isn’t its main goal. GM, which owns the technology on which several Saab models are based, doesn’t believe that [...]
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The Chinese patent office seemingly has more holes than the Titanic, this time the Smart ForSpeed concept has been leaked ahead of a possible launch. However, let’s think about this in real times – the Chinese market is now the world’s biggest market and also the world’s most notorious market for having your car ripped [...]
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The Riich X3 compact SUV may share a name with a more famous American made, Bavarian branded SUV, but the rest of the design is relatively unique when compared to other Chinese designed and developed SUV’s. The X3 has been codenamed T21 in the Chery internal naming system and should be launched in 2012 at [...]
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Chery are getting serious about their brand positioning for the Chery brand, of course they have Riich and Reely but they have failed to make a major dent in the market so far, Chery want to make the M16 into a compact sedan that is capable of taking on the likes of Hyundai, Kia and [...]
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