Autoblog

Among the never-ending sea of house-sized LCD TVs, untold navigation devices and cutesy robots at CES are more than a few cars. While last year the theme among custom-car builders was overwhelming gaudiness, this year someone must have written a rule mandating at least a little class.

We expected to see automotive LCD screens installed in more places than is acceptable, and we saw a few, but far fewer than 2007. We looked forward to a few exotics, but were surprised when we found Jay Lenno's EcoJet. Other surprises were a Year One Bandit, a Cadillac Escalade in flat gray primer, and a Morgan Aero 8.

As we approached the Dolby booth we were a bit intimidated by what we assume is a life-size model of the Transformer Bumblee. Very impressive indeed.

Perhaps the most surprising automotive find at CES was a Chery CrossEastar (shown at right) at the Delphi booth. Seating for eight, luxury to rival at least the Big Three, and an expected bargain-basement price has us looking forward to seeing what the company finally sends us. In the opinion of a dad, aside from the potential quality problems, it's an attractive vehicle. Delphi had it at CES to show its global reach, since it supplies its technology products to the Chinese automaker.

We're sure there were tons more we didn't see, but Ford and GM kept us busy this year. Check out our gallery of 60 high-res images for more cars we spotted CES.


All Photos Copyright ©2008 Chris Tutor / Weblogs, Inc.

Europeans anxiously awaiting their chance to buy a Chery will have to cool their heels a little longer. Chery's delaying the export of their B21, but it's not for anything major like crash performance woes. According to suppliers, Chery has pushed back production so they can revamp the interior design. The fitment that appeals to the Chinese domestic market is less thrilling to European buyers, so the cabin will get some attention before the B21 swings into production later this year. It won't be long until these cars start finding European buyers. Chery and its peers are getting their collective acts together and while these cars are currently punchlines, they won't be for long.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. Req., Photo: Autoblog Chinese]

Well, no, but can you blame us for thinking so? While no one here is a shoe expert like, say, The Manolo, it's hard to look at this forthcoming Chery compact and not think of the ubiquitous (and heinous) sandals worn by Mario Batali and countless suburbanites in apparent need of corrective eye surgery. Look at that rounded, upturned nose -- Croc city, baby! We know that the Chinese auto manufacturers have never shied away from "borrowing" styling elements from other cars in the past, so really, what's to stop them from aping a resin clog design for the S16?

[Source: AutoblogGreen]

Hot on the heels of Nanjing Auto's merger with SAIC, Fiat has announced it has pulled out of the automotive joint venture it had embarked upon with Nanjing.

The Sino-Italian operation had been a money-losing enterprise for years. Fiat says that Nanjing failed to live up to its commitments to the joint venture after the Chinese auto group took over MG Rover, and that the divorce will enable the Italian automaker to re-strategize its business in China. Fiat is expected to partner instead with Chery Automobiles, which just announced another joint venture with Israel Corp. Fiat and Chery are in the process of setting up another joint venture to produce 175,000 cars annually starting in 2009, and leading to the introduction of Fiat Group division Alfa Romeo to the Chinese market.

The separation affects only the cooperation between Fiat and Nanjing on the production of passenger cars, and doesn't have any bearing on Fiat's truck-building division, Iveco, which cooperates with Nanjing to build vans and with Nanjing's new parent company SAIC on trucks, the two relationships will continue unhindered.

[Source: Automotive News - Sub. Req.]

Chrysler and Chery will finally consummate their corporate marriage south of the border when a version of the Dodge-badged Chery A1 goes on sale in Mexico soon. The Chinese econobox will be built at Chery's Wuhu plant and exported to Mexico. According to a review in the Wall Street Journal, beyond a vibration in the steering column at 100 mph, some interior fitment issues and a lack of grunt with four adults in the car, the A1 handled the daily slog with relative ease. Not bad for a little over $5,000.

Sales of the Dodge/Chery A1 in the States are expected sometime in 2009, assuming that the subcompact can meet U.S. crash and emissions standards. Regardless, we're still waiting for the Hornet.

[Source: China Car Times via TTAC]

The Wall Street Journal was allowed behind the scenes at Chinese automaker Chery, a rare privilege in Communist China. The reporter didn't discover any top-secret plans for world domination or even a rendering of what Dodge's Chery-made car would look like. But he did see German and Italian robotics being used on production lines staffed by $1-an-hour workers 16 hours a day. It's a combination the story says should be good for global success.

In Chery's research center, engineers are developing 40-50 new models and the company is building a new production line capable of turning out 700,000 cars a year.

Chery chairman Yin Tongyao says they hope their relationship with Chrysler will allow Chery to hone its cars and streamline its production process. "People look down on our products. There are many doubts about our safety and quality," says Yin says in the WSJ piece. "If we work together with Chrysler, we can go global faster."

[Source: The Wall Street Journal]

Inside Line is reporting that Chery will not be building the Dodge Hornet or Demon after all. They deducted this from a report in the Wall Street Journal published on Monday that quotes Simon Elliott, president and CEO of Chrysler Group China Sales Ltd. as saying that his company really wants to fill product holes in its lineup in China, but that it won't be working with Chery to do it. Inside Line takes that information and combines it with a quote from Chrysler's Design Chief Trevor Creed at the Frankfurt Auto Show in September when Creed said Chery's B-segment platform isn't appropriate for the Hornet.

So Elliott says Chery won't be building Chryslers for sale in China, and Creed says Chery's platform isn't right for the Hornet. To us, that doesn't exactly add up to no more Chrysler/Chery deal.

So we sent an email to Chrysler and heard back from David Elshoff at Chrysler's Business Operations Communications. His e-mail simply said, "Absurd." To get a little more detail, we called him up. Elshoff tells Autoblog that Chrysler and Chery are definitely still working together on building cars for export, but not for cars to be sold in China. He tells us that the Chery A1 platform is still targeted for use as a Chrysler vehicle to go on sale in Latin America by the end of 2008. Elshoff says the two companies are also still working on a version of the Hornet, for sale possibly by the end of 2009.

So there, straight from the source, Chrysler and Chery still buddies.

[Source: Wall Street Journal via Inside Line]

As the entire industry looks towards China as a new vehicle for growth, Chinese automakers are investing heavily outside of the country in places as diverse as the Ukraine, Brazil and Egypt. The latest offsite location is Iran, where China's largest automaker Chery Auto has announced plans to build a new $370 million plant in the northern city of Babol.

Chery is partnering with Iran's biggest automaker Khodro, as well as Canadian investment firm Solitac, to start assembly of its compact S21 sedan in the Middle-Eastern country. The cars, which will arrive as knocked-down kits from China, will be sold in Iran and neighboring countries and could be followed by even more models in the near future.

This latest deal is just one of several international ventures that Chery has under its belt. Earlier this month, Fiat announced its plans with Chery to build Alfa Romeos for sale in China and you'd have to be living under a rock to not know about the deal between it and Chrysler to develop a new minicar for eventual sale in the US.

[Source: Detroit News]

Chrysler might want to take another look at its deal with China's Chery Motors to build small cars for it after another video of a European crash test has popped up on YouTube. Russian car magazine AutoRevu had a Chery Amulet sedan crash-tested in accordance with the EuroNCAP standards. After going through the frontal offset crash, the car appears to have done even worse than the Brilliance BS6, which recently earned a one-star rating. The dummy in the Amulet had to be removed in pieces, and the magazine, AvtoRevu, is now calling for the car to be pulled from the market. Check out the video after the jump.

[Sources: Detroit News, YouTube, AutoRevu]

Our most famous China car crash post, with photo gallery and videos of crash:
In German crash test, China's Brilliance BS6 sedan fails miserably

The Chery Riich II microvan is a global market car derived from the Chery V2. The Riich II will debut at the Chang'an Auto Salon later this month, and Chery says that it benefits from a focus on safety, among other things. To try and back up that claim, Chery released the crash test photo shown above (scenario unknown/questionable, so take it with a pound of salt), in which the dummy is refreshingly not in several pieces, impaled by the steering column, or wearing the instrument panel as a hat. This would seem to be a welcome departure from the norm in terms of Chinese cars' crash tests, with recent videos having led us to believe that vehicles made of arsenic and razor blades would be a better bet in a collision than some of China's automotive offerings. We'll reserve final judgment on this one until we see a crash test video on it from one of its destination markets, like Russia. You'll forgive us for being skeptical.

The front-drive van will be powered by an 83-horsepower 1.3-liter engine. In terms of appearance, it looks like a miniaturized ripoff of the Renault Trafic.

[Source: Autoblog Spanish]