CarBrandLogos archive · Chery · 2003

CheryQQ

The tiny, cheap hatchback that motorised China — and provoked a lawsuit from GM.

The story

A defining chapter in Chery history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Chery QQ, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Launched in 2003, the QQ was one of the first cars to make private motoring genuinely affordable in China. It was a minute three-door city car with a small petrol engine, sold at a price that undercut almost everything else on the market, and it arrived exactly as urban incomes were rising fast enough to support a first car. For several years it was among the best-selling small cars in the country.

Chery QQ3 Sport 02 China · Navigator84 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Design and engineering

It also became the most-cited example in the argument over Chinese design copying. General Motors, whose Daewoo operation produced the Matiz and its Chevrolet Spark derivative, alleged that the QQ was a direct copy and pursued the matter through the Chinese courts. The similarity between the two cars was obvious to anyone who saw them side by side; the litigation nonetheless ended without the outcome GM wanted, and Chery continued to sell the car.

Chery QQme 01 China · Navigator84 · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

Beyond the dispute, the QQ mattered because it funded Chery's expansion. The company grew into one of China's largest exporters of cars, and the QQ name has since been revived for small electric city cars aimed at the same buyer, forty years of technology later.

Chery QQ II China · Navigator84 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Technical specification