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A desire to add a larger SUV with three rows of seats to its showrooms has seen the more luxurious Wey brand from China's GWM return as a possibility for Australia.
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Luxury cars from Chinese auto giant GWM's Wey brand are back on the table for Australia to join the Haval, Tank, Ora and Cannon names in its showrooms.
It may prove necessary to get GWM Australia its first car-derived, three-row family SUV, which is offered by Wey in China as the six-seat Lanshan, a name which translates to Blue Mountain.
Wey is a 'premium' marque offered by GWM overseas, aimed at the likes of Lexus and other prestige offshoots of other Chinese car giants, including BYD's Denza.
The Wey name was previously ruled out for Australia after earlier indications suggested it could come to local showrooms, but a desire to launch a less hardcore seven-seater than the Tank 500 has seemingly placed it back in GWM's sightlines.
GWM Australia chief operating officer John Kett told Drive the Wey Blue Mountain – currently sold with six seats overseas – is "being considered" for local sale, to enter a part of the market GWM is "somewhat absent" from.
"If we brought it in, we are still toying with where that price would be," Kett said, when asked if the seven-seat Wey would need to carry a prestige-car-like RRP.
"When you start adding the concept of Wey to the conversation we just had on Haval, and how the crossover in the large SUV segment should play between mainstream and premium, you've uncovered the dilemma that we're dealing with at this point in time.
"So we're still working through those trade-offs, but we think as a vehicle, the team really likes it.
"As a sub-brand, we need to talk through what that means for us. And then if we decide on it, it has a sort of knock-on effect on what we should launch with the other brands before we start crossing over too much here."
A logical choice would be to rebadge the Blue Mountain as a Haval – and skip the complexity of launching a new sub-brand in its showrooms – but Kett suggested that may not be possible.
"I don't think we've really approached them on it [a rebadge as a Haval], but I think in terms of their verticals, I think that would be a big challenge for us to do," he said, when asked if head office in China would allow a rebrand.
The Blue Mountain would be one of the country's largest car-derived SUVs, measuring nearly 5.2 metres long – larger than a Mazda CX-90 or Hyundai Palisade.
Prices range from 299,800 to 326,800 Chinese yuan ($AU64,500 to $AU70,200) which, using the price of the smaller Haval H6 as a guide, could equate to the better part of $85,000 in Australia.
It is sold exclusively as a plug-in hybrid, combining a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine with two electric motors for combined outputs of 380kW and 930Nm.
GWM claims a 0-100km/h acceleration time of 4.9 seconds, while 44.5kWh or 52.3kWh battery packs rated to deliver up to 220km of electric-only driving range, and 1343km of hybrid range, in WLTC lab testing.
With a flat battery, fuel consumption is claimed at 6.5 to 6.6 litres per 100 kilometres – competitive with plug-less hybrid SUVs from rival brands.
Available features include heated and ventilated front seats, nappa leather trim, tri-zone air conditioning, an in-car fridge, suede interior accents, a 50-watt wireless phone charger, power side steps, and 21-inch alloy wheels.
Irrespective of whether the Wey Blue Mountain comes to local showrooms, GWM is aware it needs a seven-seat SUV for Australia based on a 'monocoque' car platform, rather than a heavy-duty, ladder-frame four-wheel-drive like the Tank 500.
It is preparing to launch its largest Haval SUV to date in Australia, the Haval H7, which is a slightly larger and boxier take on the mid-size H6.
"We think that in that segment, the coverage we need across Jolion and H6, and another SUV that is either borderline medium or effectively a monocoque large SUV, is lacking in our portfolio," Kett told Drive.
"So the H7 just gives us a taste for what that could look like, and then [we] will get together and work with HQ in terms of scouring their portfolio to see what a next-generation H7 could look like in our portfolio.
"When we think about [the] large SUV [category], obviously we've got Tank 500 and Tank 300 from a body-on-frame perspective, but half of that whole segment is monocoque, and we are somewhat absent."
He said a decision on which three-row vehicle to use as the basis of the new GWM model will be made later this year.
"The beauty of GWM and its ability to bring a concept to life relative to some other brands is that we move quick. We've got a little bit of time to make that decision, in terms of what that looks like," Kett said.
"I think it really comes down to ... you would lean towards a seven-seater if you can, as long as it was a meaningful seven-seater – not just [that it] says it's seven seats, but you have to be quite small to be able to sit comfortably in the back.
"So we'll toy with those ideas. We'll have a solution, I'm pretty sure, in the next six months.
"Certainly by the time we get to the tech day [media event] that we'll have in October, we would've decided or settled on what that might look like and which of our sub-brands should lead it."
GWM Australia head of marketing and communications Steve Maciver added: "The Wey product presents extremely well. The technology's there.
"It does offer a level of differentiation at the top end to what we've got available to us in Haval right now.
"The challenge [and] the amazing opportunity that Tim [Leong, GWM product planner] and I have in front of us right now is the product portfolio available to us potentially over the next 12 to 18 months is incredible.
"We probably can't do it all. We probably don't want to do it all. We are going to work out where the right niches are, and that's the work that we're trying to do. So we'll probably share more in the coming months."
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Alex Misoyannis has been writing about cars since 2017, when he started his own website, Redline. He contributed for Drive in 2018, before joining CarAdvice in 2019, becoming a regular contributing journalist within the news team in 2020. Cars have played a central role throughout Alex’s life, from flicking through car magazines at a young age, to growing up around performance vehicles in a car-loving family. Highly Commended - Young Writer of the Year 2024 (Under 30) Rising Star Journalist, 2024 Winner Scoop of The Year - 2024 Winner
