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As a dark horse in China's passenger car market, Baojun's brand has become one of the largest annual sales in only eight years, with monthly sales of more than 150000 at its peak, and has been given the title of magic car. With the increasingly fierce competition in the domestic car market, the aura of the magic car on Baojun's head is gradually fading; its recent continuous decline in sales shows that it is an indisputable fact that Baojun has fallen off the altar.

Photo: Pacific Automotive Network

Judging from Baojun's monthly sales figures for the past two years, Baojun's monthly sales have continued to decline since it reached an all-time peak of 152448 vehicles in December 2017. Take Baojun's MPV 730s as an example, which sold about 20, 000 vehicles a month from its launch to 2017, but fell below 20, 000 in January and has continued to decline since then, with only 3430 in June. The same thing happened to its SUV model, which sold just 104021 vehicles in the first half of this year, down 41.9 per cent from a year earlier, while sales of the 530s were even worse, falling more than 60 per cent in the first half.

The sharp decline in Baojun's sales is related to its frequent quality problems. In July this year, due to the calibration of the engine control module (ECU) software, the clutch spring slider of the transmission may be subjected to abnormal impact, and in extreme cases, the power output of the vehicle will be interrupted, which may lead to safety risks. Baojun recalled 20406 2018 Baojun 530 DCT automatic cars manufactured between January 15 and October 11, 2018, and 12252 2017 Baojun 730 DCT automatic cars produced between October 20, 2017 and December 24, 2018.

As early as before, a number of Baojun products were subject to complaints because of quality problems. According to the statistics of the car quality Network, the total number of complaints against Baojun was 3976 this year, while the number of complaints against Baojun 560 reached 6291, making it the hardest-hit area for complaints about Baojun models. The instability of Baojun's quality makes Baojun's reputation decline day by day, which has a great negative impact on sales.

On the other hand, the decline in sales of Baojun is also related to the decline in the price of joint venture brands in recent years and the loss of competitiveness of Baojun in the low-end market. Baojun himself is aware of this, and his company switched to a brand new "diamond label" this year and launched a higher positioning RS5 in an attempt to enhance Baojun's brand image through this kind of packaging. However, the sales volume after the listing of Baojun RS5 has not developed as expected. The starting price of the new car 9.68 deters consumers who are accustomed to Baojun to rely on performance-to-price ratio, and monthly sales are less than 2, 000.

For Baojun, falling off the altar is an indisputable fact, and now the most important thing is how to save the situation, whether to continue to promote the brand or to do a good job in performance-to-price ratio, which will be a major decision that Baojun needs to face next; and Baojun also said that his company is waiting to see whether this way of promotion is really suitable for Baojun's current state. In China, it is easy to explore the brand, but it is difficult to promote the brand, which has been confirmed by many independent brands. And we will continue to pay attention to what kind of decision Baojun will make in the future.

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