Chinese Bears on the Loose in Europe

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

China’s Greatwall is apparently hell-bent on selling their Coolbear MPV in Europe next year. China Car Times reports that Greatwall has received the ECE Whole Vehicle Type Approval (WVTA,) awarded by the UK Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA.) The WVTA testing covers 48 different tests; 13 on active safety, 13 on passive safety and 8 on emissions and environmental protection. Passing the test makes the Coolbear legal to sell all over Europe and in any and all countries that accept the ECE regimen.



With the VCA, Greatwall has chosen one of the more, well, lenient testing organizations. Others are said to be more rigorous. As our resident ECE-guru Daniel Stern and Wikipedia will likewise confirm, “when an item is type approved for a regulation by one participating country, then the approval is accepted by all other participating countries.” And so, the Coolbear will be let out of his cage and can go ravaging the markets that acceded to the WVTA protocol.

The Coolbear has received massive styling cues from Japanese boxes-on-wheels, namely the Nissan Cube and the Toyota Scion. Thetycho China Automotive Consultancy actually went so far as to state that “the modeling for the Cool Bear was done by a Toyota Scion B, Great Wall did change a few parts however, most noticeable the logo and headlights.”

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • No_slushbox No_slushbox on Nov 29, 2009

    I am fairly certain that all of the parts behind the front clip on the Greatwall Coolbear and the previous generation Toyota bB/Scion xB are completely interchangeable. A door or the rear hatch of a bB/xB could be bolted directly onto the Coolbear, or vice versa. This is fine in China, but could likely become a serious export issue. Also, even when welded together by Japanese robots the previous generation bB/xB wasn't that safe of a car, so the Coolbear, a previous generation bB/xB put together by Chinese peasants with stick welders, is inherently not going to be a safe car.

  • Porschespeed Porschespeed on Nov 29, 2009
    Also, even when welded together by Japanese robots the previous generation bB/xB wasn’t that safe of a car, so the Coolbear, a previous generation bB/xB put together by Chinese peasants with stick welders, is inherently not going to be a safe car. It's not really that third world. At least in the tech factories. Cheap labor or not, robots are just too fast and too accurate to leave welding to humans. Besides, have you ever tried to stick weld pot metal?
  • No_slushbox No_slushbox on Nov 29, 2009

    re: porschespeed Theirin lies the rub. I have no doubt that the joint ventures and some of the stand alone chinese manufacturers are using German or Japanese robotic equipment for the automated assembly of very high quality car bodies/bodies in white. But that undermines China's traditional "our labor is cheaper than your machines" advantage over the West. Machines basically cost the same to run anywhere (other than the cost of the land they are on and the advantage of lax environmental laws), so they should probably be set up close to the consumer, especially since future energy costs will drive up logistics costs, instead of in a far away cheap labor country. The pot metal twist was rather good.

  • Redshift.flipgear Redshift.flipgear on Nov 29, 2009

    Wow, after the Peri/Panda debacle here comes Great Wall Motors again...

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