Geely touches down in Australia

Chinese car-maker Geely is using Australia’s extreme conditions as a test bed for its next generation of models.

Images obtained by motoring.com.au show the fledging manufacturer hot-weather testing in the red centre recently. Seen here are variants of the Emgrand family of vehicles, the GT and GL.

Volvo’s parent company is serious about the Australian market. In the past it courted tuning specialists Prodrive for development work, but this time round Geely has bypassed Australian suppliers, completing all the assessment work using its own resources.

Although small numbers of the Geely MK light-car have been sold in Perth in recent years, the Chinese car-maker's full-scale Australian assault is expected to first materialise in the form of the marque's sister brand LYNK & CO, which is developing a global SUV.

A spokesperson for Geely said the latest round of hot-weather testing demonstrated the Chinese manufacturer’s heady ambitions.

“We currently do not have any plans for the Geely brand to enter into the Australian market, but we have always focused on developing global cars with a subtle hint of where they came from rather than aiming to take Chinese cars global,” the spokesperson said.

“We can foresee a day that the Geely brand will be truly global, just not in the short term. We will allow our sister brand LYNK & CO to be the first to global markets.”

Geely reported record sales in 2016. Overall year-on-year growth surged 50 per cent, to 765,851 units, following the release of third-generation products including the Geely Boyue, Emgrand GS, Vision SUV and Emgrand GL.

The drive in demand is owed in part to younger males. Geely says nearly 70 per cent of customers are male, many of them 26 to 35 years old.

Image credit: Shane Martyn