GWM to launch new luxury brand – Confidence Auto

Everybody wants to go upmarket, it seems, likely pushed there by intensifying competition in the volume segments and the ensuing price war. Now Great Wall Motor (GWM) wants a piece of that caviar pie too, if a Car News China report is to be believed.

Its new luxury brand is going to be called Confidence Auto, and it’s going to lord above GWM’s current Haval, Wey, Tank and Ora brands to get BYD’s Yangwang directly in its sights. CNC says GWM applied to register the brand as far back as May 2022, and its main mission is to manufacture “ceiling products for the automotive industry.”

And ceiling products cannot really have ceiling prices – Confidence Auto’s vehicles will cost above RMB1 million (RM614k), and comprise supercars and sedans built in small batches. The plug-in hybrid (PHEV) models are expected to use GWM’s self-developed 4.0 litre turbo V8, and the brand’s first product could surface in April or May before going on sale in the fourth quarter.

CNC further reports that this isn’t the first time GWM is trying to build a high-end brand – it announced Saloon Auto in December 2021 and debuted the brand’s first model, the RMB488,000 (RM300k) Mecha Dragon, at the 2021 Guangzhou Auto Show.

However, the Mecha Dragon’s mass production schedule was consistently postponed – an insider said “the rapid market changes have forced GWM to constantly re-examine the vehicle positioning.”

The company then announced in end-2022 that it will adopt a dual-brand marketing operation model – Ora + Saloon, and Wey + Tank. A bit like Chery’s O&J (Omoda and Jaecoo), we suppose. Let’s see if this new-found Confidence gets them to where they want to go.

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