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Zhongtai Automobile has brought its own traffic since its birth, and its "reference" model makes Zhongtai brand bear a lot of notoriety on the Internet, but it also makes Zhongtai have a very high brand popularity in a very short period of time. Even let its "tape measure" operation of the products harvest good sales. However, with the change of the concept of market consumption, Zhongtai began to lose its market competitiveness and became more and more urgent on the downhill road.

Since 2012, Zhongtai's growth trend has continued to peak in 2016, with an astonishing 52.48% growth for the whole of 2016, but since reaching a sales peak of nearly 330000 vehicles in 2016, Zhongtai has begun its prelude to three consecutive declines. In 2017, with the overall downturn of the national auto market, Zhongtai officially bid farewell to continuous years of growth, showing a decline of 4.47%. In 2018, the decline expanded sharply to 32.67%. This year, Zhongtai's sales decline is almost out of control, falling by more than 50% in the first half of the year.

The reason why Zhongtai has come to such a situation, in addition to the general environment of the downward car market, the main reason is still due to the problems of the product itself. To find out why Zhongtai's products are not welcomed by the market, we first need to know why Zhongtai is called the largest "ruler department" in China.

In the early days, due to the lack of technology and funds, some Chinese car companies have more or less learned from the designs of foreign mature car companies, in order to please consumers and get more markets. However, with the development in recent years, domestic car companies have begun to have their own family design language, while Zhongtai has always adopted a reference model to rudely "clone" the products of other brands. With the continuous upgrading of car consumption, consumer awareness began to return to the mainstream, and domestic people have more and more respect for intellectual property rights, counterfeit products have become more and more unpopular.

Zhongtai T600

Volkswagen Touareg

The Zhongtai T600, for example, went on sale in 2014. With its Volkswagen Touareg appearance and low price, it sold 126121 vehicles in 2015, accounting for half of Zhongtai's sales. So what is the current situation of this Zhongtai "tape measure" operated product? In the first half of this year, Zhongtai T600 sold only 9368 vehicles, accounting for less than 15 per cent of all Zhongtai brand sales.

Zhongtai SR9

Porsche MACAN

Let's take a look at another high-imitation Zhongtai SR9 launched by the Ruler Department at the end of 2016, which is "borrowed" from Porsche's MACAN. With a 90% familiarity with its body appearance, the car quickly became an online celebrity in 2017 and was jokingly called "Baoshi Tai" by netizens. But sales of the car have halved in 2018 since it reached 20,000 in 2017, and sales were dismal in the first half of this year, with none sold.

Behind the operation of the "tape measure", the quality of Zhongtai Motor is worrying. In recent years, Zhongtai's models have been exposed successively to strange problems such as engine failure lights, abnormal engine noise, engine flameout, battery failure, abnormal gearbox noise, car body leakage, and so on. this makes Zhongtai, which is unpopular because of its reputation as a "shanzhai", more difficult in sales and operation.

Judging from the above, Zhongtai's long-standing copycat road of "one hundred thousand cars, one million face" has come to an end, and Zhongtai seems to be aware of this problem, and its company recently introduced Volkswagen stylist. Launched a new family design style. At present, in addition to the T600, other "shanzhai" models can no longer be seen on Zhongtai Automobile's official website. This time, can Zhongtai get rid of its title of "ruler department" and realize the transformation of the enterprise so as to get on the right track? Let's wait and see!

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