Not long ago, there was news that Acura was about to withdraw from the Chinese market; coincidentally, just half a year ago, FAW Mazda also announced its delisting. Why is it that in China, the world's largest auto market, some brands are making a lot of money, while others are struggling. How many brands have left the Chinese market over the years, and what have they done to be so unpopular with Chinese consumers?
Acura: Not competitive enough
In fact, Acura has been officially introduced into the Chinese market for 16 years, which is not short among luxury brands, and the reason for its low popularity is that the price in the early years was too high. Take 10 years ago in 2012, for example, the most entry-level model price of Mercedes-Benz BMW Audi was more than 200,000 yuan, and the entry-level models of Lexus and Infiniti, which were also imported from the whole series, were only more than 300,000, and the most entry-level TL price of Acura that year was as high as 498,000 yuan; the starting price of more high-end RL, MDX and ZDX was more than 800,000. The high threshold has led to Acura's sales being much lower than its rivals for a long time, and many people have never seen the brand at all.
The problem of excessive prices was not gradually solved until 2016, when GAC Acura was domestically produced, but acura after domestic production was also criticized for lack of sincerity. For example, cdX's full series of rear torsional beam structure has been complained about by consumers. The more serious problem is the TLX-L, the whole series of 2.4L precursors in the luxury brand peers appear to be somewhat uncompetitive. The 10th Generation Accord, which was launched at the same time, used the new Earth Dream 1.5T engine with stronger power and lower fuel consumption, as well as a 2.0L iMMD hybrid system, and was also equipped with an LCD instrument that was not available on the TLX. This makes TLX-L seem extremely embarrassing, the price is more than 100,000 higher than the Accord, but the comprehensive strength has not been significantly improved, so just over a year after the listing, because of sales problems, it was helpless to stop production.
To be fair, these problems in Acura have improved to varying degrees, such as the later RDX has no obvious shortcomings, and the price is quite sincere. Perhaps it is too late, today's Acura has long missed the golden age of luxury brands in the Chinese market, and it may not be able to catch up with it.
FAW Mazda: A single meal is not enough for two people
In fact, the reason for FAW Mazda's withdrawal is also very simple, originally Mazda's partial sports do not pay attention to the positioning of household use in China has been niche, plus the model is obviously less than Toyota Honda Volkswagen, but it also has to be divided between FAW and Changan, and the sales of both companies are very dismal. It's like if you only ordered a small single meal, but insisted on dividing it between two people, and the result, of course, was that both people couldn't eat enough.
Instead of two of them not selling, it is better to give up one and make the other better. So after FAW Mazda withdraws, will the rest of Changan Mazda have a better life? Not necessarily, because just recently Mazda announced that it will promote the luxury brand, and new cars will become more and more expensive in the future. But Mazda's original brand recognition in China has not yet risen, and if it hastily increases the price, I am afraid that the remaining long horses will also be delisted.
Fiat: Failed, but didn't learn the lesson
Fiat and China have a long history, as early as the early days of reform and opening up, China imported a batch of Polish assembled 126p, which became the original concept of many older generations for family cars. In 2002, Nanjing Fiat introduced Palio into domestic production, the initial sales were not bad, but in the following years Fiat did not show more sincerity, the old models and technologies in the next other joint venture brands after the outbreak of obviously can not keep up with the times, can only quietly delist.
A few years later, in 2012, Fiat and GAC Group once again entered the domestic market. This time also did not bring much sincerity, into China for 8 years only brought Feixiang and Zhiyue two new cars, strictly speaking, can be counted as one, because Zhiyue is actually just a hatchback version of Feixiang. Although the Chinese SUV market was in full swing in those years, Fiat chose to ignore it, delayed the domestic SUV, and finally the end can be imagined.
Suzuki: Old Ben can't eat for a lifetime
Unlike the previous ones, Suzuki was once very brilliant, and was once in the top ten of the Chinese market brand sales list before about 2008. And the reason why it was brilliant back then was all in two words: cheap. It should be known that most of the other joint venture brands had not yet reached the price point within 100,000, and the independent brands were all cheap and poor quality at that time, and consumers with limited budgets at that time seemed to find no other choice except Suzuki. So Suzuki quickly occupied the market with less than 50,000 Alto, Antelope, big dipper, and less than 100,000 swifts and Liana.
In fact, with such a good start, Suzuki is still quite promising in China. But Suzuki did not take advantage of the chase, in the next ten years of new models are quite limited, can only rely on the old models to eat the old, the price is lower and lower, and gradually fell into competition with independent brands. But today is different from the past, today's average GDP of Chinese has increased tenfold compared with more than ten years ago, the car is no longer just a simple means of transportation, consumers buy a car is no longer just blindly pursuing low prices, models are seriously backward, and Suzuki, which only has a low-price advantage, naturally cannot continue to survive.
Write at the end
Several of the brands mentioned above have their own reasons for failure, and the common point is that in addition to product competitiveness, there is also the lack of sincerity for China, the world's largest automobile market.
I believe that there are also people who want to know which brand is the next to exit the Chinese market, this question is really difficult to determine at present, but if I have to say one, I personally think it will be DS. In the nearly ten years since its birth, the cumulative sales of DS have been less than 50,000 units, and the cumulative sales of DS9 listed last year are only 4 digits. The more fatal problem is that after Baoneng Group acquired DS, it does not seem to intend to spend too much thought on DS, but recently released its own high-end brand BAO. DS itself seems to be quite optimistic, although the world has not sold a few cars, are almost unable to open the pot, not long ago also released a mass production probability of close to 0 concept sports car DS E-Tense Performance Concept, which should be poor but also exquisite.