Chery Forms Joint Venture With Fiat
January 3rd, 2008 10:21 AM
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When Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) bought Nanjing last month, Fiat pulled out of their money-losing joint venture with Nanjing. Now China Car Times reports Chery has announced they're creating a joint venture with Fiat in 2008. The partnership will produce the Fiat Linea, Bravo and Grand Punto for the Chinese market. Fiat and Chery already had an agreement to build Alfa Romeos for China and supply engines for Fiat. It'll be interesting to see if there's any bleed-over between the agreements between Chery and Fiat, and Chery and Chrysler. With Chery and Fiat wanting to get into the American market and Chrysler starved for small cars, it could be a ménage à trois made in heaven. Or the San Fernando Valley…
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Well from my experience, if this joint venture should happen and NA would once again have access to Fiat's great small cars it'd be great for you NA consumers! If Fiat made terrible cars in the 60s and 70s (and I wouldn't disagree), starting from the 80s with the great little Uno they started getting their mojo back. And it's not just me to say so, if you read Jeremy Clarkson reviews on-loine (as well as J Mays) they have enjoyed thouroughly Fiat's latest offerings. In fact, Clarkson said of the Bravo that if you enjoyed driving you should get over the Golf (Rabbit in NA). Cheers!
Yeah, "Qirui" is totally a rip off of "Xuefulan". You can barely tell them apart.
tentacles: Your comment is probably too subtle for most of the readers, since they will not know that "Qirui" is the original name of the company in Chinese. Apparently, it was translated to "Cherry" but by accident the second "r" got left out.
Accident! Heck, they left that second "R" out on purpose, because materials cost 'by the letter.'