GAC officially went on sale in Australia this week, adding yet another new marque for buyers to consider in an already crowded market of more than 60 competing makes.
It joins new (or returning) brands having appeared in Australia in the last 36 months including BYD, Xpeng, Chery, Smart, Omoda Jaecoo, Denza, Leapmotor, Deepal and JAC among others in a seemingly endless list.
Not all newcomers are from China, either, with Volkswagen Group-owned Cupra launching here in 2022 along with British brand Ineos with its French-made, BMW-engined Grenadier off-roader, and American luxury brand Cadillac commencing local deliveries this year.
In a formidable challenge, GAC’s entry into the Australian new car sales race among an influx of new brands – predominantly from China – may seem a misstep, another name soon to be forgotten.
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Yet GAC International boss Wei Haigang told CarExpert the brand stands apart from other new brands because of its partnerships with other automakers – namely, the world’s largest automaker by sales, Toyota.
GAC has had a fifty-fifty joint venture (JV) with Toyota since 2004, with the Aion V – one of the three new models launched in Australia – using the same underpinnings as the Toyota bZ3X sold in China.
Its Honda partnership, also a fifty-fifty JV, is even longer having been established in 1999.
“Number one, it’s about how to build a car of high quality; Toyota is well-known globally for quality, so we have learned a lot,” Mr Wei told CarExpert.
“Number two is the lean production: it can help achieve lower costs with higher efficiency.
“Number three is about how to satisfy customers. They [Toyota and Honda] always put customers first, especially for the after sales, services, [and] the maintenance.
“They can provide the customers with a reassuring and comfortable journey.”
This approach is behind the company’s local launch mantra of ‘Growing Australia Confidence’ – ‘in Australia, for Australia’ – as part of its broader ‘One GAC’ global strategy focusing on its products, network, service and electric charging network infrastructure.
Mr Wei himself was an employee of Toyota for 13 years, including a 12-month stint in one of its factories in Japan.
He told CarExpert a significant number of GAC employees that now work at GAC internationally have come from the joint ventures it has between Toyota and Honda.
The company also has had partnerships with Japanese automaker Isuzu and Chinese tech giant Huawei, which was controversially banned from being part of Australia’s 5G phone network by the federal government in 2018.
GAC established Huawang Automotive with Huawei in China earlier this year, but its automaking origins go back to producing the Peugeot 505 in the 1980s – and the company dates even further back to bus repair business in the late 1940s.
Before its Australian berth, GAC already operated in 85 countries, but key destinations were missing from its resume.
“In terms of the global business or the overseas markets, we are a latecomer, but in September, we entered into the European market, and this time, we bring our products to Australia,” Mr Wei told CarExpert.
“We have carried out a lot of preparation for this, and we are ready for entering into this market – we believe that our products are differentiate different from the products of the other brands, and we can provide better choices for them.”
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