#trumpchi

Seven years ago, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and China’s Guangzhou Automobile Group entered into a joint venture, forming a 50/50 partnership between the companies. Currently selling three locally produced Jeep models – the Cherokee, Renegade, and Compass – the JV also imports the Grand Cherokee and Wrangler. Last year, sales tripled to nearly 150,000 units.

Now, according to Automotive News, the parent companies are in discussions to deepen their tie-up in China. Talks are apparently focusing on models, production, and sales targets.

There’s a Land Rover clone — or is it a Land Cruiser clone — coming our way. Built in a low-cost country where the principle of “just good enough” has held sway ever since the Communists took over, it’s cheap, rugged-looking, and certain to feed aggressively on the bottom of the SUV-buyer ocean. You might not like the idea of supporting an oppressive regime, and you might not like the idea of trusting your life to something that was slapped together in a hurry, but other people aren’t as smart and discerning as you are and they will ensure that the new product is a roaring success.

Oh, I’m not talking about the Trumpchi. I’m reading automotive history circa 2003. What, you don’t remember the CrossLander? Well, my friend, you are in for a treat — one that has a surprising amount of relevance to China’s entry to the American auto market.

It’s no use continuing with the idealistic notion that North America will reject advances from Chinese-made cars on our shores. The Buick Envision is Fabrique en Chine, as well as the long-wheelbase Volvo S60, and more recently the Volvo S90. Yesterday, Steph Willems reported on a patent filing from the Guangzhou Automobile Company for its largest SUV offering, the GS8.

You don’t have to like the upcoming Chinese onslaught, but it’s necessary to accept it as reality. So, today we’re asking you to twist your mind and wring from it your thoughts on what it would take for a Chinese auto manufacturer to be successful in North America on a large scale.

With the return of two storied nameplates like the Ford GT and Acura NSX, it’s easy to understand why the only Chinese automaker with a display at the North American International Auto Show last month in Detroit, Guangzhou Automobile Group Co., didn’t get much attention. For the past decade or so, a number of Chinese car companies have had displays and press conferences at the media previews to the Detroit show, some of them with plans to export cars to North America, but so far little or nothing of substance has come to fruition from those plans. Whether or not they end up selling Chinese cars here, it does make a little bit of sense to take advantage of the presence at the NAIAS of thousands of members of the international press. That’s probably why GAC used the 2015 NAIAS to have the world premiere of their GS4 compact SUV. In addition to the GS4, which appears to be more of a car based crossover than a serious SUV, GAC also showed their GA6 sedan (which they say was developed for “the higher end market”) and the WITSTAR concept (that included it’s own built in aquarium between the back seats).

Aside from seeing another Hasbro IP cameo transform into a weapon of mass destruction, viewers at the weekend opening of “Transformers: Age of Extinction” may have also glimpsed the first Chinese vehicle to arrive in the United States in the near future.