Wholly Cow: China Collaborates With Isreal Israel On New Car Brand

Tycho de Feyter
by Tycho de Feyter

China might be going on a deadly brand binge as Bertel prognosticated. Here is a new brand that at least is worth a look: Qoros. It is a joint venture between Chery Automotive and Quantum LLC from Israel. The joint venture had been approved way back in 2007, but things slowed down soon after that – in 2008. Now they are back, with a very first concept car that looks – well, it looks like a cow.

Qoros wants to make high-quality cars to compete with the likes of Acura, Luxus, Infiniti, Volvo, and ultimately the German Three. Cars will be made for China and for export to Europe. No clear plans yet for export to the US or other markets.

The factory is based in the great city of Changshu in Jiangsu province. The R&D Center is in Shanghai, perhaps not a single well-paid designer would ever go to a place called Changshu. Quantum and Chery have to far invested 3.40 billion yuan, or 534 million US dollar. Engines will be newly designed by the Austrian company AVL and made in China by Chery.

An ambitious plan it is. But we like ambitious plans. Furthermore, Qoros managed to hire some hot shots.

1. as vice president: Volker Steinwascher, former Executive Vice President for Volkswagen North America (center on pic).

2. as chief designer: Gert Hildebrand, designer of the original new-Mini. Left.

3. as President and CEO: Guo Qian from Chery. You guessed it.

The cars: the weird looking cow car previews a compact sedan that has to hit the market in 2013. Next up is a compact hatchback, followed by an SUV, and followed again by some ‘EV products’. We will shall wait and see.

Dutchman Tycho de Feyter runs Carnewschina, a blog about cars in China, from Beijing, China. He also collects die-cast models of Chinese cars.

Tycho de Feyter
Tycho de Feyter

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  • Vance Torino Vance Torino on Dec 05, 2011

    Anybody heard from Better Place on this? Sounds like something they would want to get in on - developing an Israeli car from the ground up. I would call it the "Schlep."

  • Tanooki2003 Tanooki2003 on Dec 06, 2011

    They can keep their crap to themselves.

  • Oberkanone My grid hurts!Good luck with installing charger locations at leased locations with aging infrastructure. Perhaps USPS would have better start modernizing it's Post offices to meet future needs. Of course, USPS has no money for anything.
  • Dukeisduke If it's going to be a turbo 4-cylinder like the new Tacoma, I'll pass.BTW, I see lots of Tacomas on the road (mine is a 2013), but I haven't seen any 4th-gen trucks yet.
  • Oberkanone Expect 4Runner to combine best aspects of new Land Cruiser and new Tacoma and this is what I expect from 2025 4Runner.Toyota is REALLY on it's best game recently. Tacoma and Land Cruiser are examples of this.
  • ArialATOMV8 All I hope is that the 4Runner stays rugged and reliable.
  • Arthur Dailey Good. Whatever upsets the Chinese government is fine with me. And yes they are probably monitoring this thread/site.
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