Baojun, it's a pity

Even more painful than death is being forgotten.

Author丨Li Sijia

Responsible editor丨Li Sijia

Editor丨 Jin Penghui

"Liuzhou Jimny", the younger brother of tank 300 "tank 30", "electric little G" ...

Over the years, there was more and more discussion online about a new car with a unique shape. Such ridicule, which contains complaints and attention, has attracted a large number of onlookers in the industry. With the listing of the discussed protagonist Baojun Yueyue, the Baojun brand has been concentrated and discussed again, and even appeared on the hot list several times, attracting the leadership of Baojun to forward one after another.

To be honest, the Baojun brand has not enjoyed such a "treatment" surrounded by this for a long time.

Strictly speaking, since the name change to "New Baojun", Baojun has been snubbed by the market, from the peak monthly sales of 140,000 vehicles, annual sales of more than one million vehicles of the mainstream brand all the way down, to the current monthly sales of thousands of vehicles, the sense of market presence is getting weaker and weaker - we seem to see a rising momentum of independent brand, fell on the eve of dawn.

To borrow the phrase that discusses Baojun the most with people in the industry, it is: Baojun, it's a pity.

Nine years of horse head mark, just like a yellow millet dream

When it comes to the birth of the Baojun brand, we have to mention the "divine car" Wuling Hongguang.

As the first generation of Wuling's "national divine car", Wuling Hongguang not only measured rural roads and witnessed the success of one entrepreneur after another, but also lifted Wuling to the peak of an era, and deeply branded the shining Wuling red mark into the glorious history of China's automobile industry, becoming a real myth.

Therefore, under the complex background of changes in the domestic consumption market, the sharp contraction of the micro-surface market and the overcapacity of the industry, Wuling aims to seize new opportunities, and then continue the sales myth and seek more market voice.

Therefore, in the following 2010, Wuling made a major decision - to get rid of the brand attributes of commercial vehicles and move to the passenger car market with broader development prospects. The Baojun brand came into being.

Judging from the subsequent development of the Baojun brand, it has to be admitted that Wuling is right to bet.

After experiencing the brief failure of the Baojun 630 and hatchback 610, the Baojun brand soon ushered in its first explosive model. The Baojun 730, built on the sedan platform, well filled the market gap at that time and officially opened the development history of Baojun.

In 2016, with a performance of more than 370,000 units, Baojun 730 ranked second in MPV sales that year, second only to its own model Wuling Hongguang. Coincidentally, in addition to its great success in the MPV field that it is good at, Baojun has also made gains in the SUV market, launching the compact SUV Baojun 560, and even competing with another national god car, Haval H6, in that era.

Coupled with the later Baojun 510, Baojun 310 and 310 WAGON, etc., successful models were launched in different market segments, allowing Baojun to successfully occupy a place in the low-end market, constantly harvesting market share, and becoming a "explosive professional household".

In 2017, the Baojun brand ushered in its peak moment. In December of that year, Baojun achieved the highest sales volume of more than 140,000 vehicles in a single month, second only to SAIC Volkswagen and Geely. Among them, the Baojun 510 sold 54,000 units, the Baojun 310 sold 35,000 units, and the Baojun 730 sold 32,000 units.

That year, Baojun also reached the same level as the Great Wall, BYD, and Chang'an of the independent camp with sales of more than one million.

However, like many car companies that hit the annual sales of millions of vehicles, after that, Baojun has not been able to go further. Its overall sales volume has never achieved a big leap, on the contrary, market changes, internal consumption of its own models and production capacity shackles have stopped moving.

The reason for the success of Baojun is the value of universally supported technology and low pricing. However, with the upgrading of consumption, more and more products with better configuration and more suitable prices have flooded into the market. This made Baojun, which has been in the low-end positioning of 5-80,000 yuan for a long time, suffer enough and is gradually replaced and abandoned.

Baojun also realized the seriousness of the problem, and did not want to be eliminated, it chose to complete the brand renewal in 2019, and the new diamond standard pushed Baojun to an unfamiliar battlefield, and the new Baojun was born. But consumers do not buy the move to change the soup without changing the medicine. The conjecture that the new Baojun will fail in detail described by the automobile commune in "Baojun, Begins with Death" has now been fulfilled.

The new Baojun returned home.

Can Bao Junyue also turn over

"We have now downplayed the concept of 'New Baojun' and returned to the name of Baojun."

At a test drive meeting of Baojun Yueye, an engineer from Liuzhou said. This is undoubtedly a denial of the new Baojun era.

Since the horse head mark was upgraded to the diamond standard, although Wuling focused on the new Baojun, and the original models of the Baojun brand were only remodeled, the new Baojun did not follow the set development route. Especially when Wuling launched the global silver standard with the brand upward, the situation of Xinbaojun became more and more unoptimistic. Xinbaojun, who wanted to be different from Wuling, seemed out of place.

In 2020, Baojun's sales volume was 422,000 units, down 36.7% year-on-year, and appeared at the "315 Gala" in the same year, and the speed box was frequently named by CCTV, becoming the only brand named in the automotive industry; In 2021, its sales continued to fall to 215,000 units; in 2022, Baojun directly closed its sales; in the first quarter of this year, its sales were only more than 3,000 vehicles...

The reason is that after the price of the new Baojun "goes up", consumers do not pay for the quality, and the cost performance is not as extreme as before, resulting in missing the original user group's replacement period.

In addition, because of the concentrated development of new Baojun models, the previously popular Baojun 510, Baojun 310 and Baojun 730 have not achieved major replacement for a long time, resulting in product strength can not keep up with the development of competing products, and the sales of the original volume models have also experienced an irreversible decline.

During this period, the new Baojun, which focused on development, also tried in new energy, launching models such as the new Baojun E300 and KiWi EV, but the explosive model did not arrive as promised.

Among them, the new Baojun E300 was listed earlier than Hongguang MINIEV. But on the one hand, the new Baojun E300 is twice as expensive as the price of many consumers to dissuade many consumers from buying cars; On the other hand, the overly personalized design also makes consumers' evaluation of the new Baojun E300 mixed.

For various reasons, the new Baojun E300 unfortunately failed, and now there is no sales to check. The KiWi EV, which was subsequently born on the basis of the new Baojun E300, did not make too many waves. This made the new Baojun gradually enter a dangerous moment.

During a previous trip to Liuzhou, the author visited Wuling and talked about Baojun-related topics, and the other party replied: "That's no way, we need continuous exploration and coordination." The "co-ordination" here is very worth playing.

The more bitter Baojun is, the more it shows that Baojunyue is also the mission of this exquisite car.

Baojunyue is also the first product equipped by Baojun after changing the standard again, and it is also the first product made by Zhou Yue after returning to Wuling, aiming to fill the off-road model and pickup truck model in the A00-class mini car. So, can Bao Junyue also achieve great success?

In fact, Zhou Ju already expressed his views on Baojun Yue on his personal social account, he said: "Can Yue also create the glory of Hongguang MINI? The answer is obviously no, admitting that it is not far ahead, nor is 5 million the best! ”

Sincerity is the biggest must-have.

Generous admission and consistent frankness are good habits that Zhou Yu possessed when he was trading Hongguang MINIEV in his early years. Obviously, too individual design and not low price will still become an obstacle to Baojunyue's hot sales, just like the new Baojun E300 faces, but it also has advantages, as Zhou Ju said: "From a global point of view, small hardcore pure electric SUV, it is the only choice." ”