One Gas Station Consumes One 100 Kilometers Of Fuel? How Did Luxgen Fail in The Mainland Market?

There are many jokes about car brands, but Luxgen is the only one that has so many and vivid jokes.

Why can they still lose money when selling two barrels of oil when oil prices are so high? Because they lost a strategic partner - Luxgen!

Why do Luxgen owners rarely answer their phones? Because they are at gas stations.

If Luxgen doesn't shut down, the fuel tank will never be full.

Of course, Luxgen was not like this at the beginning.

Luxgen is a Chinese brand, specifically a brand from Taiwan Province of China. Its owner, Yulon Motor, started a joint venture with Nissan in the 1950s to produce cars in Taiwan. Although it built Taiwan's first independently designed car in the 1980s, Yulon's business has always been mainly the production and sales of foreign brands.

In 2007, after losing a lot of money in the joint venture with General Motors, Yulon decided to create its own new brand. In January 2009, Luxgen was officially released. Its English name is LUXGEN, which is a fusion of the two words luxury and wisdom. As you can see from the name, this brand is positioned at the high end, or at least, it has a high-end heart.

How big a market can a province like Taiwan have? Yulon also knows that only with a vast world can it achieve great things, so after the new brand was established, it immediately came to the mainland and started to produce Luxgen cars in a joint venture with Dongfeng.

In 2011, Dongfeng Yulon's first product, Luxgen U7 SUV, was launched. Just listen to the name, U7, which fully grasps the psychology of Chinese consumers that "big is good, good is big". Of course, its size is also worthy of the name. The car is 4.8m long and has a wheelbase of 2.9m. The size is close to the BMW X5 and longer than the Mercedes-Benz ML.

Luxgen U7 is positioned as a mid-size SUV. At that time, there were not many cars of this level in the domestic market. Toyota Highlander sold for $34,300-46,600, Nissan Loulan sold for $65,800, and luxury brands such as Q5, X3, and GLK sold for $68,600-96,000, while Luxgen U7 SUV only sold for $25,800-36,800. And the configuration is also very high. The entire series is equipped with a large color central control screen, automatic air conditioning and 220V power supply as standard. The high-end models also have 360° panoramic images, night vision system, seat ventilation and heating, and rear entertainment screen. These things are not available on the $89,000 Q5 and X3!

With this earth-shattering price-performance ratio, the U7 SUV helped Luxgen get off to a good start. Later, Luxgen launched the U7 MPV, Luxgen5 and Luxgen6 SUV, enriching the family product line bit by bit, and sales have also increased year by year.

Not belonging to a foreign joint venture brand, but not wanting to be classified as an independent brand, Luxgen proposed the concept of Chinese cars at that time. For this reason, they specially invited Taiwanese superstar Jay Chou to be the spokesperson, and hinted at the positioning of Luxgen as the first car of the Chinese brand with the attitude of the first person in the Chinese music scene.

However, is the cost-effectiveness really that high? Just when car owners were glad that they spent the money of a family car to buy a luxury car, Luxgen used fuel consumption to tell them that they should spend every penny.

At that time, many people said that Luxgen's fuel consumption was one gas station per 100 kilometers, which was a rumor! In fact, its fuel consumption per 100 kilometers is only... 20L! It is basically the level of Land Rover Range Rover and Toyota Land Cruiser. Although the fuel consumption of 20L is definitely achieved at low speed in the city, it is not necessarily possible for ordinary cars to achieve such high fuel consumption.

Along with the high fuel consumption, there is also the poor power. In fact, this "Light of Chinese Cars", like many domestic brands in the early stages of development, has three major parts that come from technologies that have been eliminated by foreign brands. The old technical foundation, coupled with the overweight body, has created this brand of strategic partnership between the two oil companies. In addition to fuel consumption, what makes car owners feel like they have a luxury car is the after-sales maintenance price.

Other domestic cars have many minor problems, but fortunately, the maintenance is cheap. This Light of Chinese Cars also has many minor problems, but the maintenance price is comparable to that of BBA. It does not have the life of a Land Rover, but it has the disease of a Land Rover. So some people say that you can only be happy for two days after buying a Luxgen, the day you buy the car and the day you sell it. After selling the car, the owner is happy, but the second-hand car dealer is crying, and the residual value rate of Luxgen is like a black hole. "How to double the value of a Luxgen and fill it with a tank of gas..."

In this way, with the increasing number of jokes, Luxgen's sales have also dropped significantly. In 2020, Luxgen sold only 77 vehicles, and we don't know what these 77 warriors were thinking at the time. After that, sales were completely gone, but who would have thought that this would become a joke. A Taiwanese expert said on TV that mainlanders are too poor to afford Luxgen...

In the end, Dongfeng Yulon filed for bankruptcy in November 2020, and Luxgen, which once tried to lead the Chinese car brand, withdrew from the mainland market. The joys and sorrows of the car market are not the same. Some people live to the end with a smile, and some people end up as a joke. People say that the core of comedy is tragedy, and this sentence has become Luxgen's most painful realization.