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GEELY - The Biggest Car Company You've Never Heard Of | Up To Speed

May 30, 2021
- Would you be surprised if I told you that you have

never

heard

of one of the largest automobile companies in the world? (car engine revolutions) I'm talking about Geely. Now the badge may only be 30 years old, but in that time they managed to sell millions of cars. He wins an FIA Manufacturers Cup and sets a lap record at the Nurburgring. But how did they go from making junk cars in the 90s to buying Volvo? And what made its founders so angry that they bulldozed a bunch of cars? Hold your sweaty butts because we're about to find out.
geely   the biggest car company you ve never heard of up to speed
This is everything you need to know to get up to

speed

with Geely. (upbeat music) Chapter one, the legend of Lee. It all started back in 1963, in a small Chinese town called Zhejiang. I'm going to say a lot of bad words here. I'll do my best, but many of these will be mispronounced. It all started back in 1963, in a small Chinese town called Zhejiang. Where a boy named Li Shufu was born. Li was an ambitious child and often said outrageous things to make people laugh. A little like me. I can relate. Li would ride his bike around the city, you know, normal kid stuff, take portraits of people and sell them for money.
geely   the biggest car company you ve never heard of up to speed

More Interesting Facts About,

geely the biggest car company you ve never heard of up to speed...

Normally, it was a valuable first business for a young entrepreneur. And then he dedicated himself to recycling precious metals, which turned out to be more successful than photography. And in 1986, he was doing what most of us did in our early 20s. Sell ​​our successful metal recycling business to start a refrigerator

company

. This man knows how to make more money, baby. But in the late 1980s, Li became bored with the refrigerator business and donated it to the local government. You know, like you. Sure he was making money but he wanted something known, something less competitive. He wanted a market he could really expand.
geely   the biggest car company you ve never heard of up to speed
I am referring to the automobile market. The carbide you are factoring is one of the most competitive markets out there. Yes, maybe in the United States or Europe, but in the 90s, in China, the market was just starting. Some foreign brands have been able to sell cars in China, but there were no privately owned car companies. The Chinese government owned all of them at the time. They sold models designed and manufactured in China, but they also sold foreign cars with new badges, which were considered exotic. And by exotic I mean second generation Passats. Which was sold in China for 29 years, that is, longer than Nolan's entire life.
geely   the biggest car company you ve never heard of up to speed
Needless to say, many people thought Li was riding the crazy Berg cuckoo train. He even went to a manufacturer that supplied spare parts for Shanghai Volkswagen. And he was hoping to sign a contract, but when the man in charge

heard

Lee's plan, the guy literally left the room without saying a word. He cheated on him in person. That's cold man, that's freezing. Now, despite the overwhelming odds against him, he was undeterred and trusted in his ability to design a car. Li said, "Cars are just two couches with four wheels. "How hard can it be?" That's a literal quote like, I want to put that on a T-shirt.
Cars are just two couches with four wheels. I have truer words. Have you ever smoked? I don't know. But since cars are proving difficult, Li opted for the next best thing. He bought an old motorcycle factory, which was on the verge of bankruptcy, and started producing his own motorcycles. Making it the first. private motorcycle

company

in the entire history of China. And China has a lot of history. I think there is a restaurant in China, which was established in year four, I'm not making this up. Year four. He named the company Geely, which roughly translates to auspicious, which roughly translates to indicate a good chance of success So auspicious, now the Avengers' goal here was not to continue making motorcycles but to produce the opposite of a motorcycle.
I'm talking about a luxury sedan. But there's a problem: no one at the factory knew how to make one. So Li bought a Mercedes E 280 and started taking it apart. He studied it and reassembled it piece by piece, to fully understand the precision of the engineering of it. Then he bought another car and the key to his house. Provide chassis and engine for the prototype of it. Creatively called Geeley number one, this car, what do you say? Um, it wasn't very good. It looked bad, drove bad and broke down a lot. And Li quickly realized that building a luxury car, for his first car, might not have been the least ambitious idea.
So Li focused on making cars that ordinary Chinese citizens could afford. I mean, just owning a car was considered a luxury in China at the time and even on the cheapest cars on the market. I'm talking about tall Suzuki Daihatsu Chirades, worth $13,000. That's 24 thousand, in today's money. Li wanted to improve these hatchbacks, but more importantly he wanted to sell them cheaper. So, like the Mercedes E 280. He bought a few Chirades, he took them apart piece by piece and started making them his own. Chapter two, a crushing defeat. On August 8, 1998, the first production Geely model rolled off the line, the Haoqing, which translates to ambition, with a 1.8-liter Toyota four-cylinder, the same engine as the Chirade.
It only made 83 teenage horsepower. But for such a small hatch. It was quite nice. Fairly good. Unfortunately, however. Fairly good. It didn't matter because no one bought them. Granted, they looked exactly like the Chirades ones, except the build quality was worse. The interior was filled with hard plastic. The paint was terrible and there were huge gaps in the panels that let water into the cabin. We had a big premiere party and only one person showed up. He got so angry that he took a steamroller and ran over the 100 cars he had built. That's a true story.
That's Enzo Ferrari type stuff. Down and out, but not down for the count. Li did what we all would do. The guy started making buses under the Boeing name. That was until Boeing called him and said, "Hey, you can't do that." So he quickly reverted to the name, Geely, and while he returned, Li turned to the drawing board, determined to make his dream come true. The Haoqing, finally a success. It debuted in 1999. The new, much improved Haoqing began selling. They are infinitely more reliable than the first generation and provided cheap transportation to people who in the past could not afford cheap transportation.
Geely started making profits and before long they bought a second factory and started producing a new model, the Meir, which translates to ♪Beautiful day♪ I don't like you either. Geely likes you too, you may like you, but I don't. Until then, Geely had been operating in a gray area of ​​Chinese law. Granted, they weren't allowed to produce cars as a private company. But everything changed in 2001. Six years after Post Malone was born, China joined the World Trade Organization. Geely was now a wholly privately owned company. But during this time, Geely got to work building the first self-developed sports car in Chinese automotive history.
It was called (foreign language), which translates as auspicious beauty Leopard. And a 1.5-litre Toyota engine and five-

speed

manual gearbox, which looks like it could be a decent car. But again, it didn't matter. Toyota, which had been supplying Geely, decided to double the retail price of its engines, making it financially impossible to continue development of its sports car. So he had no choice. Geely began developing its own engine. Something similar to the four-cylinder design of the Toyota Effie. These little Geely econo boxes are selling like hot cakes. And over the next decade, Geely became a ubiquitous brand.
They sold 140,000 cars a year and in 2009, Ford announced that it would sell the Volvo brand to Geely for $1.5 billion with a b. This was great news. A company that 10 years before could not even sell a car. Now he was buying one of the most recognized car brands in the world. Yes, it seems like a lot of luck, but what if I told you that Li had planned all of this from the beginning? Chapter three, Sweden the deal. 1.5 billion dollars for a former automobile company, Volvo. and, truly, he left Volvo to remain practically independent. And allow them to continue designing and producing their own cars with minimal supervision.
Sure, it would have been more profitable to produce knick-knacks in China, but Li kept factories in Sweden and Belgium open. Appease the Volvo homebodies and all their unions. In 2010, the deal was done and Geely began using Volvo's technology to make its own much, much better cars. Not only were they able to improve the existing Gili economy boxes, but Li was finally able to achieve his life's goal of developing luxury cars, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Chinese citizens were becoming richer. They wanted an affordable luxury car, one that could give them, as the kids say, "clout." In 2015, Geely debuted the Bo Rui.
This large family sedan was a canceled Volvo concept that found new life with Geely. It features different trim levels and engine options, including a 1.8-liter turbo, a 3.5-liter V-six, and a hybrid engine capable of generating 261 horsepower. I know that's not sports car territory, but as we've learned time and time again, it didn't matter, because Geely was about to launch an entirely new brand dedicated exclusively to sports cars. Chapter four, a link with the future. In 2016, Geely launched Lynk & Co using the CMA platform designed by Volvo. They developed a front wheel drive 03, named after the year I graduated high school.
This feisty little compact comes with a few powertrain options, including a two-liter turbo four-cylinder that makes 190 horsepower in hot trim. The 03 plus comes with 254 horsepower. Turbocharged inline-four converted to a seven-speed dual-clutch with those fucking paddle shifters. Geely wanted to demonstrate its sports car brand on a global scale. So they entered an 03 in a race that Volvo was known for winning. The touring car championships. Using Volvo connections, Geely contacted a racing team that has been working with the Swedes since 2003. Cyan Racing, you may know them from what they used to be called Polestar. (upbeat music) A little history of science.
They want a ton of touring car championships from the late 90s to early 2000s, featuring some of the coolest Volvos of all time. A super touring 850 and an S 40. Both with five-cylinder engines that are up to my personal standards. And as of 2018, they use Lynk & Co 03 as their platform. The Cyan racing 03 TCR generates 350 horsepower and helps Cyan win. The WTCR Manufacturers Cup in 2019. Becoming the first Chinese company to win an FIA sanctioned race. And in early 2019, Volvo's performance division started working on a 528-horsepower road car concept for lynk 03. And I just want to point out that this is a nearly 600-horsepower four-cylinder engine .
Impressive, quite impressive. Now, it was this car driven by team driver Thed Bjork, which is a sick name. I don't even know Thed was a name. Well, Thed all took a spin at the Nurburgring. In a crazy seven minutes and 20 seconds. He broke both the lap record for the fastest front-wheel drive car and the Ford or production vehicle record. That's crazy. And that's why we made this episode. You guys need to know who these guys are because their future is fast. We learned a lot researching this episode. I was lucky after making a new friend and talking to him.
Shout out to Lulu. - More power baby. - More power baby. - More power baby. - I think you're better. If you want to learn more about Chinese car culture, check out this episode of Wheelhouse. I love you

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