In recent years, in the process of China's auto market from incremental to stock, elimination has become an inevitable. The membership of the elimination club continues to increase, and Mahayana is the latest one. 】
Producer: Observer Network Car Channel [Official Number: Engine Sight]
Author: Pan Yuchen
Edit: Lou Bing
On one search engine, almost all of the information about Mahayana is concentrated on its official website, because there is not even a entry. Even for industry insiders, there are not many people who are familiar with this company.
The Mahayana Automobile, which is in a corner of the city, has recently been related to byBYD, a maverick who has announced a high-profile car-making and a domestic new energy vehicle leader: According to reports, the automobile manufacturing base of Mahayana Automobile in Fuzhou High-tech Zone, Jiangxi Province, has been taken over by BYD Automobile a few days ago.
It is only lamentable that the most eye-catching moment of the Mahayana car is the day of saying goodbye to the car circle.
In fact, as early as the end of 2020, Mahayana's production base in Jintan, Jiangsu Province, was also sold to Niutron Ziyoujia, a new power brand under Xiaoniu Electric. It is reported that Maverick is using the production qualification of Mahayana cars in the form of leasing to lay the foundation for the future production of four-wheeled electric vehicles.
In addition, the bankruptcy reorganization of Mahayana Motors was officially launched in April this year. As of now, the official website of Mahayana Motors can still be logged in normally, but the last news update is stuck in July 2020. From the founding of the Mahayana brand to the bankruptcy, it took less than 2 years.
01
Weird "Mahayana Speed"
Mahayana cars have fallen as fast as they did when they were founded.
Turning the clock back to September 2018, Wu Xiao, who was only 31 years old, held a Launch of the Mahayana brand in Beijing. After returning from studying in the UK, he claims to have a dream of building a car. According to Wu Xiao's positioning, Mahayana Automobile is a mid-to-high-end brand with Internet attributes, and its main competitors are also the leaders of independent brands such as Great Wall, Changan and Geely.
But surprisingly, along with the Mahayana brand, there are three models that have already been mass-produced, including two SUVs, the G70s and G60s, and a micro-electric vehicle, the E20.
According to the laws of the industry, it takes at least 3-5 years for a new car to be established, research and development to production. For the new car-making forces of the same period, the production qualification of light automobiles is a huge obstacle. But in front of the young Wu Xiao, these never seemed to be problems.
Where does the qualification of Mahayana come from? Qixinbao data show that in 2017, Jiangsu Jintan Changdanghu New Energy Technology Company, founded by Wu Xiao, participated in the restructuring of Jiangling Group Light Vehicle Co., Ltd., becoming the largest shareholder of the latter with 67% of the shares. In January of the following year, Jiangling Light Automobile officially changed its name to Mahayana Motors.
It is worth mentioning that the original production category of Jiangling Light Automobile only includes commercial vehicles and special vehicles. However, it took only one year for Mahayana to go from restructuring to obtaining the passenger car qualification issued by Jiangxi.
What is even more paradoxical is that before the brand was officially released, the Mahayana G70s had begun to roll off the production line in batches from the Jintan factory, and in the construction of dealer channels, Mahayana Motors claimed to have more than 100 4S stores, more than 600 distribution outlets and more than 400 service outlets. According to Wu Xiao's plan, Mahayana Will also complete the goal of 220 4S stores, more than 1,300 distribution outlets and 2,000 service stations in 2019.
With such "divine speed", how did Wu Xiao and Mahayana create it?
02
The Chengya family
Wu Xiao's parents and sisters, who sat on the stage of the brand conference, seemed to reflect the role of the power behind Wu Xiao.
Wu Xiao does not shy away from his blood relationship with his father, Wu Jianzhong, who was once the chairman of Zotye Automobile. In the first 10 years of the 21st century, under the leadership of Wu Jianzhong, Zotye Automobile has gradually built itself from an unknown local enterprise into a second-tier brand with national influence by virtue of its first release bureau for the car market.
"Family" has always been a distinctive feature of the Zhongtai family. The iron bull group behind Zotye Automobile, its founder Ying Jianren and Wu Jianzhong are in a relationship, and Zotye's later president Jin Zheyong is Ying Jianren's nephew.
Despite the doubts from the outside world, Wu Xiao insisted that Mahayana Automobile was a brand founded by himself and had no equity investment relationship with Zotye Automobile. But in fact, although Zotye did not participate in the restructuring of Jiangling Light Automobile, Wu Jianzhong served as the project leader of jiangxi Mahayana Automobile Technology Industrial Park. Not only that, he is also the chairman of Jiangsu Jintan Automobile Industry Co., Ltd.
The registered location of Mahayana Automobile is the location of the previous Jintan factory of Zotye Automobile. Linked to the fact that the Jintan factory was once the production base of Zotye Damai, this seems to explain why Mahayana Automobile was able to come up with three mass production cars in just one year after quickly obtaining the automobile production qualification.
The association between the release of the new car by Mahayana and the existing model of Zotye further confirms the speculation of the outside world.
For example, the Mahayana G70s, which were first listed on the market, not only have a similar appearance and completely consistent body dimensions with the Zotye Damai X7, but also have the same configuration level as the 2.0T engine, 8AT transmission parameters and even the model configuration level from Aerospace Mitsubishi.
Between G60s and Zotye T500, E20 and Zotye Sesame, there is also a distinct "blood relationship".
On this basis, Mahayana Relies on the dealer channel of both Zotye models, and naturally has the confidence to rapidly expand the offline market.
In fact, Mahayana is not the only shell brand of Zotye. Like Hanteng Automobile, which belongs to the Iron Bull Group Sun Company, the first model X7 can be called a replica of Zotye T600; Hanlong Automobile, which was invested by Zotye in 2016, also exudes the atmosphere of Zotye T900. Just one year before the release of Mahayana, Zotye also launched Junma Automobile, which is similar to the positioning of the former...
03
Born ahead of one's time
However, the family power can help Mahayana speed up the preparation work, but it cannot influence the market performance after the listing. The deeply bound Zotye big car type, its technical reserves have long lagged behind the times, and have not become the product basis of the market explosion, coupled with the Fact that the Chinese car market has entered the downturn since 2018, the time, location, people and people have not cared for the Mahayana car.
In the whole of 2018, the cumulative sales of Mahayana cars were only more than 20,000 units, and although there was a slight increase in 2019 with the launch of new models, the arrival of the epidemic accelerated the decline of Mahayana cars, with sales of less than 10,000 units in 2020.
Moreover, as the Mahayana of Zotye's shell-changing model, its technical strength could not match the latest National VI emission standards, and it soon fell into a situation where there were no cars to sell. Since the beginning of this year, Mahayana has no sales data to check.
So there was a scene at the beginning of the article: the quagmire of Therabada Automobile had to gradually transfer assets such as production bases, from the survival of the name to the "complete coolness".
Dismal sales volumes and financial conditions led to a series of precursors to bankruptcy such as wage arrears, arrears and dealer rights protection, which broke out in Mahayana. Up to now, Mahayana Motor has been listed as an executor 15 times, with a total amount of 960 million yuan, and has been listed as a dishonest executor 5 times; founder Wu Xiao has received 61 restrictive consumption orders.
In addition, Mahayana Motors is currently burdened with more than 200 judicial lawsuits, the vast majority of which are listed as defendants. Among them, in December last year, the Jintan District People's Court made an administrative ruling, and Mahayana Motor was forced to pay 24.67 million yuan in wages and 12.33 million yuan in compensation for 603 employees in arrears.
04
Defeated family
The ephemeral fate of the Mahayana is not alone. A series of shell-changing brands such as Hanteng, Hanlong, and Junma are just a means for Zotye Automobile to survive in the downturn of the automobile market. With the fall of the last doppelganger, Zotye, which was burdened with a large number of losses and debts, once again became the commander of the light rod and began to enter the stage of bankruptcy and reorganization.
Ironically, relying on the family nature of the enterprise, Zotye was able to push a brand to the forefront in just one year, and the rapid demise of Zotye brands, including Mahayana, is actually the bitter fruit of the Ying Jianren family in order to achieve behind-the-scenes capital operations.
With the titles of "leather ruler" and "Baoshitai", Zotye once achieved annual sales of 300,000 vehicles and moved the idea of listing. In 2016, Jinma Shares, a listed company controlled by the Iron Bull Group, announced the acquisition of Zotye Automobile for 11.6 billion yuan, a premium of 429% compared with the latter's net assets at that time.
At that time, the CSRC issued the "strictest new rules on backdoor listing in history", and in the face of the Iron Bull Group's "crime against the wind", the CSRC questioned the existence of a relationship between Ying Jianren and Jin Zheyong, who constituted a concerted action.
In order to circumvent the restrictions of the new regulations, Ying Jianren manipulated the Iron Bull Group to first acquire the shares of Zotye Automobile for 6 billion yuan, getting rid of the name of "backdoor". Subsequently, Iron Bull Group signed a VAM agreement, promising that the non-net profit of Zotye Automobile in 2016-2019 would not be less than 1.210 billion yuan, 1.410 billion yuan, 1.610 billion yuan and 1.610 billion yuan respectively, otherwise it would need to compensate Zotye.
Subsequently, Jinma shares were renamed Zotye Automobile and officially listed. By turning the left hand to the right hand, Ying Jianren and Jin Zheyong also cashed out 5 billion yuan from it.
However, with the decline of the automobile market, the performance of Zotye Automobile has declined sharply, from profit to loss since 2018, and in 2019, it has made a huge loss of more than 11.1 billion yuan. In the past four years, Zotye Automobile's non-net profit has never reached the target. According to the VAM agreement, the Iron Bull Group shall compensate Zotye. However, in 2018, Ying Jianren took advantage of the high stock price to pledge 82.4% of the Zotye shares held by the Iron Bull Group, resulting in Zotye being unable to obtain compensation and relief through the gambling agreement.
In the final capital game between Ying Jianren and the family members, Zotye and the Iron Bull Group fell into a vicious circle of losses and debts. In December 2020, Iron Bull Group officially declared bankruptcy due to serious insolvency. As for Ying Jianren, Jin Zheyong and others, they resigned as senior executives of Zotye Automobile in March this year, and have since faded from people's vision.
As of the third quarter of this year, Zotye Automobile's total assets were 9.5 billion yuan, while the total liabilities were close to 15 billion yuan, and the asset-liability ratio was as high as 157%, and it was waiting for the arrival of the "white knight" who helped the bankruptcy and restructuring of the company. 【END】