Chery Design Chief Aims for Total Transformation of Lineup
Executive Summary
The Chinese automaker plans to become a key global player and has hired several Western designers to help it achieve the feat.
WUHAN, CHINA – China’s domestic automakers aren’t known for their styling prowess.
Many brands here famously “borrow” established Western marques’ designs or create basic-looking models that get no one’s blood pumping.
But now realizing that making cars that look as good as their foreign counterparts’ could be the key to success, Chinese automakers are stepping up their game.
James Hope, Chery’s corporate director-design, is one of the people leading the charge. Hope joined the Chinese domestic brand in early 2012 after a 20-year career with the Detroit Three.
“I knew it was going to be a big challenge – it is a big challenge,” Hope tells WardsAuto of moving to China to oversee about 85 designers at Chery’s two studios, in Wuhu and Shanghai.
“(But) I’m pleasantly surprised with the massive support we get internally, which is obviously very critical to design,” he says on the sidelines of the recent 2013 Global Automotive Forum here.
Chery has a plan to redesign its entire lineup by 2020. However, not every existing model will get a new look.
“Chery had many, many cars, (so) we’re consolidating,” Hope says. “And the strategy is to hit the market segment with the products that we need to fill the holes. And the ones that don’t support that strategy we are pushing away.”
Amid falling sales, Chery last spring said it would nearly halve its lineup, from 20 models to 11 or 12, as well as eliminate or sell its three sub-brands.
Total Chery sales in China slipped 12.2% in 2012, to 563,305 units, WardsAuto data shows.
In the closely watched passenger-car category, Zhejiang Geely overtook Chery for the top spot last year.
Sales of Chery cars fell 11.9% in 2012 to 405,831, following a 3.9% decline in 2011.
Through August, Chery car sales were down 17.0% in a segment up 10.5% in the same period.
While the automaker’s top management is not necessarily willing to give designers free rein, it is listening to them, which Hope says took him by surprise.
“Instead of (them) dictating, we gather opinions,” he says. “We kind of sift them through and we all get on the same page. And it’s all quite harmonious. It works really, really well.”
Chery has plans to grow its design team, but in a methodical fashion, Hope says.
“What we want to do is bring in the key people we feel we need, where we have the weak points, so it’s a very strategic growth model.”
Hope and three others are the only members of Chery’s design team who aren’t Chinese. Earlier this year the automaker wooed former Porsche designer Hakan Saracoglu to head its Shanghai studio.
Recruiting designers from overseas can be tricky, so Hope has taken on the job himself.
If someone has never been to China “there’s sort of a preconceived notion (about the country),” he says. “But the auto industry is very small. I’ve been in it quite some time and I’ve bounced around a little bit, so I know people who I can approach…to come and join me. So that’s how I’m approaching (recruiting) versus (using) headhunters.”
At the Shanghai auto show in April, Chery displayed three concepts that showcase what it called a new more “international style”: the Alpha7 sedan, Beta5 compact CUV and one-seat @Ant. All three vehicles are built around Chery’s new iAuto suite of technologies, which includes advanced telematics, powertrain and suspension technologies it claims are on par with those of major global OEMs.
