Geely trys to get rid of bad reputation in China

dragin said:

I think you are confusing Geely with another Daihatsu Charade-based vehicle called Tianjin Xiali. The use of this sub-compact model as a taxi was widespread and competed with the larger VW Santanas.
For a long time the Santanas seemed to prevail all over China.

Did the Geely ever really find wide use as a taxi? I don't think so.

No, if Geely has a bad reputation it is because of poor quality. Of course the company is striving to improve, but a poor quality reputation is hard to overcome. Just ask Hyundai........

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Sry but i have to correct you with one point - Geely not tianjin Xiali was used as taxi within Chengdu and the rest of the Sichuan province before they got replaced through Changhan Suzuku Altos and later through VW Jettas.
But you are right they have a bad reputation through the very low quality of the cars - but during the time when they came to the market here in china several 100 of taxi companies used them as taxis long time before the average chinese could even think or dream about buying an own car.
The knowledge about the low quality and the following bad reputation came out of the time while Geely model where used as taxis.
Even if i do live only for about 2.5 years in Chengdu but my wife is a native Chengdu Girl and was born here.
Besides that her family is one of the few real so called Chengdunese living here for generations.
And her father was working in the Chengdu Traffic police department and owned a car during a time when that was still a dream. So i do think my information is correct.
Greetings Logan

dragin said:

Hi Logan:
Thank you for the correction. I wasn't aware that Geely was previoulsy so popular as a taxi in Sichuan. Was it also used in places like Kunming and Xian?
In any case I'm sure the taxi fleet owners were disappointed at the poor reliability and durability of those early Geely Haoqings.
What about the Chang'an-made Altos. Do they hold up well as taxis?

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Hello again - since i found my new interest in chinese cars ( i love cars in general - i think thats just typical german ) i started to collect more and more informations about past present and future of chinese car brands but i do not know if Geely's where used outside of Sichuan.But i can tell you that the Chang an Altos where extremly popular as Taxis and lasted very long and this is one of the major reasons why they also became so popular as private cars.
My wife and her aunt both had such a Chang an Alto City and everone that i met until now was very happy with it. The only reason why the local goverment controlled taxi companies gave up on the Alto was the Contract Cooperation between VW and the Beijing Goverment.
After that deal went through 90 % of the Alto's where sold to new private owners in Sichuan.
You can still find these Taxi Altos till today on the street.Most of them just got a very poor new paintjob and they are very easy to recognize.Besides that most of the higehr workers and owners of the Taxi companies are still using them privatly.
According to my wife and her family the chinese where always satisfied with the Suzuki Altos as taxis.But as soon as the Jetta was interduced they realized the differences in price and quality and thats the reason why they finally disapeard into private hands.
In my own opinion the Chang an Suzuki Alto is a pure low level city car - wich was for a long time enough for the chinese. I only tried it out a few times and have to say that it reached it limits when going over 80 kmh. Then it became unstable. But because of the traffic situation and usual speadlimits of 60 kmh the Alto was and is in many cases - just enough.
I called a friend that is still driving such an former taxi alto - It s still up and running and used already by 4 different family members:thumb:
Greetings
Logan