GWM’s chairman becomes a car salesperson

Spurred on by Xiaomi’s Lei Jun personally leading sales efforts of the SU7 other Chinese car company leaders are hitting the sales floor. Latest to don a polo shirt and jeans was Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor who joined the staff at GWM’s first direct sales store which just opened in Zhengzhou, the provincial capital of Henan. There he led sales efforts for the newly launched Tank 700 Hi4-T.

Although most of the new energy startups in China use to some extent direct sales the legacy Chinese brands are only just experimenting with the format. Wei Jianjun reportedly drove for six hours from GWM headquarters in Baoding to the new Zhenghongcheng store in Zhengzhou.

Once there he set about laying out the virtues of the Tank 700 Hi4-T even going as far as accompanying one young prospective customer on a test drive. Wei said that everyone thinks this kind of car uses a lot of fuel but really it is not that bad due to the plugin hybrid powertrain and it can travel 100 kilometers on electric power.

During the test drive Wei told the customer how the Tank 700 Hi4-T has a non-load bearing body and has chassis girders which means that the noise from the road surface and tires is much less when it reaches the car.  He went on to claim in true salesman fashion that the Tank 700 Hi4-T has better tire road noise suppression than a Rolls Royce Cullinan.

Part of the reason for the sales exercise was to communicate with car owners, by doing so the top leaders of the company could communicate the ideas of the car buying public to the core leadership of the company and keep up with the ideas of consumers.

The Tank 700 Hi4-T went on sale in February and measure in at 5096, 2060, 1952 mm (l/w/h) with a wheelbase of 3000 mm. In a break from other Hi4-T models in the Tank range the petrol engine part of the PHEV system is a 3.0 liter V6 rather than the 2.0T seen in the other cars. The engine has a maximum power of 265 kW and torque of 560 Nm. There is also a front mounted electric motor with 120 kW power and 400 Nm torque. The system combined figures are 385 kW and 800 Nm. Currently the car only comes as a PHEV but an ICE version is likely to launch soon.

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