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According to media reports, Hunan Cheetah Motor Co., Ltd. filed for bankruptcy restructuring in April this year. According to people close to Cheetah, at least three prospective investors want to participate in the restructuring of Cheetah, including traditional vehicle manufacturers, car-building new forces and financial investors, all intend to bid separately, and all bid separately. The above-mentioned people stressed that the above-mentioned vehicle manufacturing enterprises are quite famous in the industry.

According to SkyEye survey data, Cheetah currently has two warning messages in bankruptcy cases. On November 20, 2020, Tianjin Bailide Auto parts Co., Ltd., the upstream supplier of Cheetah, applied for bankruptcy review of Cheetah. On April 30, 2021, Cheetah filed for bankruptcy in the Intermediate people's Court of Changsha City, Hunan Province.

Netizens have made bold guesses about the three intended investors, believing that the traditional car company involved in the restructuring of Cheetah is Geely Automobile, while the new force of car building is Xiaomi Group.

Such a guess is not unreasonable. In April 2020, Geely Holdings formally took over Cheetah Automobile's production base in Changsha, Hunan Province. After Geely managed Changfeng Cheetah Automobile Factory, it will engage in the production and sales of new energy vehicles, introduce new energy vehicle products and technologies, and promote the integration of resources. Earlier, Geely acquired shares in Volvo, Daimler and other companies, and participated in Lifan's restructuring last year, which does not rule out Geely's participation in Cheetah restructuring.

As for Xiaomi Group, it officially announced its entry into the smart electric vehicle industry in March. According to the announcement, Xiaomi Group plans to set up a wholly-owned subsidiary to take charge of the smart electric vehicle business, with an initial investment of 10 billion yuan and an estimated investment of US $10 billion over the next 10 years. However, Xiaomi does not have the production qualification, that is to say, it either manufactures through car companies or buys car companies with production qualifications, and as a traditional car company hovering on the edge of the market, Cheetah is undoubtedly one of its direct choices to obtain production qualifications. Previously, Xiaopeng Automobile relied on seahorse car OEM to produce Xiaopeng G3, and later obtained the production qualification through the acquisition of Guangdong Fudi Automobile Co., Ltd., Xiaopeng P7 achieved self-production and self-marketing. Xiaopeng Automobile and Haima Motor cooperation agreement will also end at the end of this year, which means that in the future Xiaopeng G3i (Xiaopeng G3 modification) and follow-up products will also achieve self-production and self-sale. Of course, the above are all market speculation, the specific news needs to wait for official confirmation.

Changfeng Group can be traced back to 1950 and has a history of nearly 70 years. In September 2001, it was handed over by the army to the people's Government of Hunan Province. It is mainly engaged in the research and development, manufacture and sales of complete vehicles, and its headquarters is located in Changsha, Hunan Province. In 1995, the company cooperated with Japan's Mitsubishi Motors to introduce Mitsubishi Pajero automotive technology. After the development process, Changfeng created a "cheetah" brand, with an annual production scale of 500000 SUV and pick-up trucks, the main products are cheetah brand series SUV and pickups.

In 2005, the production scale of Cheetah reached 8-100000 vehicles, which was the largest SUV manufacturer in China at that time. In 2009, GAC GROUP reached an agreement with Changfeng Group to rename GAC Changfeng, but Cheetah delisted in 2012 without the introduction of new cars due to outdated technology and low sales. And GAC has a joint venture with Mitsubishi to get rid of Changfeng cheetah, Changfeng cheetah embarked on the road of independence.

Due to the intensification of market competition, the sales of Cheetah cars, an established independent car company, continue to decline, and the brand is marginalized. Cheetah sales fell from 86402 in 2018 to 32541 in 2019 and only 1043 in 2020, according to the data. Market stock competition, technical products can not keep up with the development, cheetah car management is becoming more and more difficult.

On August 18, 2020, about 200 authorized dealers of Cheetah jointly issued a statement on stopping the free after-sale of Cheetah cars in China (hereinafter referred to as the "statement"). The statement said that dealers were unable to provide free after-sales maintenance services under the warranty due to infringing acts such as the suspension of car production, the use of the balance of the DMS system, the supply of spare parts and the suspension of 400 phone calls. However, for vehicles that have broken down, dealers will use all channels to provide paid after-sales service with the consent of the owners.

According to the National Enterprise bankruptcy reorganization Information Network, Cheetah car sales companies have filed for bankruptcy one after another. Cheetah car development time is not short, but there is no actual progress in technological research and development, so that today's cheetah models meet the sixth national standards, become the product of the times abandoned. Of course, if Cheetah can become an acquisition target for traditional car companies or new car-building powers and come into being in another way, it may also have a happy ending.

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