Brilliance to start selling improved BS6 sedan in Europe

GUANGZHOU -- Brilliance Jinbei Automobile Co. will launch sales of improved cars in Europe this summer, about one year after its BS6 sedan got a low safety rating in a crash test in Europe.

Its chief distributor in the region has cut the sales target for its sedans set before the crash test by more than 50 percent.

Hans-Ulrich Sachs, managing director of Brilliance's European importer HSO Motors Europe, says the sales of the redesigned cars will start in Germany.

In addition to the redesigned BS6, another sedan made by Brilliance -- the BS4 -- will also hit the German market in summer. The third car, a coupe model BC3, will be launched there in autumn, he says.

Sales in other European countries like France and Belgium are expected to start in early 2009.

Brilliance confirms the plans and says it will start producing the improved BS6 as well as the BS4 in April or May at its plant in Shenyang city, Liaoning province.

The company adds the improved versions, dedicated for European markets, will differ from products targeting Chinese domestic markets, but all products will share production lines.

Brilliance started exporting cars to Europe at the end of 2006, but all sales of the BS6 sedan stopped last July and August after the car did badly in crash tests conducted by 11 national auto clubs, including Germany's ADAC.

Brilliance says it has redesigned "approximately 60 components" of the BS6 to improve its safety.

The company says it:

A) Replaced an unspecified number of parts in the chassis;

B) Redesigned the airbags to minimize injuries to front-seat passengers' chests during a car crash;

C) Equipped front seats with seat belt pretensioners, which will lock the belts almost instantaneously when a car crash happens;

D) Improved door panels, car roofs and roof pillars to minimize injuries inflicted by edged parts on passengers during a car crash;

Brilliance and HSO Motors say they are now requesting the independent car-testing organization EuroNCAP to crash the improved Brilliance car later this year. A EuroNCAP spokeswoman says no final decision has been made on when to conduct the test.

Spanish independent tester IDIADA has crashed a prototype of the redesigned BS6 to EuroNCAP standards last September, and says it would get a three-star rating.

Brilliance says the improvements add to the costs, thus the cars targeting European markets will be more expensive than those sold on the domestic market.

Sachs says the improved versions of the BS6 will sell at about 19,900 euros per unit while the BS4 will be priced at about 16,900 euros. The price of the BC3 will range between 17,000 and 18,000 euros.

Sachs adds HSO Motors plans to sell 3,000 to 4,000 Brilliance cars this year, about 10,000 in 2009 and 20,000 in 2010. The company previously aimed to sell 20,000 in 2008, 30,000 in 2009 and 40,000 in 2010.

He adds HSO Motors sold 120 units of the unimproved Brilliance cars to its European distributors in January. The company has 10 distributors in 16 European countries.

"We are still alive and we are fighting back," Sachs said.

Brilliance also says its cars are receiving emission and crash tests in the United States now. The company is building distribution networks there. It expects to get 500 dealers across the U.S. by the end of this year.