From copycat to original, the development history of Chinese brand sports cars

Chinese brands now occupy half of the automobile market. In addition to sedans, SUVs, and other daily cars for ordinary people, sports cars, which were almost dominated by foreign brands in the past, now also have domestic products. But don't think that Chinese brands have only started to make sports cars in recent years. Speaking of the founder of domestic sports cars, he may be older than some of my friends here! Today, let's sort out how Chinese people compile their sports car dreams step by step.

Back at the beginning of the millennium, cars slowly entered the homes of ordinary people. At this time, discerning Chinese realized that sooner or later, cars would change from tools to toys, and we had to plan and build sports cars! This person is Li Shufu, the founder of the Geely brand.

Although it has several years of experience in car manufacturing, Geely is still a blank slate when it comes to sports cars, but Mr. Li is not afraid. Because the most valuable experience in the past few years is: standing on the shoulders of giants and playing giant imitation shows. After several years of "independent research and development" (copying the original version), in 2003 Geely launched the first Chinese sports car - Beauty Leopard! The Integra at the front and the Supra at the rear are available on the market for $13884. Let me ask you if you are afraid of them! All series are manual, and the two low-end versions use a 1.3L engine, while the top-end Urban Panther model is equipped with a 1.8L engine with a larger displacement and a maximum power of... 94 horsepower...

The next year, the starting price of the Leopard was reduced to $9789. At that time, imported sports cars could easily cost tens of hundreds of thousands of Dollars. So even though the quality and performance of the Leopard were far inferior to those of real sports cars, the price of tens of thousands of Dollars still gave the spirited young men a chance to realize their dreams. After all, not every girl can tell the difference between a real Maybach and a fake one today. Twenty years ago, it was enough to look at the appearance!

It is commendable that in 2006, the Leopard even launched a modified model - Liliang. What is even more commendable is that in 2009, Geely launched its second sports car product - China Dragon, which shows that Li Shufu is serious about making sports cars. As the name suggests, China Dragon uses dragon elements to design this car, but some things look good on the car, while others don't. The front face of the China Dragon is very eye-catching... In addition, when China Dragon appeared, several other domestic brands also started to make sports cars, and their quality was even better, so the sales of China Dragon were not as good as Leopard. In a way, Geely helped domestic brands take the lead, but it suddenly became a stepping stone for others.

BYD S8 is the first domestically produced convertible sports car. The convertible structure is reverse-engineered from the Renault Mégane CC. Needless to say, whose appearance is reverse-engineered? Although it is very cool, the top configuration of this car was more than $28050 at the time. It was the kind that the poor could not afford and the rich could not afford. As a result, only 103 units were sold in total. This "limited edition" was sudden and hard to guard against.

MG TF was bought back as a package when Nanjing Automobile acquired MG and was later produced in China. It is the first domestically produced mid-engine sports car. MG TF is equipped with a 1.8L engine based on Rover K. Although the horsepower is not high: 136 horsepower, the body is very light, it can reach 100 km/h in 8.2 seconds, and the top speed is 215 km/h. Coupled with manual rear-wheel drive and soft top convertible, it is still a very cool and playable car today. Of course, good things are never cheap. The price of MG TF started at $35007 in 2007, and not many people can really pay for this fun.

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