2011 is the year of the rabbit, but in actual fact it’s the year of the Treasured Horse, or the morning star, or the Everus. These strange sounding names are not the 12 animals of the Chinese star system, what they are in fact are the self-developed brands from GM, Nissan and Honda.

    At the end of 2009 we saw a clash of worlds, the Chinese automakers could not draw large profits from small micro cars which were sold on wafer thin margins and discount prices, there was a race to the bottom from 2008 to the end of 2009 to see who could make the cheapest car. BYD came in with its super cheap BYD F0, Geely with its Panda, Chery with its Riich M1 and of course QQ series of car all of which start in the 20,000rmb range which is a mere 3,000USD and rising. Of course these models are sold to inflate sales figures for the parent company, BYD sells more than 10,000 F0’s per month, Chery has a similar figure for its QQ series, the only problem is that these cars don’t generate high revenue but they do keep factories busy. The majority of home grown brands, again using BYD, Chery and Geely decided the only way to go forth was to up their branding and make higher priced cars that were capable of taking on the joint venture brands in the 80,000rmb to 120,000rmb range.

    If several years ago you mentioned the name Geely to any soon to be car owner, they would have laughed in your face. Mention Geely in 2011 and you will get a nod of admiration, Geely have embraced capitalism with a fervor and have moved a long way from being a small time motorbike maker, they now own Volvo and DSI Transmission. Geely created several sub brands in a bid to move away from the cheap and cheerful image that they have created with Geely, now they own Emgrand, Global Eagle and Englon – whilst these names do not make much sense in English, they have already developed a strong market for themselves in China, the Emgrand brand has developed very well since the launch of the EC7 and EC8 series of cars, ultimately the Geely name has been dumped and is now just the name of the holding group much in the same way the GM controls its brands, it’s obvious Geely is thinking big here. Regional rival in neighboring Anhui province did not want to be left behind in the multiple brand department and set up its own sub brands – Riich, Reely, and Karry, but instead of dumping the Chery brand they plan to continue using that as well, so four brands to Geely’s three. Riich will be Chery’s high end sedan range, Reely will take on MPV’s and SUV’s whilst Karry is a low cost no-nonsense light truck range. BYD decided that it would not split its brand down the middle but instead work on a different naming system, the F series was its first sedan range and also its first big hit, the G series came later as did the L series, in fact BYD is setting up four distribution networks within China which will target different buyers, after all there is no point in putting its high end sedan range in a rural or suburban area where cheaper cars are required for economic reasons. Other companies such as Brilliance managed to bridge the gap between cheap and expensive cars by first launching a high end sedan – the BS6, and then expanding out from expensive to cheap, making their cars viable to all.

    Brilliance’ own major stumbling block is a poor marketing campaign and a major loss of talent due to a highly political back stage. Great Wall are another company that manages to quickly gravitate to what consumers require, pre-2008 it was a major SUV maker, in 2008 with the onset of a poorer economy they moved onto small car manufacturing which really boosted their brand from that point onwards. For 2010 they have expanded their Hover series of SUV’s which started off as one popular SUV has sprouted 5 different variants of the same car but with a different grill.