File:Chery Fulwin 2.jpg

English: Place: Gaozeng, Congjiang County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province

Chinese name: 奇瑞风云2 (qíruì fēngyún 2) Year of launch: 2008

Chery Automobile was the largest Chinese carmaker for quite some time, thanks to successes of the QQ, Tiggo, A5 and the old Windcloud/Flagcloud (Fulwin/Cowin) models. Chery is a state-owned company founded in 1997. It began automobile production in 1999 after acquiring toolings and a license to produce the first generation Seat Toledo. Interesting is that Chery was only granted a production license for passenger cars in 2003, which means Chery cars couldn't be legally sold until 2001. Until then Chery was officially only producing automotive components, albeit in a fully assembled form. In 2001 Chery solved the problem by piggybacking on a SAIC Motor license, China's largest state-owned car manufacturer. Chery surely knowns the way around the law... After rising tensions between Chery Automobile and General Motors (GM) and Volkswagen, two of SAIC's joint venture partners, the 20% ownership SAIC once held in Chery was sold. GM was not amused and filed lawsuits after Chery copied their Spark (Matiz) and Epica (Evanda/Magnus) models. Volkswagen also planned a lawsuit against Chery, because they apparently secretly purchased the Seat Toledo blueprints, which is quite interesting considering Seat is a subsidiary of Volkswagen...

The successor of the Fulwin was launched in 2008 as Fulwin 2 and went in production in the year after. It was quickly followed by a hatchback. The Chery Tiggo 3x, a rugged, raised and heavily revamped Fulwin 2, was launched in 2006.