Ask a Westerner what he or she thinks of Chinese cars, and the answer will be predictable: unsafe. Thanks to China’s slower crash test speeds and low-cost manufacturing, Chinese cars have largely not met global safety standards, and Youtube videos have long cemented the impression that Chinese cars are fundamentally unsafe. But as with any growing industry, the Chinese are stepping their game up. Far from a global embarrassment, the latest Geely Emgrand even earned four stars in Euro-NCAP testing. That’s not enough to erase China’s reputation for unsafe cars, as five star performances are rapidly becoming the standard in Europe. But it is enough to match the achievements of  other modern European cars, most notably the updated Fiat Panda. Though the Panda is considerably smaller than the Emgrand, and therefore is at something of a safety disadvantage, the price difference between the two cars is likely to be negligible, making the comparison quite interesting. Meanwhile, there are other four-star (or should we call it “Chinese Quality”?) cars in NCAP’s latest round of testing, including the considerably more expensive Jaguar XF and Jeep Grand Cherokee. Check out the reports for the XF, Panda and Emgrand in the gallery below, or surf on over to Autobild for more details on where these cars came up short on safety…

Jiangling’s European distributor is reintroducing Landwind to Europe. Landwind Europe started sales of Jiangling’s CV9 Minivan in the Netherlands. According to Automotive News [sub], next will be five other European markets including Germany, Italy and Belgium. Having passed Whole Vehicle Type Approval, including mandatory crash tests, and being equipped with Euro 5 engines, the car is street legal in all of Europe.  The importer expects the minivan to earn least a three-star rating out of five when the voluntary EuroNCAP releases its next batch of official results in fall. Unless ADAC upstages the official EuroNCAP test and conducts its own unofficial tests “under EuroNCAP conditions.”

The CV9 Minivan has enough European DNA to qualify as an Eurasian. The design comes from IDEA of Turin. The 1.6- or 2.0-liter gasoline engines were developed by Jiangling with the help of F.E.V. Motortechnik GmbH, of Aachen, Germany. The five-speed manual transmission is from Getrag of Germany.

Size wise, the CV9  is similar to an Opel Zafira. The price (€11,950 in Germany), is much lower than the Zafira’s German MSRP of €20,295.

Jiangling just announced an investment program to lift their annual production capacity to 210,000 vehicles. Jiangling is a joint venture partner of Ford and produces the Transit for the Chinese market.