BAIC, JMC and FAW all fighting for the Subaru JV deal

Subaru have been importing into China for several years since the decline of their doomed joint venture with the now long dead and buried Guizhou Avation’s automotive department that produced the Subaru Justy in 800cc form, now that Subaru have seen a major sales spike in China and with their sales bound to hit 100,000 units in 2010 Subaru are looking to produce locally and become more competitive rather than relying on the import segment.

Subaru officially started importing cars into China in 2004 and since then rumors of Subaru planning a joint venture in China have been rife, recent news of Subaru’s China plans have increased with JMC, Beijing Auto Industry Corp (BAIC) and First Automobile Works all interested in signing up the Japanese SUV maker. First Automobile Works (FAW) may well be in a better position to take on Subaru as they are already working with Subaru’s parent company Toyota in Changchun city and Tianjin where the RAV4, Crown and lower end models such as the Corolla and Yaris are produced, which shows that FAW have a good understand of what Japanese automakers need. JMC so far have been working with Ford and have a good amount of Ford investment in them, whilst BAIC work with Mercedes and Hyundai which also shows they have a high understand of quality requirements in China.

Obviously FAW are the biggest group of the three and can easily afford to add another brand to their line up. , but possibly over stretched thanks to their partnerships with VW, Toyota, Mazda and also their own self developed vehicles. According to media sources BAIC are fairly recent applicants to the Subaru China talks, and appear to be getting on well with Subaru, BAIC’s close ties to governmental officials in Beijing will likely mean that there will be no issue in fast tracking Subaru’s Chinese domestic plans.

In recent months smaller niche players have become more interested in the Chinese market, Jaguar-Landrover are also planning to enter the Chinese market with locally assembled vehicles, it could be that if you’re not in China during the next few ‘golden years’ of Chinese automotive expansion then you might as well not sell in China at all.