Brilliance's future unclear
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A source from Brilliance Jinbei International Sales Company Thursday refuted recent rumors that Brilliance has halted its car exports to Europe.
"Brilliance will never pull out of Germany and Europe, even though it is confronted with bleak sales and thin profit margins," the source told the Global Times, speaking under conditions of anonymity.
The source told the Global Times that Brilliance has been struggling to increase its brand awareness while competing with local German auto giants and Toyota and Hyundai, which entered the country's market nearly 30 years ago.
Brilliance entered Europe in 2006, and secured a deal to ship 158,000 sedans to Europe over a 5-year period. Its unit sales, however, were not as good as it expected.
It sold roughly 1,000 Brilliance cars in Europe in 2008 through HSO Motors Europe, Brilliance's sole importer for Europe, and its distributors.
The source said various safety tests, which European consumers rely on in making buying choices, are barriers against winning local customers.
Its first vehicle in Europe, the BS6 mid-sized sedan, got the cold shoulder after receiving a rating of one star out of five in a crash test performed by Germany's ADAC auto club in 2007.
After a great deal of improvements, Brilliance returned to Europe with the BS4 sedans the next year. The BS4 sedans received a three-star rating in a crash test in 2008 from E-NCAP, but its rating from ADAC in 2009 was zero.
The source also complained about fast-changing European regulations. "They abandoned Europe IV in less than a year and a half, and will put Europe V in place in the second half. We can hardly meet the new standards with domestic auto part suppliers. We have to use overseas ones, which will raise our costs," the source said, referring to the continent's standards for vehicle emissions.
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