Ten years after its inception as the first automotive startup in China, the near-premium brand Qoros is getting serious about expanding its portfolio—and has started sharing platforms with Chery, a Chinese mass-market brand that owns 50 percent of Qoros (the other half is owned by the Singapore-based investment firm Kenon). Qoros introduced the Young, a new entry-level crossover SUV, at the Chengdu auto show last week.
At 177 inches long, the Young is just slightly shorter than a Honda CR-V or a Mazda CX-3; power comes from a turbocharged 1.5-liter inline-four rated at about 150 horsepower and mated to a six-speed dual-clutch gearbox. That’s the only available powertrain, which makes sense: The Qoros Young will be priced significantly below the other Qoros models, and the company wouldn’t want the new model to cannibalize the more upmarket offerings.
While all other Qoros models are built on a stand-alone platform designed with input from Austrian engineering house Magna Steyr, the Young shares its platform and many components with the Chery Tiggo 7. It is also built in a Chery production plant—but to Qoros-specific quality requirements, meaning to a more rigid standard than the Chery-badged models.
From its looks, you couldn’t tell the Qoros Young and the Chery Tiggo 7 are related; styled under former Mini chief designer Gert Hildebrand, the new Qoros looks powerful, masculine, and remarkably upscale both inside and out. While Qoros borrows a Chery platform for its new entry-level model, the exercise is reversed for a new SUV that Chery plans to unveil at the Frankfurt auto show next month. That new mid-size SUV, internally called M31T, is a variation of the upmarket Qoros 5 SUV and will be Chery’s most sophisticated offering to date.
Qoros and Chery still seem to be working out their international strategy. We believe that Chery will hit international markets first, with Qoros following as a premium, upmarket sister brand—similar to the relationship between Honda and Acura or Toyota and Lexus. So far, the only China-built cars offered in America have worn familiar brand names such as Volvo (the S60 Inscription) and Buick (the Envision), and this doesn’t look like the right time, politically, to introduce a Chinese brand in the United States, so don’t hold your breath.
At the top end of the market, Qoros is pushing forward with the K-EV sedan, a fully electric, 870-hp performance luxury sedan with an extremely stiff carbon-fiber monocoque. A new coupe concept gives a clue to the design of the series production four-door, which will shun the glass doors of the original K-EV concept.
The designers clearly had some fun with a derivative called the Pacecar Safety. It is distinguished by entirely free-standing fenders with classic, almost floating lighting elements up front and abaft. The strobe lights on the roof are executed as a rear spoiler. And inside, a strapped-on iPad offers assistance for a racing environment. The overall look is even more aggressive than on the first K-EV concept.
The K-EV sedan is slated for a 2018 debut and is expected to be sold in low volumes beginning in 2019.
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