- Would it surprise you if I told you that you've never heard of one of the biggest car
companies in the world? (car engine revs) I'm talking about Geely. Now the badge might be only 30 years old, but in that time, they managed to sell millions of cars. Win an FIA manufactures cup and set a lap record at the Nurburgring. But how in the world, did they go from making
junky cars in the 90s to buying Volvo? And what made their founders so mad, that he drove a steamroller over an entire lot of cars? Hold on your sweaty bums cause we're about to find out. This is everything you need to know to get up to speed on Geely. (upbeat music) Chapter One, the legend of Lee. It all started back in 1963, in a small Chinese
village called Zhejiang. I'm gonna say a lot of words wrong here. I'm gonna do my best, but a lot of these are going
to be pronounced wrong. It all started back in 1963, in a small Chinese
village called Zhejiang. Where a young boy was born
by the name of Li Shufu. Li was an ambitious kid, and often said outrageous
things to make people laugh. Kinda like me. I can relate. Li would ride his bike around town, you know, normal kids stuff, take portraits of people
and sell them for money. Normal,it was a valuable first business for a young entrepreneur. And after that, he took up
recycling precious metals, which proved to be more
successful than photography. And by 1986, he was doing what most of us were
doing in our early 20s. Selling our hugely successful
metal recycling business, to start a refrigerator company. This man knows how to
make a more money baby. But by the end of the 80s, Li was bored with the
refrigerator business and donated it to the local government. You know, like you do. Sure he was making money but
he wanted something knew, something less competitive. He wanted a market he
could really scale up. I'm talking about the car market. Carbide you're factoring, is one of the most
competitive markets out there. Yeah, maybe in the US or Europe, but in the 90s, In China, the market was just starting up. A few foreign badges have been
able to sell cars in China, but there were no privately
owned car companies. The Chinese government owned
all of them at this point. They sold models that were designed, manufactured in China, but they also sold re badged foreign cars, which were considered exotics. And by exotics I mean, like second gen Passats. Which sold in China for 29 years, that's longer than Nolan's whole life. Needless to say many people thought, Li was riding the cuckoo train crazy Berg. He even went to a manufacturer who provided parts for
Shanghai Volkswagen. And was hoping to sign a contract, but when the man in
charge heard Lee's plan, the dude literally left the
room without saying a word. He ghosted him in person. That's cold man, that's ice cold. Now despite the overwhelming
odds against him, he remained undeterred and felt confident in his
ability to design a car. Li said, "cars are just
two couches on four wheels, "How hard can it be?" That is a literal quote from the dude, I wanna put that on a shirt. Cars are just two
couches with four wheels. Have truer words ever been smoking? I don't know. But since cars are proving difficult, Li went to the next best thing. He bought an old motorcycle factory, that was on the brink of bankruptcy and started producing his own motorcycles. Making it the first privately owned motorcycle company ever
in China's whole history. And China has a lot of history. I think there's a restaurant in China, that was established in the year four, I'm not making that up. The Year four. He named the company Geely, which roughly translates to propitious, which roughly translates to indicating a good chance of success. So propitious,now the
Avengers endgame here was not to keep making motorcycles but to produce the
opposite of a motorcycle. I'm talking about a luxury sedan. There's a problem though. No one in the factory
knew how to make one. So Li bought a Mercedes E 280, and started taking it apart. He studied and reassembled
it piece by piece, to fully understand the
precision of its engineering. Then he bought a different car a home key. To provide a chassi and
engine for his prototype. Creatively named Geeley number one, this car, how do you say? Um, was not very good. It looked bad, drove bad, broke down a bunch. And Li quickly realized that building a luxury
car, for his first car, might not have been the
least ambitious idea. So, Li turn his focused to making cars, that everyday Chinese
citizens could afford. I mean, just simply owning a car was seen as a luxury in China at the time and even the cheapest cars on the market. I'm talking Suzuki
altos Daihatsu Chirades, rap worths of $13,000. That's 24 K, in today's money. Li wanted to make these hatchbacks better, but more importantly, he wanted to sell them cheaper. So, like the Mercedes E 280. He bought a few Chirades, and took them apart piece by piece, and began to make them his own. Chapter two, a crushing defeat. On August 8 1998. The very first production Geely
model rolled off the line, the Haoqing which translates to ambition, featuring a 1.8 liter Toyota four banger, the same engine as the Chirade. It only made 83 teenage horsepowers. But for such a small hatch. It was pretty pretty pretty. Pretty good. Unfortunately, though. Pretty good. Didn't matter because no one bought them. Okay, they looked exactly
like that's of Chirades except the build quality was worse. The interior was full of hard plastic. The paint was terrible, and there were huge gaps in the panels, which let water into the cab. We had a huge premiere party and only one person showed up. He got so mad ,that he took a steamroller and drove over all 100
cars that he's made. That is a true story. That is some Enzo Ferrari type stuff. Down and out, but not down for the count. Li did what all of us would do. The dude started making
buses under the name Boeing. That's until the Boeing
called him and was like, hey man, you can't do that. So he quickly went back
to the name, Geely, and while going back, Li would turn to the drawing board, determined to make his dream. The Haoqing, finally a success. Debuting in 1999. The much improved new
Haoqing started selling. They're infinitely more reliable than the first generation and provided cheap means of
transportation to people, who in the past couldn't afford, a cheap means of transportation. Geely started turning a profit and before long, they bought a second factory and started producing a new model, the Meir which translates to ♪Beautiful day ♪ I don't like you too. Geely like you too, you are allowed to like him but I don't. Up until this point Geely, had been operating in a
gray area of Chinese law. Okay, they weren't fully allowed to produce cars as a private company. But everything changed in 2001. Six years after Post Malone was born when China joined the
World Trade Organization. Geely was now a fully
privately owned company. But during this time, Geely
got to work on building the first self developed sports car, in Chinese automotive history. It was called (foreign language) Which translates to
auspicious beauty Leopard. And a 1.5 liter Toyota Motor and a five speed manual gearbox, which seems like it could be a decent car. But again, it didn't matter. Toyota who'd been supplying Geely, decided to double the retail price of their engines making
it financially impossible to continue with the
develop of their sports car. So left with no other choice. Geely began developing
an engine of their own. Something similar to
the four cylinder design of the Toyota Effie. These little Geely econo boxes, sold like frickin hotcakes. And over the next decade, Geely became a ubiquitous brand. They were selling 140,000
cars a year and in 2009, Ford announced that they were selling the Volvo brand to Geely
for $1.5 billion with a b. This was huge news. A company that 10 years before couldn't even sell one car. Was now buying one of the
most recognizable car brands in the world. Yeah, it's Seems like a bunch of luck, but what if I told you Li
had planned this all out from the very start? Chapter three, Sweden the deal. $1.5 billion hairs for a
legacy car company Volvo. and in truly fashion he let Volvo remain pretty much independent. And allow them to continue designing and producing their own
cars with minimal oversight. Sure, it would have
been more cost efficient to produce baubles in China, but Li kept the factories
in Sweden and Belgium open. Appeasing the homeys at Volvo, and all of their unions. In 2010,the deal is finalized and Geely started using Volvo technology to make their own cars much, much better. Not only were they able to upgrade the existing Gili econo boxes, but Li was finally able to
achieve his lifelong goal, of developing luxury cars, and it couldn't have
come in a better time. Chinese citizens were becoming wealthier. They wanted an affordable luxury car, that could give them as
the kids say, "clout." In 2015 Geely debute the Bo Rui. This large family sedan was
a cancelled Volvo concept that found new life with Geely. It features different trim levels and engine options
including a 1.8 liter turbo, 3.5 liter V six and a hybrid engine capable of 261 horsepowers. I know that's not sports car territory, but as we've learned time and time again, it didn't matter, because Geely was, about to launch an all new
brand dedicated entirely to sports cars. Chapter four, a lynk to the future. In 2016, Geely launched Lynk & Co using the CMA platform designed by Volvo. They developed a front wheel drive 03, named after the year that I
graduated from high school. This feisty little compact comes with a few power training transmission options, including a two liter turbo , four cylinder, makes 190 horsepowers but the hot version. The 03 plus, comes with a 254 horsepower. Turbocharged inline four made into a seven speed dual clutch with them fuckin paddle shifty boys. Geely wanted to prove
their sports car brand, on a global scale. So they entered an 03 into a race that Volvo was known for win. The touring Car championships. Using Volvo's connections, Geely contacted a race team, that have been working
with the Swedes since 2003. Cyan Racing, you may know them by what they used to be called, Polestar. (upbeat music) A little history on science. They want a bunch of
touring car championships in the late 90s through the early 2000s, with some of the sickest Volvo's ever. A super touring 850 and an S 40. Both with five cylinder motors which are right up there
with my personal face. And starting in 2018. They use the Lynk & Co
03 as their platform. The Cyan racing 03 TCR
makes 350 horsepowers And help Cyan win. The WTCR manufacturers cup in 2019. Making the first Chinese company to win an FIA sanctioned race. And in early 2019 Volvo
performance division, started working on a 528 horsepower per road car concept of the lynk 03. And I just wanna point out that,that this is an almost 600
horsepower four cylinder motor. Impressive, pretty impressive. Now, it was this car driven by team driver Thed Bjork, which is a sick name. I don't even know Thed was a name. Well, all Thed did a lap at the Nurburgring. In an insane seven minutes and 20 seconds. It broke both the lap record for fastest front wheel drive car and the Ford or production vehicle record. That's frickin nuts. And that's why we did this episode. You guys need to know who these guys are because their future is fast. We learned a lot researching this episode. I was fortunate after making new friend and talk to him. Shout to Lulu. - More power baby. - More power baby. - More power baby. - I think you're better. If you wanna learn more
about Chinese car culture, check out this episode of wheelhouse. I love you
I think this is a pretty cool summary of the history of the company that purchased Volvo and Lotus. The founder is only 57 years old right now.
There's a surprising number of comments by Malaysians talking about the lack of Proton mentions. For those OOTL, Proton was a state-owned automobile company founded by the then Deputy Prime Minister, and the previous Prime Minister, Mahatir Mohamad. Now, they are 49.9% owned by Geely. Proton used to sell rebadged Mitsubishi's since the 80's, and is now going to sell rebadged Geely's.
Also, that L&C 03+ is cool. A compact sedan with the 250-hp Volvo engine and AWD. Sounds like a potential WRX competitor. A road-legal version of the 03 Cyan Concept would be insane.
u/JamesPumphrey, quick note, the 03+ doesn't use the dual-clutch. It actually uses an 8-speed automatic
So basically, Geely made really sketchy cars that mimicked some engine and chassis designs they reverse-engineered until they got enough money together to buy a failing automaker, and used that automaker's IP and tech as a springboard into modernity as a more legitimate player in the business?
Not exactly an inspiring story of innovation, but hey, if it works I guess. I do think they've done a better job managing Volvo than Ford ever did, mainly because unlike Ford they just let Volvo do whatever they want to do and write them blank checks to bankroll it. They've turned Volvo around with that strategy and made them a profitable entity (recent Covid recession pending).
Also, they benefit secondarily from that by leeching off the new IP for their own cars.
Own Volvo
I just realised that my dumbass linked a URL of the current timestamp when I was watching, and not that of the start of the video.
Whoops