29 Sep 06 17:10
It's big, it's cheap, and it's coming to Europe. Great Wall, China's largest truck-maker, is planning to export around 30,000 Hovers this year and it intends to set up a kit assembly plant in Russia to build vehicles for the European market. It is also aiming to launch the Hover in the US at January's Detroit Auto Show.
The cut-price Hover is fitted with a Mitsubishi-sourced four-cylinder 2.4-litre petrol engine and is said to have passed crash tests, indicating it will meet minimum European safety standards. Equipment will include twin airbags and ABS - and high-spec versions will have powered seats, leather upholstery, digital display systems, air-conditioning, electric windows all round and a six-CD autochanger. And there's what Great Wall's blurb charmingly refers to as an 'Inner Mirror with Munual Anti-Dizzy Function', more commonly known as an auto-dimming rear-view mirror.
To reassure us about its quality, Great Wall says the Hover is 'welded utilising group control technology and bored hole by robot' and 'painted by Japanese imported robot'. Its switchable two/four-wheel drive system should help make it pretty adept off-road.
An initial batch of Hovers has arrived at the HQ of the European distributors, the Eurasia Motor Company in Brescia, Italy. Eurasia said last year that it intended to sell around 10,000-12,000 vehicles a year in Italy alone, and that it was preparing a deal for sales in Spain. Sales in China start in early December.
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