AzMotorNews.com
Man Who Imported The Yugo To Soon
Bring Chinese Cars To U.S.
by David N. Goodman for The
Arizona Republic Business Section on 1-3-05.
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The Arizona Republic
Man Who Imported
The Yugo To Soon Bring Chinese Cars To U.S.
David N. Goodman
Associated Press, 1-3-05
DETROIT - The man who brought the Yugo and Subaru to this
country and built a gull-wing sports car bearing his name has a new project
- becoming the first mass importer of low-cost Chinese-made cars to the
United States.
Chery Automobile Co., owned by the Chinese government, has
signed a deal with auto entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin
and his privately held Visionary Vehicles LLC of New York
to sell Chery's cars in United States, Visionary announced Sunday.
The companies aim to sell 250,000 vehicles in five models in their first
year, 2007, with the goal of selling 1 million units of eight to 10 models
by 2012, said Visionary Vehicles chief of staff Paul Lambert.
He said the company will aim at selling vehicles well below
the price of models now available while matching the quality of Japanese
carmakers. China exported 47,400 vehicles in 2003.
"America doesn't need another car company unless we can do it at 30
percent below market with quality and styling," Lambert said. "We've got
to have a Toyota-Lexus-like quality."
Bricklin was behind the selling of the low-cost Yugoslavia-made Yugo
cars in the United States in the late 1980s and early '90s. His company,
Yugo America Inc., collapsed in 1992 amid falling sales and
production problems in war-torn Yugoslavia.
He also started importing Subaru cars from Japan in 1968.
In 1974, he founded a short-lived Canadian company to build a gull-winged
Bricklin SV-1 sports car.
Chery is China's eighth-largest automaker. It was founded
in 1997 and sold about 90,000 vehicles in China in 2004.
"The North American automobile market is complex, competitive and always
changing," Chery President Yin Tongyao said in a written
statement. "We are looking forward to working with Visionary
Vehicles and taking advantage of Malcolm's expertise as we enter
it."
Bricklin said his exclusive distribution agreement is for five Chery
models that would go on sale in January 2007 - a compact sedan, a midsize
sedan, a car-sport utility crossover sedan, a sport/luxury coupe and an SUV.
The vehicles will carry 10-year, 100,000-mile warranties, Visionary said.
No brand name has been selected.
South Korea's GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. sued
Chery in December, accusing it of illegally copying one of its car
models, the Chevrolet Spark.
****
* Written by
David N. Goodman for the
Associated Press and reprinted in The Arizona Republic
Business Section 1-3-05.
** Link to the original article at;
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