File:Karry K50.jpg

English: Place: Zhaoxing, Liping County, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province

Chinese name: 开瑞K50 (kāiruì K50) Year of launch: 2014

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...

Chery had a terribly messy line-up after it launched three new sub brands in 2009, two of which completely failed: Rely, Riich (both now defunct) and Karry. One of Karry's products was the Karry Youyi, in the vein of cars like the Opel Combo Tour. The Karry Youyi was initially branded as Chery Karry before Karry became a new brand. The Karry Youyi is based on the platform of the Windcloud/Flagcloud, and also shares its interior with these models (and Seat Toledo). Karry is the surviving subbrand, now joined with the more recent Cowin and Qoros sub brands, and focuses on cheap MPVs and vans. Apart from the Karry Youyi, Chery produces the Youya (formerly known as Chery Riich V2, launched in 2007), the Yousheng and Youpai, the Youyou and Youjin, the Higgo pick-up (Great Wall Wingle produced in license). It entered the cheap MPV market with the launch of the K50 in late 2014, and it was followed by the rugged K60 in 2016. The Karry K60 is also sold as Cowin V3 with a different front end and rear end.

Sales of the Karry K50, K60 and Cowin V3 in 2016: 62,301 / 9,453 / 10,178