2008 Beijing Show: The Top 10 Chinese Concepts

As the Chinese auto industry sharpens its skill set and exercises its financial muscle, it's rapidly moving away from being merely a provider of low cost cars and mass transportation. The homegrown concept car was a major feature of the 2008 Beijing auto show. Some were good; some not so good. But as GM design boss Ed Welburn observed: "They don't know the rules, but that's okay. There's a lot of creativity here." So, here are the 10 best Chinese concept cars of the show. The Scorpio is a long, low coupe study by CH Auto, a design house headquartered a few miles from the show venue on the outskirts of Beijing. CH Auto is sort of like a fledgling Chinese ItalDesign, a full-service shop that can take a concept from sketch to fully finished model. This rakish coupe is one of a suite of concepts on the BAIC stand. BAIC, which builds Mercedes-Benz E-Class and Chrylser 300Cs for the Chinese market as a joint venture partner and has its own line of Jeep-based products, plans to move into the car market with its own-brand models. This strong coupe borrows from Bentley Continental GT and Aston Martin DB9. Companion car to BAIC's coupe concept, this sedan takes design cues from vehicles as diverse as Mercedes-Benz CLS (trunk), Dodge Charger (C-pillar and rear fender haunch), and BMW 5 Series (that complex body section that twists from a horizontal surface over the rear fender to a concave feature through the front door). Apparently based on Honda bits, this handsome four-door coupe will reportedly hit the road in 2010 as an all-new Chinese branded model from GAC, the company that currently builds the Accord in a joint venture with Honda. It looks way better than the Accord. Companion vehicle to the GAC four door is this very nice coupe-convertible. Again apparently based on Accord bits -- and again way better looking that the original Honda -- it's also scheduled to make its debut in 2010. Sivax is a Japanese-based design and prototype-build outfit that's set up a shop in Guangzhou. The beautifully finished Izana is a bold, rear-drive sport coupe with scissor doors and a classy interior. IAT Beijing was established in 2002 in close cooperation with Japan design and development firm International Application Technology. IAT is the largest and most comprehensive independent auto design company in China, working on powertrain and body design as well as protoype builds. The Cross Wind is a crossover coupe with more than a hint of Audi TT around the rear fenders. FAW, or First Auto Works, is the daddy of China's automakers. Its Red Flag cars were once the sole preserve of senior Communist party apparatchiks, but the company now wants to make it a premium cvilian brand. It already has a Toyota Majesta-based Red Flag sedan, the HQ3, in production and is now clearly looking at an upscale SUV to go with it. Ambitious Geely stole much of the preshow thunder by releasing pictures of its GT -- the Geely Tiger. This long, low coupe is certainly dramatic, though the front-end styling is somewhat heavy handed. More significant, the car rolls on a front-engine, rear-drive platform that Geely hints will underpin a range of future upscale models. The GAC A-HEV is a hybrid electric vehicle crossover concept first seen at the Guangzhou International Auto Show last last year. No plans for production, but Guangzhou's bus-making subsidiary has done a deal on Eaton hybrid buses, and it has a joint-venture manufacturing arrangment with Honda, so the technology is clearly available to the company.