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Those brands that can't adapt to the new climate may become the next Borgward and the next Acura that day.
Author: Liang Zhihao
This weekend was really hard! Due to the sudden emergence of the epidemic, Guangzhou, where we are located, has instantly entered a state of all soldiers, and topics such as isolation, risk control, and nucleic acid have filled the streets and alleys of Yangcheng overnight.
Also this weekend, there are two "luxury brands", one Japanese and one German, but they have successively drawn their own ends in the Chinese market with different postures. Why do "luxury brands" have to be in double quotation marks? Because in the minds of the vast majority of Chinese consumers, these two brands are not real luxury brands, and this may be the main reason for their collapse in the Chinese market.
"Ashkenazi luxury" was liquidated in bankruptcy
In 2014, Foton, a well-known domestic commercial vehicle manufacturer, acquired the Borgward brand for 5 million euros, and formally established Beijing Borgward Automobile Co., Ltd. in 2016. After years of silence, this Ashkenazi brand has successfully "borrowed the corpse to return the soul" with Chinese capital, and played the slogan of the "BBBA" Four Brothers of the Ashkenazi Tongmen, trying to pull itself to the same height as Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi.
For a car company like Foton, which does not have much experience in passenger car production, the most convenient and fast way to get involved in the field of household cars is "shanzhai". Therefore, its first model, the BX7, whether it is the engine or chassis, is actually developed from the "reverse" of Volkswagen's old Wayview on the PQ35 platform.
However, at that time node in 2016, Chinese consumers have already seen the world, not so easy to fool, coupled with the official pricing of its models is not low at all, so the Borgward brand in the domestic market has always been in a state of "survival". In addition to the success of the whole network discussion with a "good is expensive, expensive is good" advertising slogan in the follow-up, this self-proclaimed Ashkenazi luxury brand has not set off too many waves in the Chinese market within its limited life cycle.
On April 8, Foton Motor issued an official announcement announcing that because Beijing Borgward was financially exhausted, unable to pay off its debts due and already insolvent, Beijing Borgward decided to apply for bankruptcy liquidation in accordance with the law at the Extraordinary General Meeting of Shareholders and submitted an application to the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court.
It is worth noting that unlike brilliance, Bojun, Byton and other brands that also applied for "bankruptcy reorganization" due to poor management, Borgward applied for "bankruptcy liquidation" this time, in other words, once the liquidation is completed, the brand of Beijing Borgward will be directly deregistered.
Consecutive years of losses, assets were sealed
The collapse of Borgward can be said to have long been inevitable, since its birth in 2016, the brand has entered a state of continuous losses, and in the first three years, it has accumulated losses of more than 4 billion yuan. The huge loss also led Tonda to announce its abandonment of the passenger car market and sell most of its shares in Borgward Automobile to UCAR through Changsheng Xingye.
At this point, Borgward has actually become a dedicated brand under the car rental company.
However, this also failed to reverse the decline of Borgward, in the subsequent operation, Borgward continued to be negative, not only the debt rolled bigger and bigger, at the end of last year, it was seized by the Third Intermediate People's Court of Beijing Municipality with all 2.2 billion yuan of assets.
According to data released by Foton Motor, in 2021 alone, the Borgward brand will cause the company to lose as much as 5.3 billion yuan. Borgward was able to hold out until April 8 to file for bankruptcy liquidation, which is actually a miracle in the eyes of many people.
At present, an open letter has been hung on the official website of Borgward, saying that the future after-sales and maintenance business of the Borgward brand will be taken over by a company called Borgward Automobile Technology Co., Ltd., and that it will continue to provide maintenance services and spare parts supply for existing owners in accordance with the original after-sales service policy.
Japanese luxury officially announced the suspension of production
On the same day that Borgward officially announced bankruptcy, another "luxury brand", GAC Acura, also released a statement on its official website.
This statement is arguably the most "euphemistic" collapse statement we have seen recently. It mentions that Guangqi Honda has released a new electric brand e:NP, which is about to focus on a new electrification strategy. In order to better achieve this goal, GAC Honda will "fully integrate" the resources of the GAC Acura brand and join the electrification business, and from 2023 onwards, GAC Honda will no longer produce and sell the existing products of the GAC Acura brand. Some Acura 4S stores will also become part of THE GUANGQI Honda's electrified sales service network in the future, and the existing Acura owners will need to carry out maintenance services in the follow-up of the 4S stores of GAC Honda.
After a big circle, in fact, what Guangqi Honda wants to say is: Acura can't go on!
Unlike Honda's "thriving" in the domestic market, Acura, which has entered the Chinese market since 2006 as Honda's luxury brand, has always been a niche brand. At the beginning, the characteristics of full import + large displacement made the pricing of all models of the Acura brand quite "off the ground".
888,000 ZDX
900,000 MDX
860,000 RLX
In addition to the price, the overly simple interior and the lack of "expensive" exterior design have made Acura a brand that the poor cannot afford and the rich cannot afford. Therefore, the Acura brand can only please consumers with unique tastes. It was not until 2016, that is, the 10th anniversary of the Acura brand's entry into China, that Honda decided to localize the Acura brand through the Guangqi Honda channel, and the first domestic model was a Chinese special model such as CDX.
With a special car, but also a compact SUV with the same platform as Binzhi to act as the main force of localization, but also let Acura's already unstable brand image be further destroyed. Although with low prices and fairly good product strength, CDX helped the Acura brand to set a peak of 16,300 brand sales in 2017, but in the follow-up Acura brand fell into a sales crash, and then the domestic TLX-L and RDX failed to help the overall sales too much.
In 2020, acura brand sales in the Chinese market only 11,200 vehicles, and in 2021 this figure was once again "cut off", sales of only 5761 vehicles, Acura's defeat has become a foregone conclusion.
The wrong taste of the product is the culprit
Although Acura is a luxury brand under Honda, whether it is from the tone of the product or the brand background, Acura is more like an American brand than a Japanese brand. First of all, Acura's various models are full of the feeling of a big grin of American cars, the material is not bad, but the sense of luxury presented is insufficient; the driving experience is not bad, but it is divorced from the domestic consumers' demands for a luxury car.
This is also why Acura can sell more than 150,000 vehicles a year in the United States, but in China it can only withdraw. Even CDX, a special product launched for the Chinese market, does not have any difference in overall tone from Acura's other models, indicating that Acura does not really understand the preferences of the Chinese market.
From this point of view, Acura's defeat is actually not unjust at all.
Of course, for Acura, the Chinese luxury brand market, which has long been dominated by the BBA, is already a chicken rib, and the withdrawal is only a pain that turns long pain into short pain. For consumers, the withdrawal of a second-tier luxury brand that does not have a strong sense of existence will not have much impact on their own car purchases.
Perhaps as Guangqi Honda's announcement said, instead of continuing to survive, it is better to integrate the existing resources and production capacity of the Acura brand to meet the more important era of electrification.
Write at the end
Within a day, bidding farewell to two brands, the seemingly stable market of automobiles is actually a lot of hidden turbulence. In China's auto market has gradually transformed into a stock market, while the trend of electrification continues to impact the traditional automobile industry, those brands that cannot adapt to the new climate may become the next Borgward and the next Acura that day.
(Some image source network)
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