Thanks to the hot sales of GM Buick in the new century, Buick, a brand marginalized in the United States, came to China and suddenly established a lofty image and market appeal. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Therefore, when GM advertised to launch a 100,000-yuan sedan car, many consumers who were interested in buying a car quickly held their money to buy.

After the Buick Sail sedan was unveiled at the Capital Auto Show, the slogan known as "Little Buick" was easily recognized by consumers, and it boasted that it was in line with international standards, and accumulated 16,000 orders in a short period of time.

According to the production capacity schedule given by SAIC-GM, the 16,000 Sail will take 3 months to digest.

Foreign brands, joint venture cars, 100,000 yuan, standard mainstream safety configurations, optional automatic transmission models, any one factor is the most likely itch for Chinese consumers to be impressed.

General Motors' precise positioning and excellent marketing have made Sail fight its way out of the 100,000 yuan car.

In the old three such as Santana, there are domestic independent brands Zhonghua and Chery, and under the joint attack of the two sides, Sail firmly occupies the position of the benchmark of 100,000 yuan sedan car.

In the month of Sail's listing, the sales of Zhonghua "Qin" were cut in half, from 2,600 monthly sales to less than 1,400 units, and Sail, which was positioned in the 100,000 sedan car market, came to the top and easily defeated its own brand Zhonghua "Qin".

On the contrary, Chery is not greatly affected, it is mainly sold in Anhuai Province, and there are local protection policies to ensure stable sales.

And the Chinese "Qin" wants to compete on the same stage as the Sail sold in GM 4S stores nationwide.

"What is the recommendation for a 100,000 yuan car?"

Someone consulted on BBS.

"The Chinese 'Qin' is not bad, and Chery is also good, but the one I recommend the most is the General Sail. GM is a big brand, reliable in quality, and the world's No. 1 car manufacturer, and it is much more cost-effective to buy a domestic brand than a domestic brand. ”

"The reliability of domestic cars is not good, and after a year of driving, except for the horn does not sound, it rings everywhere. At the same price, it is definitely more reliable to buy a joint venture brand. ”

"Chery's appearance is passable, but the Chinese 'Qin' is too ugly, so let's buy Sail, GM's boutique car. ”

......

On the automobile forum, enthusiastic netizens who know cars have replied.

As soon as Sail appeared, the competitiveness of Zhonghua "Qin" products plummeted, and at the same price, although the space competition Europe was a grade higher, consumers finally voted with their feet and lined up to enter the GM 4S store and were willing to increase the price and wait for the car.

Han Hao has psychological expectations for the listing of Sail, and originally wanted to use a higher-level model to compete with the joint venture brand to tie the game, but he didn't expect that the current market data shows that Sail is frantically encroaching on the share of Zhonghua sedan.

Before joining the WTO, Han Hao now feels the power of international auto giants to use global resources. Sail was imported from Brazil, which is also a developing country, and now it seems to be very much in line with the needs of Chinese consumers.

Zhonghua "Qin" 1.8L power, Sail is equipped with 1.6L, in the eyes of ordinary consumers, the two are not much different, Sail can easily soar to 120 kilometers per hour with GM's new engine.

The configuration of the two cars is roughly the same, and the only thing that the Chinese "Qin" wins is that the interior space is larger, after all, it is compact against small cars.

But Sail can add 15,000 yuan to choose a 4AT automatic transmission, which is a big plus point, and it is easier for women to get started with automatic transmission.

"Mr. Zhao, the car you ordered has not yet arrived, and I will take the initiative to inform you if there is news. ”

"I'm here to get back the deposit and cancel the order, I don't want to buy your Zhonghua brand car, GM Sail is more suitable for my appetite. ”

In the Zhonghua 4S store, there was a scene where someone asked to cancel the order.

"I'm sorry, when you booked the car, we said that we paid a deposit, and the deposit of 500 yuan is non-refundable, because our store has picked up the goods from the manufacturer. Now the car is on the way, wait a few days to arrive. ”

"Call your manager over, can't I refund the money if I don't buy it? What kind of black shop, I'm going to find the Industrial and Commercial Bureau to sue you-"

......

The scene of queuing up to pick up the car quickly disappeared from the Zhonghua 4S store, and many people even preferred not to deposit to switch to the GM camp. Of course, in China, whoever has a loud voice and who makes trouble will take some advantage, in order to calm things down, according to China's national conditions, Zhonghua 4S stores will return the deposit to consumers.

When asked about the reason for returning the car, many people said that for the same money, they still think it is more cost-effective to buy a foreign brand joint venture car.

In the initial stage, domestic cars have not yet completed the accumulation of technology, and they will directly face the competition from foreign mature model products, which is a very harsh competitive environment for China's own brand cars.

Faced with the situation of losing and retreating, Han Hao held an internal seminar in the Chinese car market to see how to curb such an unfavorable situation.

"Let's reduce the price, only by staggering the head-to-head competition with Sail can we retain a certain number of customers. Our internal staff choose honestly and honestly, and they are more inclined to the Sail side in comparison. ”

"Once the price is reduced, the market image that we have managed to maintain will decline, and it will become a cheap domestic car in the future. Now we have good cost control and reasonable profits, and if the price is reduced, we won't make money. ”

"Can the price reduction bring satisfactory sales, if the price reduction does not meet expectations, we might as well ensure the goal of profit priority and stick to the current price unchanged. ”

......

At the meeting, the backbone of China Car expressed their views on the price reduction.

Although the price reduction is simple and crude, it is a double-edged sword, and if it is not handled well, it will have a great impact on the brand.

If you want to avoid Sail, you can only reduce the price by more than 10,000 yuan, so it will fall to the rank of directly fighting with Chery.

"It's better to run an anniversary promotion and make sure the line starts than stops. ”

In the end, it was Han Hao who made the decision to reduce the price and promote, staggering the direct competition with Sail.

The official price reduction promotion in the form of annual rewards ranged from 1 to 18,000 yuan, and the minimum allocation of China's "Qin" was just 90,000 yuan, which finally retained some consumers, and sales began to stop falling but the growth was still weak.

If there is no new product replacement, the Chinese "Qin" will continue to slide into the abyss.

A month ago, Toyota's ninth-generation Corolla was finally launched in Dong's Beijing, and the new platform greatly absorbed the design concept of European sedans, and the shape of the new Corolla was very amazing.

The exterior is more streamlined and features an advanced body layout, including a longer wheelbase and shortened front and rear overhangs, providing a larger and more comfortable ride inside.

The power adopts VVTi intelligent variable valve system, installs the world's mainstream safety system, and adds a more advanced ESP system in addition to ABS to make the car safer.

It can be said that Toyota has done its best to create a global car that is destined to be a big hit, and the new Corolla has been praised by people including car critics and consumers as soon as it was unveiled.

Toyota, the Japanese manufacturer that has been following behind GM and Ford, began to show its fangs through the ninth-generation Corolla, ready to attack the top.

This generation of corollas adopts a new design language, which is completely different from the eighth generation of corollas imitated by the Chinese "Qin", and has undergone great changes in both platform and shape.

On the premise that the Corolla won the first city, the mid-level car Camry that followed one after another is another main force of Toyota.

"What a beautiful boutique!"

Han Hao couldn't help but give such a high evaluation when he saw the ninth-generation flower crown for the first time.

Toyota's design is very much in line with the Asian aesthetic, especially since this generation of Corolla is a groundbreaking work of the new century, enough to go down in the history of classic design models.

Originally, Han Hao was still hesitant to copy the flower crown again to upgrade the Chinese "Qin", but now in the face of the situation of losing market sales, surviving is the most important thing he should consider.

Therefore, the second-generation Zhonghua "Qin" will once again learn from Toyota's new generation of Corolla, whether it is chassis, shape or power, it is a place for Chinese engineers to study and learn.

At present, the new platform of Zhonghua Car has not yet landed, and imitation is the most convenient way, both the cost and market sales can be guaranteed.

The only drawback is that it is easy to suffer from plagiarism and borrowing dependence, and it will also cause lawsuits of intellectual property rights.

The lesser of two evils, in the life and death crisis, surviving is the most important thing for China Car.

Toyota's all-new Corolla has just been launched in Japan, and there is no mass-produced car exported to China, Han Hao has ordered 10 Japanese right-hand drive cars through a trading company, and will enter the mainland through Hong Kong in the future.

With these 10 prototypes, the Zhonghua C2 will be upgraded on the basis of the ninth-generation Corolla, and once again be on top of Toyota's big model. I believe that the new generation of Zhonghua C2 should be able to be compared with Sail, due to the strength gap between domestic and joint venture brands, it can only be dislocation competition.

According to the fastest speed, the new generation of C2 Zhonghua "Qin" on the market will be at least in August 2001, in this period of market gap, C1 Zhonghua "Qin" will have to fight alone.

An important factor in the defeat of the Chinese "Qin" to Sail is the lack of automatic transmission, and the GM 4AT transmission is a first-class product in China, resulting in Sail becoming the cheapest automatic sedan in the Chinese market.

Therefore, in the second-generation C2 Zhonghua "Qin", Han Hao intends to launch an automatic transmission model. With automatic transmission, consumers will look up to it in terms of image perception. At the same time, it can also drive sales up, after all, manual transmission is still not as convenient as automatic transmission, and there is a lot of demand in the market.

Half a year has passed since going to Detroit to recruit talents, and the CVT R&D team established by Xia Cheng has made initial progress.

Through the dismantling of the mainstream CVT transmissions on the market, with the assistance of Ricardo, the overall design prototype of China Motor's independent CVT transmission project has been implemented.

In the computer test, this CVT transmission is already operational, and now it is waiting for it to be physically built and tested.

However, before it can be built according to the drawings, it is necessary to overcome the key components.

"After continuous experiments, we finally came up with an approximate range of material composition of this planetary gear, with an error rate of 0.1%-0.3%. If we're lucky, we might be able to crack the material composition data tomorrow. ”

At the CVT project team discussion meeting, Dong Qihai, who made an exception and became a regular in advance, introduced it with a formula on the blackboard.

"However, after cracking it, we still have to go through process quenching experiments to find reasonable data on quenching. Konichi A does have something unique in this field, even if we figure out the composition of the material, we can't know the most reasonable steps to operate. These take a long time to test and accumulate, and if we don't figure this out, our gears may break down in half the time. ”

The automatic transmission also involves the process of materials, just like this CVT planetary gear, the core technology is controlled in the hands of the Japanese A himself, and they will not share and sell it to the outside world. Relying on such leading high technology, it firmly controls the high-end of the market, maintains high profits and high thresholds, and realizes monopolistic operation.

If latecomers want to crack the technical secret, they can only spend a lot of effort to crack it, which is very costly, and ordinary small and medium-sized enterprises cannot afford it.

"It's good, it's been a lot of progress.

We are like children holding a hammer and constantly hitting a boulder, two or three times...... After countless knocks, there will always be a blow that shatters the boulder. The credit for smashing the boulder was not the final blow, but the countless strikes that had been going on and on before.

We are engaged in CVT, and everyone now deeply understands the difficulties, and some people even say that there is no hope. But we just have to learn how stupid the child is to knock on the rock, and break the CVT one after another.

Day A himself engaged in CVT from scratch, they also groped step by step, and we are now in much better conditions than them, at least there are mature products on the market for us to learn.

Therefore, I still say that the road is for people to come out, and don't give up easily until you reach a desperate situation. Come on, the take-off of China's auto industry may be in the continuous knocking of our people!"

Xia Cheng, who returned to China for development, has become a qualified team leader and knows how to motivate everyone.

Han Hao sometimes goes to the research institute building privately to see how the project team is going, and the process of cheering for the team in the summer just now can be seen.

There is no hope for mass production of the Chunghwa CVT for at least three years, and if the automatic transmission is easy to imitate, it will not be monopolized by Japanese brands.

"There is some progress, but you still have to plan for the worst, because no one can easily say that mass production is successful before it is made, and it may just fall apart after not taking two steps. ”

Seeing Han Hao, Xia Cheng walked out and said to his boss.

"Then I can only continue to confine you to work here, I can't find the right person to be qualified for such a position except you!"

Han Hao responded jokingly.

Although he would like to see the birth of his own brand of CVT as soon as possible, Han Hao knows that this is a very long road.

If you can't get your CVT for a while, then the only feasible way for the C2 Zhonghua "Qin" to get an automatic transmission is to buy it externally.

Now it is possible to get automatic transmissions in China, one of which is to purchase Shenhang Mitsubishi engines, which are forced to tie in the 4AT transmissions imported from China, which are very expensive. The Chunghwa Group already has a Pangu engine and is not interested in Mitsubishi goods.

The second is to purchase from independent transmission manufacturers, Aisin has entered the Chinese market, and Zhonghua can order 4AT transmissions from Aisin.

As one of the world's leading AT transmission giants, Aisin is not focused on the high-end market like ZF, but in the ordinary low-end market, ranking first in the world in AT shipments.

Toyota, Volkswagen, and Peugeot Citroen are Aisin's largest customers. Toyota, in particular, is the majority shareholder of Aisin and controls the world-renowned transmission company.

In order to enter the layout of China, Toyota Motor first laid out the layout of parts enterprises, and engine, transmission, axle factories, etc. have entered before the main engine factory.

Therefore, Han Hao's method is to purchase a 4AT transmission from Aisin, which will be used on the new C2 model in the future, and the price will certainly not be cheap.