Comeback of the Dragon: China’s fresh car-assault on SA
Cape Town – During the year of the Rat (2008), hardly a month passed in the South African motoring calendar without the arrival of a Chinese auto brand. It was a momentum of fresh product and players that threatened to irrevocably alter the local market, yet it didn’t.
Tellingly, far too many of these Chinese arrivals were symptomatic of the stereotypes we attribute to certain manufactured goods from the People’s Republic. They make a very good iPhone, in Apple’s Zhengzhou factory, but they can’t design, execute or build a quality automobile. Right?
Imagining that China will lag in its capability to produce quality cars to export markets is a fallacy of logic akin to what Japanese analysts suffered in the 1980s – when they supposed Korean car companies would never have influence beyond their domestic market.
In a country with a history of innovation that predates literacy in Germany, graduating six hundred 000 engineers a year, the notion of Chinese auto brands continuing to be as awful as those who failed after arriving in South Africa a decade ago, is disingenuous. And to prove that, is Haval.
The only Chinese brand to retain some semblance of credibility – instead of customer ire – has been Fine Wall Motors (GWM). If your company is named after the good wonder of Chinese engineering, one would expect something superior to the unspeakably awful cars and bakkies many first-time South African car buyers were duped into buying locally, by joint venture distributors during the initial wave of Chinese imports.
Haval is GWM’s SUV brand. That sentence, alone, says much of the differentiation it brings. GWM has the sensibility to know that a differentiated brand is significant when you are Chinese and attempting to conquer foreign markets. More crucially, GWM has also realised that SUVs are the now the only game in town.
Pic: Lance Branquinho
Very little pomp and ceremony has accompanied Haval’s entry to South Africa this month. It is unsurprising, as GWM South Africa is no more, with the distributorship having been suspended in favour of a renamed company, called Haval South Africa – managed directly from China. The initial fresh vehicle suggesting is Haval’s H2, a Qashqai-type Chinese SUV, generously tooled and powered by engines which are not copies of three-decade old Japanese designs and built with imitation tooling.
Predicting product success for SUVs in the South African is challenging, but Australia is effectively our twin market and Haval’s been achieving success Down Under.
With its H2 Haval will be marketing the best Chinese car ever suggested in South Africa. Altering perceptions in the local market range inbetween devilishly harsh to unlikely – ask the French brands – but Haval’s combination of price and product features could prove pivotal in achieving that.
It’s the Huawei analogy, you know it’s not the best Smartphone – but for the price, it’s awfully compelling by not being awful.
And that’s where the Chinese auto industry is at, now. Evolving from awful to average.
Since the two thousand eight financial crisis most of the world’s economic headlines have been predominated by issues in the European Union and the collapse of Brazil. China’s been calmly evolving its economy from inefficient industrialisation to modernisation and with a switch an increasingly educated labour force, generating more discerning domestic customers, the request for better vehicles have been unavoidable.
Underestimate at your peril
From the ashes of the 2nd World War, Germany and Japan should theoretically never have gained the ascendancy as superior automotive nations. America was poised to entrench itself and assist its allies in France and Britain to become unassailable. In the fullness of time, the unexpected became fact.
Japanese and German brands have come to predominate in markets beyond their own, at the expense of others. American auto company bosses, blinded with arrogance from the golden age of American manufacturing in the 1960s, never foresaw switching consumer habits or the onset of dwindling product quality and appeal in their own cars. By the early 1980s, Japanese cars were commonplace in suburban America. More established neighbourhoods garaged the German ones.
Picture: Lance Branquinho
Despite having been the beneficiary of this strategic arrogance, instead of awareness, on behalf of the American auto industry, the Japanese repeated Chrysler, GM and Ford’s mistakes. In the 1980s, the Korean car industry was in its infancy and before Samsung and LG became a household brands, few people even knew where South Korea was. Today? Hyundai/Kia is the world’s fifth largest car brand, and its market share is not one sustained by discount pricing, it’s buoyed by actual customer request for products considered desirable.
American executive belittled the very first wave of Japanese cars to arrive Stateside as insignificant fucktoys. They weren’t classed as ‘decent’ cars. By the 1990s, Japanese brands had full-sized bakkies and sportscars expertly tailored to what American consumers desired and arguably superior to what GM, Chrysler or Ford could suggest its domestic market.
The South African practice with Korean cars, were much the same. Indifferent at very first, in the 1990s, but by 2017, they’ve become respected brands. China certainly won’t be the Asian auto outlier. The trend of Asian automotive ascendancy shows up fate for Chinese brands.
Korean car companies conquered global markets – and South Africa – because they had a lot of cash to burn and reinvested it in research and development. German engineers were lured to Korea and the results have been demonstrable. Chinese companies have even more cash to fund research and development initiatives, money they’re not bashful at spending – especially if it means contracting abilities beyond the Chinese mainland.
Photo: Lance Branquinho
Preceding Haval’s arrival in South Africa there was a startling bit of news from Germany, in May, to prove this point. An electrical Chinese hypercar – the NIO EP9 – had set a fresh Nurburgring lap record, for its part, the most revered record of all for any road car wishing to illustrate superiority of spectacle.
Debates about the EP9’s status as a ‘production car’ aside, it’s the collaborative nature of NIO’s global design bureaus, linking project teams from Munich, London and San Jose to those in Shanghai, which expose the converting way Chinese car companies are commencing to function.
With request for SUVs and crossovers displaying no sign of waning, Haval’s poised to profit from that trend and leverage the evolving capability of Chinese engineering and manufacturing to transcend the traditional stereotype of Dragon auto brands.
Six of the world’s top ten Smartphone companies are Chinese. None of the world’s top ten car companies are. But it will switch. Soon.
Comeback of the Dragon: China s fresh car-assault on SA, Wheels24
Comeback of the Dragon: China’s fresh car-assault on SA
Cape Town – During the year of the Rat (2008), hardly a month passed in the South African motoring calendar without the arrival of a Chinese auto brand. It was a momentum of fresh product and players that threatened to irrevocably alter the local market, yet it didn’t.
Tellingly, far too many of these Chinese arrivals were symptomatic of the stereotypes we attribute to certain manufactured goods from the People’s Republic. They make a very good iPhone, in Apple’s Zhengzhou factory, but they can’t design, execute or build a quality automobile. Right?
Imagining that China will lag in its capability to supply quality cars to export markets is a fallacy of logic akin to what Japanese analysts suffered in the 1980s – when they supposed Korean car companies would never have influence beyond their domestic market.
In a country with a history of innovation that predates literacy in Germany, graduating six hundred 000 engineers a year, the notion of Chinese auto brands continuing to be as awful as those who failed after arriving in South Africa a decade ago, is disingenuous. And to prove that, is Haval.
The only Chinese brand to retain some semblance of credibility – instead of customer ire – has been Good Wall Motors (GWM). If your company is named after the excellent wonder of Chinese engineering, one would expect something superior to the unspeakably awful cars and bakkies many first-time South African car buyers were duped into buying locally, by joint venture distributors during the initial wave of Chinese imports.
Haval is GWM’s SUV brand. That sentence, alone, says much of the differentiation it brings. GWM has the sensibility to know that a differentiated brand is significant when you are Chinese and attempting to conquer foreign markets. More crucially, GWM has also realised that SUVs are the now the only game in town.
Photo: Lance Branquinho
Very little pomp and ceremony has accompanied Haval’s entry to South Africa this month. It is unsurprising, as GWM South Africa is no more, with the distributorship having been suspended in favour of a renamed company, called Haval South Africa – managed directly from China. The initial fresh vehicle suggesting is Haval’s H2, a Qashqai-type Chinese SUV, generously tooled and powered by engines which are not copies of three-decade old Japanese designs and built with imitation tooling.
Predicting product success for SUVs in the South African is challenging, but Australia is effectively our twin market and Haval’s been achieving success Down Under.
With its H2 Haval will be marketing the best Chinese car ever suggested in South Africa. Altering perceptions in the local market range inbetween devilishly rough to unlikely – ask the French brands – but Haval’s combination of price and product features could prove pivotal in achieving that.
It’s the Huawei analogy, you know it’s not the best Smartphone – but for the price, it’s awfully compelling by not being awful.
And that’s where the Chinese auto industry is at, now. Evolving from awful to average.
Since the two thousand eight financial crisis most of the world’s economic headlines have been predominated by issues in the European Union and the collapse of Brazil. China’s been calmly evolving its economy from inefficient industrialisation to modernisation and with a switch an increasingly educated labour force, generating more discerning domestic customers, the request for better vehicles have been unpreventable.
Underestimate at your peril
From the ashes of the 2nd World War, Germany and Japan should theoretically never have gained the ascendancy as superior automotive nations. America was poised to entrench itself and assist its allies in France and Britain to become unassailable. In the fullness of time, the unexpected became fact.
Japanese and German brands have come to predominate in markets beyond their own, at the expense of others. American auto company bosses, blinded with arrogance from the golden age of American manufacturing in the 1960s, never foresaw switching consumer habits or the onset of dwindling product quality and appeal in their own cars. By the early 1980s, Japanese cars were commonplace in suburban America. More established neighbourhoods garaged the German ones.
Pic: Lance Branquinho
Despite having been the beneficiary of this strategic arrogance, instead of awareness, on behalf of the American auto industry, the Japanese repeated Chrysler, GM and Ford’s mistakes. In the 1980s, the Korean car industry was in its infancy and before Samsung and LG became a household brands, few people even knew where South Korea was. Today? Hyundai/Kia is the world’s fifth largest car brand, and its market share is not one sustained by discount pricing, it’s buoyed by actual customer request for products considered desirable.
American executive belittled the very first wave of Japanese cars to arrive Stateside as insignificant fucktoys. They weren’t classed as ‘decent’ cars. By the 1990s, Japanese brands had full-sized bakkies and sportscars expertly tailored to what American consumers desired and arguably superior to what GM, Chrysler or Ford could suggest its domestic market.
The South African practice with Korean cars, were much the same. Indifferent at very first, in the 1990s, but by 2017, they’ve become respected brands. China certainly won’t be the Asian auto outlier. The trend of Asian automotive ascendancy shows up fate for Chinese brands.
Korean car companies conquered global markets – and South Africa – because they had a lot of cash to burn and reinvested it in research and development. German engineers were lured to Korea and the results have been demonstrable. Chinese companies have even more cash to fund research and development initiatives, money they’re not timid at spending – especially if it means contracting abilities beyond the Chinese mainland.
Picture: Lance Branquinho
Preceding Haval’s arrival in South Africa there was a startling bit of news from Germany, in May, to prove this point. An electrical Chinese hypercar – the NIO EP9 – had set a fresh Nurburgring lap record, for its part, the most revered record of all for any road car wishing to illustrate superiority of spectacle.
Debates about the EP9’s status as a ‘production car’ aside, it’s the collaborative nature of NIO’s global design bureaus, linking project teams from Munich, London and San Jose to those in Shanghai, which expose the converting way Chinese car companies are beginning to function.
With request for SUVs and crossovers demonstrating no sign of waning, Haval’s poised to profit from that trend and leverage the evolving capability of Chinese engineering and manufacturing to transcend the traditional stereotype of Dragon auto brands.
Six of the world’s top ten Smartphone companies are Chinese. None of the world’s top ten car companies are. But it will switch. Soon.