China to Box and Ship Great Wall to Bulgaria

You read that correctly, dear reader, though it’s not what you think. We’re not talking about the Great Wall, we’re talking Great Wall Motor [sic], a Chinese automaker that builds everything from sedans to pickups to hatchbacks and SUVs - some of which will bring to mind [sic times two] models from other European and Japanese carmakers. And, by mid-year 2011, Great Wall Motor will have a factory in Bahovitsa, Bulgaria! Yippee!

If you, like me, know only a few things about Bulgaria, here’s a little summary from the CIA World Factbook: it sits between Romania and Turkey; it has a population of around 7 million; Communism was dropped in 1990; the country joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union in 2007 and its primary exports are clothing, iron and steel, machinery and fuels. Fascinating!

The new plan is the brainchild of Bulgarian tycoon, ex-wrestler and self-professed patriot Grisha Ganchev. Mr. Granchev’s Litex firm raised 90% of the €97 million (US$130 million) needed the build the plant, with Great Wall providing the last 10. The plant is expected to generate 1,220 jobs and build some 50,000 vehicles from knock down kits a year.

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Great Wall Motor's Beijing Auto Show Entries

And just because we know you're quite curious about the upcoming 2010 Beijing Auto Show, here are some pictures of the models that China's Great Wall Motors is preparing to unveil. For the record, any information we could pull from the rubble of Google's translation can be found below, so let's just call anything read beyond this point...assumptions.

1) Ling Ao (small, 5-door hatch), highlights include: 1.3/1.5 liter VVT aluminum engines (68 kW, 77 kW ; 118, 138 Nm), ABS, and an Alarm System.

2) Great Wall Tengyi C30 a basic, average-looking small sedan.

3) Great Wall Teng Yi C50, an interesting-looking B-class sedan with a 95-kW turbocharged/180 Nm 1.5 liter engine, a CVT, and something about Seiko and Zoran (whatever that mean, I'm intrigued). It also has a tire pressure monitoring system and ESP. For some weird reason, I want this to be good.

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British Group to Import China's Great Wall Motor Cars Into Europe from 2010

The Chinese maker of original masterpieces such as the Fiat Panda Haval M1, GWPeri, Toyota-Scion Florid and Coolbear, Great Wall Motors, has struck a deal with I.M. Group, a UK-based automotive importer and distributor for Subaru, Isuzu and Daihatsu, to import its vehicles into Europe starting from next year. The British company said that it will initially target the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and from 2011, the Scandinavian region, the UK and Ireland.

"Great Wall Motor Company, one of the few privately-owned Chinese car companies, has copied designed and built all of the European-bound models specifically to meet EU whole-vehicle type approval standards," I.M. Group said in a prepared statement for the press.

"This will ensure that Great Wall models deliver high standards of crash-worthiness, equal to those of modern European and Japanese vehicles."

The UK-based importer said that it will release further details about the launch of the Great Wall brand next year.

The Chinese automaker became known to the Western public a few years ago when it introduced a series of cars that shamelessly copied European and Japanese products including the Fiat Panda and Toyota - Scion cars.

Last year, the Fiat Group sued Great Wall Motors in Europe and China to prevent the company from selling the GWPeri claiming that the mini closely resembled it's Panda model. While the Fiat Group won the legal battle in Europe thus keeping the GWPeri out of the EU, a Chinese court in Hong Kong dismissed Fiat's claims for infringement.

You can get a taste of the numerous production and concept vehicles from Great Wall Motors in our gallery below.

China’s Great Wall Motors to Build Cars in Bulgaria

Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors is planning to start building cars in Europe in a new joint venture with a Bulgarian partner near the city of Lovech. The project was announced during a meeting on Tuesday between the Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev and two of Great Wall's Vice Presents, the government said in a statement. According to Reuters, Bulgarian media have reported that Great Wall's investment partner is most probably a local firm called Litex. The Bulgarian government said that Great Wall will invest approximately €80 million to build the new car plant at Lovech, which is located about 170 km northeast of the country’s capital city, Sofia. The Chinese-Bulgarian joint venture, which will employee around 1,500 workers, is scheduled to begin in early 2009.

Great Wall Motors, whose GWPeri minicar was recently banned from Europe because its appearance was ruled to be too similar to that of the Fiat Panda, is considered China’s largest sport utility vehicle maker. As reported here on Carscoop -see here- , over the past few months, the Chinese company has being patenting designs of various cars whose appearance is conspicuously similar to Japanese models at the European Patent Office.

Toyota Files European Patents for Yaris Sedan, HiLux, Fortuner and Innova MPV Designs

In a previous post we told that you that China’s Great Wall Motors successfully managed to file a European patent on the design of its Toyota Ractis lookalike, the Feel Free minivan (read about it here). Even though Toyota has no plans of importing its Yaris based MPV to Europe, we’re pretty sure that the Japanese firm’s execs won’t be at all happy with this development.

In our search to find out if Toyota has patented any designs at the European trademark office, we discovered that a few weeks prior to Great Walls Motors’ filing, the Japanese automaker had registered the designs of the Yaris Sedan, HiLux pickup truck, the Fortuner SUV and the Innova MPV. With the exception of the HiLux that is already available in Europe, we seriously doubt that Toyota has any intentions of selling the other models on the Old Continent. -Continued

Which leaves with us a question: did Toyota actually register the design patents because they new something was up and if yes, why didn’t they do the same with other models including the Ractis and especially the Scion range since Great Wall Motors has already created clones of the xA and xB models?

Toyota HiLux


Toyota Yaris Sedan


Toyota Innova MPV


Toyota Fortuner SUV