Andrea Bocelli - Besame Mucho (Tribute to Marilyn Monroe)
Brilliance China automaker stopped European exports, leaders say.
Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd. BMW AG partner of China, stopped his car exports to Europe after its BS4 and BS6 sedan met with a cool reception, and there is no timetable for resumption, senior managers said Thursday.
The leader of the former Brilliance importer for Europe, Hans-Ulrich Sachs, told Automotive News Europe in March that another reason why the automaker has struggled is because it has refused to lower prices starting on the BS6 and BS4.
They did not want to lose money by car, said Sachs, former head of the now dissolved import company HSO Motors Europe We told them that it is the entrance fee you have to pay to settle in Europe, they said that we should make the investment to cover the shortfall; we should subsidize the brand.
Brilliance is one of the few Chinese automakers who managed to sneak into the highly competitive European market, dominated by Volkswagen AG, PSA Peugeot-Citroën SA and Fiat S p A.
In 2006, he got a contract with Sachs, a former Volkswagen executive AG who also helped launch Hyundai in Germany to ship 158,000 sedans to Europe over a period of five years, the largest auto order ever for a Chinese manufacturer the developed world.
The total count of sales of the two Brilliance models from 2007 to 2009 was 502 units, according to the British market researcher JATO Dynamics.
Brilliance sold only 46 in 2009 and 181 BS6s BS4s, JATO data shows sales of the BS6 never recovered from poor results of crash tests in 2007.
Brilliance had considered at some point adding a BS4 wagon in its lineup, but the plan was postponed indefinitely, two company executives told Reuters.
We stopped exports to Europe, at the moment we have no timetable for the recovery of the company, said one of the executives with direct knowledge of the matter, blaming the poor reception for the sedans some difficulty to follow the evolution of the European regulations.
The two leaders said the company would seek to resume sales in Europe with products that could meet new EU emissions standards in the future.
The BS4 and BS6 were made with Euro 4 specifications in mind when we resume exports we find cars and meet the Euro 5 standards, said the second executive.
Sachs told ANE that last fall he found through contacts in China Brilliance showered the engineering work needed to get his cars ready to meet European safety and emission.
We asked some of the guys working together with BMW Brilliance China and how we got the information Brilliance stopped everything, said Sachs.
Around the same time relationship with Sachs is cracking Brilliance, BMW announced that the partners would share the cost of a new plant for 740 million euros 560 million in China's second factory partners expected to start production in 2012 BMW week last announced its intention to sell 120,000 BMW, Mini and vehicles in the Rolls-Royce brand in China this year, up 20 percent from its previous target BMW Group sold 90,500 cars and SUVs in China last year .
China, which overtook the US as the world's biggest auto market in 2009, became a refuge for General Motors Co and other producers battered by slowing strong industry.
Chinese manufacturers, the automotive group of SAIC Motor Corp State Warren Buffet-backed BYD Auto Co also working harder than ever to raise their national profiles to compete with rivals such as Volkswagen, Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co.
Rather than rushing into unfamiliar markets when economic uncertainties and rising protectionism have raised the bar for new entrants, Chinese automakers should focus more on their own ground, industry executives and observers said.
At a time like this, the best strategy for a Chinese national brand is to strengthen its presence in China while maintaining a foothold overseas, said Huang Zherui, CSM Worldwide analyst, a global consulting firm of industry.
Brilliance, parent of Brilliance China Automotive Holdings, is the ninth largest automaker 2 6 percent of China's market share, against 19 percent 8 leader SAIC National queue, according to official data.
Brilliance has sold 348.300 vehicles in 2009, up 22 percent from a year earlier, lagging a 46 percent gain in the broader market.
Chinese automaker Brilliance Europe exports executives say stop Autoweek, porcelain automaker, shine, stop.