More SUVs than ever. That’s what we saw as we wandered among the stands at the 2017 Guangzhou motor show, an ideal opportunity for understanding which direction the car market and, therefore, design are moving towards in China. While popular in Europe, raised floorpan vehicles have become a must over here, so much so in fact that some manufacturers only offer SUVs in their range. The three-box sedan that the Chinese public has always been so fond of is now giving way to Sport Utility Vehicles, which, contrary to what we see in the Old Continent, seem to adhere to the belief “the bigger the better”.
This explains why the Wey luxury brand founded last year by Great Wall, which aims to take its cars to Europe and the USA by the end of 2021, presented the VV5S and the VV7S at the show, together with the XEV, a concept prefiguring the style of a future SUV-Coupé already seen at Frankfurt a few months back. The SAIC Motors group was also there, with the new MG 6 sedan and the concepts it had taken previously to the 2017 Shanghai show, namely the MG E-Motion and Roewe Vision-E (see design story in Auto&Design 227). GAC held the world premiere of the i-Space concept, an electric car which, according to brand vice president and chief designer Zhang Fan, should go into production by 2020. We also met Anders Warming, design director of the Bowgard brand, during the presentation of the BX7 TS, a more luxurious iteration of the existing BX7.
In the next issue of Auto&Design, we’ll be looking in detail at the design trends seen in the new cars unveiled at Guangzhou 2017, to understand if a style is emerging that both the East and the West can agree upon.
