Gasgoo.com (Shanghai Nov 4)- In the evening of November 3rd, Jeep’s first China-built model new Cherokee was officially unveiled. The first batch of new Cherokee shared a common engine displacement 2.4L, with price ranging from 229,800 to 315,800 yuan. The conference also revealed Jeep’s plan to produce 2.0L model and its floor price of 200,000 yuan. With such a drastic price-cutting, GAC FIAT was determined to make Jeep localized.
The manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for Jeep Cherokee in America is $23,395, about 148,200 yuan, compared with the floor price of imported model in China arriving at 371,900 yuan. As a relatively-speaking niche brand specialized in SUV, Jeep positioned itself high-end in China. And now, the advent of affordable Cherokee is a necessity.
The price-cutting of new Cherokee brings a question on the table, that is, as the first localized model of Jeep in China, new Cherokee breaks the previous high-end positioning, but the positioning of unborn localized models of Jeep is in doubt. In the Jeep SUV family, Cherokee is in the middle end with Compass and Patriot in the lower place and Grand Cherokee and Wrangler in the upper. The localization of Jeep will end up with a full product chain covering high, middle and low-end SUV models. Of course Jeep might lose its so-called “middle and high-end positioning”, but it will gain more brand popularity and market share. Feng Xingya, the Board Chairman of GAC FIAT, noted on the press conference,“ The localization of Cherokee achieves our goal to upgrade and expand our products. In the near future, we will introduce more localized Jeep SUVs, and they will together rewrite the SUV market structure in China.”
The global sales volume of Jeep Cherokee in 2014 was 236,300 with 178,500 in America, while that number for China was negligible duo to the high price. However, maybe the localization of Jeep Cherokee will change the situation. Still, it is possible for GAC FIAT to localize some high-end Jeep SUVs as an effort to retain its previous positioning.
