Tag Archives: Chery

News

China Goes to Le Mans—and It’s About Time

For more than a century, the 24 Hours of Le Mans has been motorsport’s ultimate proving ground: a rolling laboratory where reputations are built, shattered, and occasionally resurrected at 200 mph. Porsche has made it a religion. Ferrari treats it like sacred art. Audi weaponized it. Toyota conquered it through sheer persistence. And yet, through more than 100 editions of the race, one massive corner of the global auto industry has remained conspicuously absent.

Until now.

Chery has signed a five-year agreement with the ACO to compete at Le Mans under its premium Exeed brand, marking the first time a Chinese manufacturer will take on the world’s most famous endurance race. It’s a milestone not just for Chery, but for China’s entire automotive industry—and a signal that the country’s ambitions now extend far beyond showrooms and sales charts.

Because if you want to be taken seriously as a carmaker, there’s no better place to earn your scars than motorsport. And there’s no harsher judge than Le Mans.

Motorsport: The Last Unclaimed Territory

Chinese manufacturers have spent the last two decades mastering volume, electrification, and global expansion. What they’ve largely avoided is racing—the messy, expensive, ego-bruising business of pushing machines past the edge in public. Motorsport has always been more than spectacle; it’s a marketing platform, a technical incubator, and a cultural statement rolled into one. And until now, China has sat that one out.

That’s why Exeed’s Le Mans entry matters. In a race that has hosted everyone from Jaguar and Bentley to Cadillac and Lamborghini, the absence of a Chinese badge has been glaring. Le Mans is where brands prove not just speed, but durability, engineering discipline, and institutional confidence. Showing up means you believe your engineers belong in the same conversation as the world’s best.

Chery clearly believes that now.

The Big Question: What’s Under the Bodywork?

Le Mans isn’t kind to newcomers, and it’s especially unforgiving to half-baked powertrains. Exeed’s current road-car lineup—SUVs and sedans with no GT sports cars in sight—offers little hint of what kind of race car will emerge. What we do know is that an entirely new machine will have to be developed, complete with an internal combustion engine capable of surviving 24 hours of flat-out abuse.

That’s where things get interesting.

Chery, like most Chinese manufacturers, has limited experience beyond four-cylinder engines. Six- and eight-cylinder powerplants are rare exceptions in China’s domestic market, making a Le Mans effort feel almost absurd on paper. Hybridization seems likely—both as a nod to modern endurance racing and a way to leverage China’s strength in electrification—but even that doesn’t solve the core issue: someone still has to build a serious combustion engine.

The smart money says Chery won’t do it alone. Outsourcing the engine to a specialized engineering firm would shortcut years of development pain and reduce the inevitable “childhood illnesses” that plague first-time race programs. It wouldn’t be unprecedented either—plenty of manufacturers have leaned on external expertise before claiming victories as their own.

Impossible Missions Have Precedent

If this all sounds unrealistic, history says otherwise. In the 1960s, Ford’s decision to take on Ferrari at Le Mans seemed laughable. Detroit muscle versus Italian racing aristocracy? We know how that turned out.

Exeed’s challenge may be even steeper. This isn’t just a new team—it’s a new motorsport culture learning endurance racing from scratch. But that’s exactly why the project feels significant. Le Mans has never been about comfort zones. It rewards obsession, resources, and the willingness to fail publicly until you don’t.

And Chery has resources in abundance.

Money, Scale, and a Replica of La Sarthe

Chery sold more than 2.5 million vehicles last year and remains China’s largest auto exporter. This isn’t a vanity startup throwing a logo on a race car—it’s a global manufacturing giant with the financial muscle to play the long game. That matters, because Le Mans success isn’t bought with a single check; it’s earned through years of testing, iteration, and heartbreak.

To underline its seriousness, the ACO agreement reportedly includes French consultants helping Chery build a Le Mans–style test track in Wuhu, where the company is headquartered. A replica of Circuit de la Sarthe on Chinese soil isn’t just symbolic—it’s a declaration of intent. Engineers and drivers training 365 days a year on a homegrown endurance circuit? That’s how racing programs mature.

More Than a Race Entry

Exeed’s Le Mans debut isn’t about trophies—at least not yet. It’s about credibility. About proving that Chinese manufacturers aren’t just fast learners in electrification and manufacturing scale, but capable of mastering the most unforgiving discipline in motorsport.

Le Mans doesn’t care how many cars you sell. It doesn’t care about market share or export numbers. It cares whether your machine can survive the night, the rain, and the relentless punishment of 5,000 kilometers at full tilt.

For the first time, China is ready to find out.

And whether Exeed finishes first or last, just showing up changes the conversation forever.

Source: Chery

News

Chery Tried to Recreate Range Rover’s Legendary Heaven’s Gate Stunt – It Didn’t Go Well

Back in 2018, Range Rover pulled off one of the greatest pieces of automotive marketing ever recorded: a Range Rover Sport, piloted by a Le Mans–winning driver, conquering the 999 steps up to China’s Heaven’s Gate. The video—now sitting at 6.7 million views—was equal parts engineering flex and cinematic bravado, cementing itself as one of the brand’s most iconic “because we can” moments.

Naturally, someone was going to try it again.

Enter Chery, China’s fast-rising automaker, with a brand-new SUV called the Fulwin X3L—a hybrid off-roader whose design pays significant homage to the latest Land Rover and Range Rover silhouettes. In its top configuration, the X3L makes an impressive 422 horsepower, which Chery evidently felt was enough to warrant a headline-snatching spectacle of its own.

So the company brought a bright yellow example to the foot of Heaven’s Gate, lined it up with the ancient staircase, and hit record.

Spoiler: It didn’t reach the gate. Or even close.

Ground-level footage shows the Fulwin X3L powering up the steps with enthusiasm—until about the midway point, where enthusiasm turns into hesitation. The SUV begins to bog down. The driver digs deeper into the throttle, trying to claw toward the next landing. Instead, the X3L loses traction, slides backward, and violently impacts a stone barrier.

A shower of debris follows, some of it tumbling off the cliffside. The SUV, thankfully, stays put. The dignity? Less so.

Chery’s Explanation: Blame the Rope

Within hours, Chery issued a polished apology. The company explained that the November 12 test was “interrupted due to an unexpected incident” that drew “widespread attention”—corporate-speak for this was supposed to go viral for different reasons.

According to the automaker, a safety rope meant to serve as an emergency safeguard detached, became tangled in one of the X3L’s wheels, and drained power—leading to the backward slide and crash.

It’s unclear why a stunt meant to showcase power and capability needed a safety rope in the first place, but we digress.

A Historic Staircase, Now Slightly More Historic

Heaven’s Gate isn’t just a scenic photo op—it’s home to a centuries-old stone staircase leading to the 1,700-year-old Tianmen Cave, a sacred and heavily protected cultural landmark. Which means Chery’s failed stunt didn’t just dent an SUV; it damaged heritage infrastructure that predates the internal combustion engine by more than a millennium.

So yes, Chery does indeed have more apologizing to do.

Chery’s Fulwin X3L is probably a perfectly competent hybrid SUV. But engineering credibility isn’t earned by recreating someone else’s viral stunt—especially if the result is a high-profile, slow-motion failure on an irreplaceable historic monument.

Range Rover wrote the playbook at Heaven’s Gate.
Chery tried to photocopy it.
Unfortunately, the machine jammed.

Source: hongkong.newsupdates via Instagram

NEW CARS

iCaur V27: China’s Defender Slayer Rolls Up Its Sleeves

Move over Land Rover and Toyota — there’s a new tough guy on the block, and it’s wearing a badge you’ve probably never heard of. Meet the iCaur V27, a burly new 4×4 from Chinese car-making behemoth Chery, which has clearly been eyeing the Defender 110 and Land Cruiser with a mix of admiration and quiet menace.

At first glance, the V27 looks every inch the off-roader: boxy stance, upright proportions, and enough purposeful cladding to make it look like it’s ready to chew through Mongolia before breakfast. It’s the biggest model yet from iCaur (known as iCar back home in China — until Apple’s lawyers got twitchy). Still, despite its bulk, it’s actually a touch shorter and narrower than the Defender, which means it might just squeeze into a British car park without tears.

Underneath the rugged styling lies something much more modern: a range-extender hybrid setup. There’s a 1.5-litre turbo petrol engine, but don’t expect it to drive the wheels — that’s not its job. Instead, it quietly hums away as a generator, feeding electrons to one or two electric motors depending on spec. In the dual-motor version, you’re looking at 449bhp, which means it’ll have enough grunt to fling its chunky frame up a muddy incline with a smug grin.

iCaur claims the V27 will go 124 miles on electric power alone, though that’s under China’s optimistic CLTC cycle — so maybe shave a few miles off in the real world. Combine the 33kWh battery with a full tank of fuel, however, and the total range balloons to over 621 miles. That’s Land Cruiser–beating endurance in theory, though we’ll need a real-world test to see if it delivers.

Inside? We’ll find out soon enough — the full interior reveal is pencilled in for 21 November. Expect lashings of leatherette, big screens, and more ambient lighting than a Shanghai nightclub.

Now for the kicker: price. In China, it starts at the equivalent of £27,000, which sounds laughably cheap for something with Defender aspirations. But once it crosses oceans and picks up taxes, shipping, and the usual “UK market adjustments,” it’ll likely land closer to the £50k+ mark. Still, if iCaur can maintain that spec-to-price ratio, Land Rover should start sweating.

And here’s the interesting bit: the V27’s platform is reportedly being evaluated for use in the upcoming Ineos Fusilier, suggesting that even the Brits are eyeing Chery’s engineering with interest. Not bad for a brand barely out of nappies.

With Chery, Omoda, and Jaecoo already gaining traction in the UK — the Jaecoo 7 even outsold the Nissan Qashqai last month — it’s clear that Chinese carmakers aren’t just knocking on the door anymore. They’re barging in, boots muddy and grins wide.

So when the iCaur V27 lands next year, expect more than raised eyebrows. Expect a proper showdown in the mud, the mountains, and maybe even the Waitrose car park.

Source: Autocar