In late April 2022, a familiar and unfamiliar brand once again caught the professor's attention.
It is reported that Hanteng, a young car company born in 2013, may complete bankruptcy and restructuring before April 25.
At the same time, the first phase of Hanteng Automobile's factory will also be sold to Great Wall Motors, a brand that has been in a state of suspension since 2020, and will eventually be unable to escape the fate of withdrawing from the market.
Another brand disappeared, making the professor can't help but think: What did these car companies that went bankrupt and delisted in recent years do wrong? Why are they so gone?
First of all, let's briefly review which independent brands that everyone has paid great attention to in recent years have quietly gone bankrupt or delisted.
Brilliance China
Brilliance China is a passenger car brand owned by Brilliance Group, a large state-owned enterprise founded in 2002 and headquartered in Shenyang, founded in 2002.
In the early days of the birth of the brand, the cars launched by the Chinese brand were widely popular in China, and the Junjie series was the representative of the independent brand cars of that year, and the Chinese Cool Treasure they launched was one of the few independent brand coupes that received a lot of praise in the industry.
However, since 2018, Brilliance China's parent company Brilliance Auto has been plagued by cash flow problems and is deeply involved in a debt crisis.
In 2020, under the sudden impact of the epidemic, brilliance auto's operating conditions further deteriorated, and the debt problem eventually led to the bankruptcy and reorganization of brilliance auto group. This eventually led to the full suspension of production by Brilliance China and its eventual withdrawal from the market.
The Chinese brand itself, acquired by BMW China in 2021, has assets used to produce BMW-related products, and it is estimated that it will never be seen again in the vehicle market.
Lifan
Born in the industrial city of Chongqing, Lifan is one of the largest motorcycle manufacturers in China, which has laid a solid foundation since the 1990s with excellent motorcycle products, and has gradually developed into a large-scale enterprise covering vehicle production, research and development, finance, culture, real estate and many other businesses.
From motorcycle factories to large enterprises with a wide range of ties, Lifan can be described as a legend among China's private enterprises. However, since its entry into the automotive sector in 2003, its performance in the passenger car market has been flat.
Until 2018, the sales of Lifan Automobile have entered a continuous sharp decline, which has brought great pressure to Lifan's revenue situation and frequently exposed debt problems.
Finally, after the full adjustment of the business focus to motorcycles, Lifan Automobile entered the bankruptcy and restructuring stage in 2020, its assets were acquired by Geely, and now only the "Lifan New Energy" in the automotive business is still insisting, and the Geely Jiaji pure electric MPV that has been replaced by the Lifan logo was launched earlier, and some old scooters are still in production, and Lifan Automobile is in name only.
Zotye
Zotye is a legendary name in the Chinese auto market, and the private car company founded in 2003 has produced classic models such as Toyota Trigla and Fiat Multipa in China.
Zotye is also one of the earliest car companies to respond to the trend of new energy, as early as 2014, it joined forces with the new power brand Zhidou to produce pure electric mini-vehicles, and made a lot of profits with the generous subsidies at that time.
However, it is such a grounded brand, but after 2016, there was a sharp decline in sales, and the dismal market performance finally declared bankruptcy under the influence of many negative factors such as wage arrears, dealer rights protection, stock price plunge and the impact of the epidemic in 2020.
Nowadays, everyone can no longer buy new cars of the Zotye brand in the market, and the assets of Zotye have been repeatedly auctioned in the auction market, which can be described as a miserable situation.
Huatai
Also withdrawing from the market in recent years is Huatai Automobile, a brand that has cooperated with Hyundai Motor of South Korea to introduce models such as Santa Fe to open up the domestic SUV market, and has achieved quite good market performance in the first decade of the 21st century.
However, after a moment of scenery, Huatai Automobile seems to be moving towards a bright future. Since 2018, Huatai Automobile, which has had dismal sales, has been exposed to negative news such as wage arrears, a large number of employee losses, and factory shutdowns.
In late 2019, all of Huatai Automobile's projects have been stopped, and its employees have even been reduced to only a few dozen. As for many of Huatai Automobile's models, they have naturally stopped selling and gradually disappeared in the Chinese market.
So, what happened to these car companies that are either bankrupt or delisted?
Brilliance China
Among these car companies that have withdrawn from the market, Brilliance is an old senior enterprise.
The introduction of foreign production lines to manufacture Jinbei buses laid a good foundation for Shenyang Jinbei Bus Manufacturing Co., Ltd., the predecessor of Brilliance Automobile; therefore, when Zhonghua Automobile debuted as a domestic car with all independent intellectual property rights, its quality and design were enough to open up the market.
However, after Brilliance Automotive Group and BMW Group formally signed a contract to establish BMW Brilliance in 2003, the joint venture car became the focus of Brilliance Automotive Group's operation.
As a mainstream luxury brand that competes with Mercedes-Benz, BMW brings continuous revenue to Brilliance Automobile; although brilliance can only share part of the profits at a 50:50 shareholding ratio, this income is stable, and there is no need to worry too much about product planning, after all, that is what BMW needs to worry about.
The good days have allowed Brilliance Auto to relax the research and development of its own brand models, especially the Chinese brand. With the market foundation laid by the Junjie series of cars, relying on some old technologies provided by BMW, the model update of Brilliance China is maintained.
Over time, in the face of domestic consumers with increasingly high requirements for automobiles, Brilliance China's products have lost their attractiveness. They no longer have outstanding competitiveness in the face of their rapidly improving peers, and the quality is not guaranteed, and they are often complained of quality problems, and it is inevitable to be abandoned by consumers.
Lifan
Lifan Motors started by manufacturing motorcycles and relying on the demand of ordinary working-class people for basic commuter vehicles.
When they entered the automotive market, they also chose a route that was affordable and affordable. Small bread and small trucks sold for 20,000 to 30,000 yuan have become the main products of Lifan Automobile, and these models have indeed accumulated some capital for Lifan in the early days. But when Lifan entered the field of daily passenger cars, this trick seemed to gradually not work.
Although the price of the models launched by Lifan is attractive, it is accompanied by poor workmanship and rough materials, not to mention the backward three major pieces of technology, making Lifan car unattractive in the eyes of many consumers.
To this end, Lifan Sword takes a bias, hoping to attract consumers through the design of successful models, such as the famous Lifan 320, which imitates the appearance design of MINI.
The cottage shape can indeed catch people's attention, and the professor's father even wanted to get one at one time; however, after seeing the car, the rough carriage and many negative comments about this model on the Internet allowed the professor's family to avoid this cottage car.
The bad image at the quality level has brought a very serious impact, with the rapid progress of other independent brands and the decline in the price of joint venture models, fewer and fewer consumers choose Lifan, and the plunge in sales is inevitable.
Zotye
When it comes to copycats, Zotye is a well-known imitation of professional households; but when this car company was established with the investment of a number of auto parts manufacturers, its future still looked bright.
At the beginning of its establishment, Zotye bought the production line of Toyota Terry from Taiwan Province, and soon made toyota Terry a "makeover" into Zotye 2008, which became a popular small SUV in the domestic market at that time.
Subsequently, Zotye bought the production line of Multipa from the Italian brand Fiat, and turned this very distinctive MPV model into Zotye Montibra/Langyue, which is a rare original Italian personalized car in the domestic market.
However, domestic consumers quickly showed resistance to this practice of copying the production line of foreign models, and few people would want to pay a lot of money to buy an outdated old "new car". So Zotye was forced to embark on the road of independent research and development.
But for Zotye, it has tasted the sweetness of copying foreign classic models, so it also uses plagiarism and imitation on the new body developed by itself. Thus a series of cottage models were born, and the objects of plagiarism were mature models that were popular in the domestic market, including even Suzuki Alto.
After plagiarizing the Porsche Macan and launching the SR9, although Zotye gained some sales, it also caused controversy, and the brand image plummeted.
While ridiculing Zotye with "leather rulers", Chinese consumers in the new era are no longer willing to drive cars that are put on cottage hats to hurt their own image, and Zotye has finally been beaten by the market.
Coupled with the negative impact of the "cheating" of the Jiangnan T11 pure electric mini car created by the old Jiangnan Alto base when the new energy trend first appeared, the rapid collapse of Zotye in the last few years became a matter of course.
Huatai
Founded in 2000, Huatai Automobile started from the old SUV model Santa Fe provided by Hyundai in South Korea, as the main product of hyundai, Santa Fe had a good product strength and at that time in front of the independent brand models still had certain advantages in workmanship and quality.
This was good news for Huatai Automobile, which was in the middle and high-end market at that time, and the Santa Fe series achieved a very good market performance, allowing this nascent car company to gain a firm foothold.
However, what followed was not all-out research and development, but improvement after improvement on the old foundation. Although Huatai Automobile's Santa Fe series has been revised several times in the next few years, the core technology is still the foundation of the old model.
The 136 hp 2.0L naturally aspirated engine and the 160 hp 1.8T turbocharged engine, such power parameters in the 2017 or even 2018 auto market, are too shabby; and consumers certainly do not want to buy such a backward car.
In the face of increasingly dismal sales, Huatai Automobile once again set its sights on image upgrades. First with the Paulig imitating the Porsche Cayenne, and then with the Luxen E80 copying the Ford Mondeo.
But the cottage did not save Huatai Automobile in the end.
Hanteng
Speaking of the recent bankruptcy of Hanteng Automobile, the car company founded in 2013 is much younger than the previous ones, and at the beginning of its establishment, it set the slogan of "creating a good car loved by the Chinese people with global quality standards".
At that time, the Chinese market was in the period of SUV explosion, and a large number of car companies participated in the SUV market, and the fledgling Hanteng was no exception. It took them three years to build the first model, the X7, challenging the SUV market with two engines, 1.5T and 2.0T, with manual and 6-speed dual-clutch transmissions.
However, careful friends will find that the two engines are the 15S4G and Mitsubishi 4G63S4T jointly developed by SAIC and GM; the front face shape is a bit of the same Changan CS75 flavor, and the body side shape and interior are obviously imitated from BMW.
This patchwork style has not changed until their last updated model, and many consumers complain about various strange problems and improper after-sales handling of the new car shortly after buying the new car.
Although in Shangrao City, where Hanteng Automobile is located, local policy preferences have brought a short highlight period of sales to Hanteng, in the face of poor product strength, this highlight is only an illusion.
Write at the end
In fact, it is not difficult to find that these automakers, which have gone bankrupt and delisted in recent years, have such a common feature - lack of core technology.
They either buy gas production lines directly from foreign car companies, or rely on the glory of mature foreign brands for a period of time, but they have not tried their best to improve their technical strength after establishing a foundation.
The dependence on external technology makes the products of these brands lose their competitiveness when the core technology cannot keep up with the times over time.
In addition, most of these car companies have bad habits of imitating; in the face of fierce market competition, they have chosen shortcuts to copy their homework in an attempt to quickly gain market recognition through existing mature cases.
But they clearly underestimate the rate of progress of Chinese consumers, and products that lack core technology, poor quality and plagiarized imitation are no longer as widely accepted as they were in the past because they were cheap.
Looking at today's Chinese auto market, the developing and expanding independent brands have all mastered their own core technologies and developed their own design characteristics.
Whether it is intelligent systems or hybrid or battery technology, if you want to survive in this cruel market, you must get rid of dependence on foreign technology.
After all, what our consumers need is a mature, reliable, advanced, and easy-to-use car!