Chinese cars come across the horizon

It has now been confirmed that the new small car from Chrysler, probably to be called the Dodge Hornet, will be supplied by Chery. Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda said at the Detroit Motor Show that the deal with the Chinese car maker had yet to be approved by the authorities there and the DaimlerChrysler strategy board but he was confident that it would go ahead. A team from Chrysler has been working at Chery “for what seems like an eternity” and should be able to move quite quickly to get its completely restyled version of a Chery model into production. But it will not be this year. The baby Dodge will be sold in North America and Europe, probably starting in 2008. Meanwhile, Paul Williams, recently departed from Kia UK, has settled in as managing director of LWMC in Belgium, the European importer of Landwind. This brand is associated with Changan, a company that makes Fords, Volvos and Suzukis in China. Eighteen months ago it entered the German and Dutch markets with a £10,000 sport-utility vehicle with a resemblance to an old Vauxhall Frontera but had a false start when independent crash testing showed it was far off the safety levels of European models. Now Landwind is ready with the X6, an improved version of this SUV, and a compact MPV called Fashion. Both will be sold new at the prices of two to three-year-old equivalent vehicles. Right-hand drive models will be available early next year. Williams has already received a lot of enquiries from prospective UK dealers. He expects to sell 50,000 cars a year in Europe by 2009. The plans for Nanjing – the company that bought the MG Rover tooling and is restarting MG TF production in a small way at Longbridge – are still unclear but MG Rover's first Chinese associate, Brilliance, has signed a deal with a Luxembourg company, HSO Motors, to supply 158,000 Zhonghua saloons for EU sale over five years. The Zhonghua is a saloon the size of a Rover 75, styled by Giugiaro and using a 2-litre Mitsubishi engine. To begin with these cars will be subject to Single Vehicle Type Approval but in the longer run Brilliance will have to modify them to meet pedestrian safety requirements to comply with Whole Vehicle Type Approval. HSO is appointing dealers on the Continent but there is no word on whether Brilliance plans right-hand drive production. In any case, the prospects for the Zhonghua are less promising than the Landwind because, as Koreans Hyundai and Kia have found, there is a limited market for cut-price big saloons.