Chrysler may be teaming up with China's Great Wall for small car
Chrysler's much ballyhooed deal with China's Chery Motors to build small cars hasn't yielded much of value for the Auburn Hills manufacturer yet. Chrysler offers a Dodge-branded version of the Chery A1 in South America, but no new cars have emerged yet. It looks like Chrysler may now be working with a new Chinese partner to build an A-segment car. Great Wall has been better known up to now for building cars with a startling resemblance to models from other manufacturers, such as the first generation Scion xA and xB. Chrysler staff are reportedly working with Great Wall to produce a micro car for Chrysler to be sold world-wide. Fans of the original xB probably shouldn't get their hopes up though. Selling this model outside of China probably wouldn't sit well with Toyota.
[Source: China Car Times]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nick 6:39PM (10/07/2008)
Chinese copy-manufacturers should have their factories blown up with TNT for blatantly copying others. What a shame.
Lead toys, melamine milk, toxic fabrics, deadly medicine, what's next? F* Chinese products.
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Mattias 2:26AM (10/08/2008)
I just do not understand why it should make sense to team up with the Chinese right now. Chrysler does not have any experience in building small front drive cars. The Chinese can just provide cheap manufacturing, but virtually no engineering. Most recent chinese-developed cars were heavily co-engineered by german and italian companies (Bertone, Pininfarina, Thyssen-Krupp-Drautz, Betrand, Kolbenschmidt, Getrag just to name a few).
Chrysler currently needs a partner that is strong in engineering and efficient manufacturing. It would be best to find one, that is present in Mexico and is able to tap european engineering. So it might make more sense to team up with Renault/Nissan, PSA or FIAT and base a future small Chrysler/Dodge/Eagle on one of their small models. It might even make sense to just take a Dacia Sandero and slap an Eagle badge on it to be present with a small, cheap and reliable car again.
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andrew 6:50AM (10/08/2008)
well at least with chrysler teaming up with this chinese copy-cat company we know the designs will cease to be copy-catish... I mean with the company that has put out the prowler, and other really cool cars... we can expect their products to at least look a little better...