China’s Geely makes its mark in Detroit

Geely faces its own competition in the U.S.— Honda, Chevrolet and South Korea’s Kia all make cars in the same price bracket. But Geely-USA’s Harmer, who is an attorney by trade and has never worked for an automotive company before, plans to sell 25,000 cars in the U.S. in his first year, and 100,000 by 2013, and he’s confident of his company’s success.

“This is huge, but we can do it,” he said. “25,000 is our first year goal, but we actually think we’ll do better than that, and we’ve had a number of potential distributors come to us at the Detroit auto show and say they are anxious to become a distributor.”

One issue for Chinese carmakers is the perception that their products are not up to par when it comes to safety and reliability. It’s a perception problem that Harmer plans to deal with through aggressive marketing.

“I’ve had a number of people come up to me and say, ‘John, how can the Chinese make a quality automobile?’ And I tell them I know they can because I know their engineers, and many of them have trained here in Detroit and spent five or 10 years with a major U.S. automobile manufacturer. So they know their industry and they know engineering standards,” Harmer said.

Geely has four factories in China and is the nation’s sixth-largest manufacturer. It has yet to sign up any U.S. distributors, but when it does it expects to firstly sell vehicles on the west coast of the U.S. and then move to the East, eventually building up a national distributor network.

Bricklin’s Visionary Vehicles aims to sell 250,000 Chery cars in the United States in the first year through 250 dealerships nationwide, raising sales to 1 million vehicles annually by around 2010.

Bricklin said he expects to have 100 dealers — some with multiple showrooms — signed up by the end of next month and all 250 sites ready and financed by March, putting in place the sales network needed to introduce the cars, which the entrepreneur said will “redefine the price of luxury.”

Bricklin has said this week in Detroit that he is willing and eager to help Geely succeed in the United States through his 50 years of experience in the auto industry.

“Anything we can do to help them do a good job is what we want because we don’t want Chinese cars to come in and start a bad reputation,” Bricklin said. "'Anything that somebody does that says 'Chinese is bad' could hurt us."

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