AN AMBITIOUS plan to provide China with its first home-grown, budget family car has been unveiled by a joint Hong Kong and mainland group.
The three-door car, which has yet to be named, is styled on the Japanese Supermini and designed for the 'modern', one-child Chinese family.
A prototype of the car made its debut at the Wuxian Trade Exhibition, near Shanghai, last week.
It is the product of Tint Dragonfly, a joint-venture company comprising private Hong Kong-based product designer Tint International and state-owned industrial company Shenzhen Dragonfly. The project has received official backing from the Wuxian provincial government.
China has started developing and restructuring its fragmented and inefficient car industry, while also protecting it from foreign competition.
Tint Dragonfly, which specialises in product design but has no experience in the car industry, plans to win central government approval by 1997 to produce at least 150,000 vehicles a year, in line with requirements of the Ministry of Machinery Industry.
Its target by 1996 is to sell 2,000 units in Wuxian, and to follow this with mass production a year later, pending government approval.
