This site might help people
Just scanning through it now... will add my choice later
EDIT: Or
this list of Chinese car manufacturers
EDIT 2: Right, I've had a good look on that second link I provided, through every single manufacturer. Some of the websites don't work (my firefox browser wouldn't let me access others as apparently they are "attack sites"). I think I've come to a decision, or at least I will have by the time I've finished typing this.
The first manufacturer that gets a commendation is one called Chang'An Motors. They're one of the very few manufacturers there who have their own safety tests to make sure cars won't disintegrate on impact. However, the only interesting vehicles in their lineup are those of other manufacturers that they build under licence, so they're out.
Incidentally, a lot of Chinese manufacturers make good cars - just a lot of the time they're not their own design. Much as it's tempting to pick the MG TF and say "it's a Chinese car", that would be doing a massive discredit to all the Brits who actually designed and developed the thing 13 years or more ago. For this reason, I'm not going to include the Roewe 75, any re-badged version of the Toyota Landcruiser etc (of which there are many), or any car built under licence in China that isn't actually the intellectual property of a Chinese company. This is probably excluding (nay, definitely excluding) some good cars but it would be unfair to include them.
More commendations.
Shanghai Maple's "F50". Why? Well it doesn't look very special, bascially an old Citroen ZX with a new front end. But the company actually claims that it's a car for women. Now the first reaction to statements like this is to assume that it's sexist, but I disagree and I think that with the motor industry being mainly male dominated it's good to see a manufacturer actually at least thinking what the fairer sex might want from a car. There are lots of "girly cars", but honestly I doubt the designer of these set out to design it for girls in the first place. Shanghai maple have taken one of their other cars, softened the design, chosen fair and bright colours, and then given it a series of amusing but somehow thoughful options like a shoe comparment, dressing mirror, clothes rack, and even an amusing compass option... However, this car can't get my vote either.
I was tempted to choose a Chery as they do make some reasonable looking vehicles, and I was also tempted to go for one of the many luxury sedans that some companies are producing.
In the end, it came down to two choices. I had a long think about what I'd actually want from a Chinese car. My main, overriding priority was safety. I'm sure in crowded city streets there aren't many high speed accidents that would pose a threat to your health, but China is a massive country with a very varied landscape, a lack of paved roads in a lot of places, variable weather in the extreme, and all manner of other cars and animals to hit out on the roads. For this reason, I'd be very tempted to vote for the
Great Wall Motor Company "Socool" (I think it is genuinely Chinese even though it looks Toyota-esque.. and yes I did choose it because of the name, over many other vehicles). It's a big, 4x4 pickup and would suit general Chinese conditions very well.
However, in the end there was only one winner for me:
The FAW Vita C1
This is a Chinese passenger car that looks genuinely modern, it's a five door hatchback, equipped with a 1.3 16v 87bhp engine. Does a little over 100mph, around 40mpg (UK), weighs under a metric ton, and has as many creature comforts as you'd expect from a Western market car. And what was it I was saying about safety being an overriding priority more than anything? The Vita C1 is the first car in China to be subjected to full frontal, side, rear, and offset frontal impact tests under the new Chinese New Car Assessment Program (C-NCAP). I had a lookat the C-NCAP site and their testing methods look very similar to Euro NCAP. The C1 scored 3 stars overall in a similar test, with 95% on the front offset impact. Now, 3-stars isn't brilliant by European standards but it's actually one of the higher Chinese market cars (only models such as BMWs, Suzukis etc scored higher) and a whole lot better than the zero stars that some Chinese cars of years gone by would attain.
So, after this massive essay, that's my vote!
I would say the Brillliance BS6, but its only marginal now, saftey-wise.
