Great Wall Motors arrives at Auto Shanghai 2007 in a notably different position from its Chery counterpart elsewhere on the show floor. Where Chery’s presentation foregrounds independent engineering capability and Pininfarina-styled production cars, Great Wall’s Baoding-based stand presents an expanding portfolio whose individual models continue to draw direct comparison with Western and Japanese reference vehicles. Founded in 1976, GWM had publicly listed in Hong Kong (SEHK: 2333) and built up its commercial position through SUV and pickup production for the domestic Chinese market — the company entered the European market in September 2006 by exporting Hover SUVs and Deer pickups (categorised as commercial vehicles to bypass EU passenger-car safety regulations of the time).
The headline reveal at the Shanghai stand is the production version of the Great Wall Peri (also marketed as Jing Ling in domestic markets and GWperi for export), a sub-A-segment city car that European observers immediately compare to the second-generation Fiat Panda. The Peri had been previewed in concept form at December 2006, and Fiat’s Italian legal team had already begun preparing copyright infringement filings before the Shanghai show opened. The dispute would eventually reach the Tribunal of Turin in 2008, with the court ruling that the Peri “does not look like a different car but is a Panda with a different front end” and banning import of the model into the European Union, with fines of EUR 15,000 for the first imported example and EUR 50,000 per subsequent unit. A parallel Chinese case at the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People’s Court would reach the opposite conclusion, dismissing the patent claim on the grounds that «consumers would not be confused between the two».
Beyond the Peri, the stand presents the Hover SUV (Haval Hafu in domestic markets) in updated form, the Florid hatchback (Xuanli) which European motoring journalists compare to the Toyota ist, the Coolbear (Kuxiong) compact MPV widely noted for its first-generation Scion xB visual cues, and the Wingle pickup (Fengjun) on the company’s body-on-frame ladder-chassis architecture. The 2.8-litre common-rail diesel engine displayed alongside the pickup line is acknowledged by Great Wall as Isuzu-derived in its base architecture, with internal modifications by GWM engineering. The Sing SUV — subject of an earlier 2003 design dispute when Nissan considered legal action over visual similarity to the Paladin (X-Trail platform export variant) — remains in the lineup with revised styling.
European trade press coverage of the Great Wall stand at Shanghai 2007 is markedly more critical than coverage of Chery, focusing on intellectual property concerns rather than product progress. French automotive site Caradisiac headlines its coverage «Shànghai Motor Show: Great Wall Motors, copies toujours conformes» (Shanghai Motor Show: Great Wall Motors, the copies still match), establishing the framing that would persist in Western coverage of the brand for several years. The contrasting English-language assessment is more measured but converges on similar concerns: design originality remains the principal commercial barrier preventing GWM from broader Western-market access through standard passenger-car channels (the Hover and Deer EU sales had been routed through commercial-vehicle Type Approval to bypass equivalent passenger-car regulatory and design-protection scrutiny).
In retrospective context, Auto Shanghai 2007 represents an inflection moment for Great Wall’s strategic trajectory. The Peri-Panda dispute that crystallises around the show would be litigated for the following four years before Great Wall’s 2011 announcement that it would not appeal the Italian ruling. Over the same period the company would invest substantially in independent design capability, leading to the Haval H6 launch at the 2010 Guangzhou Auto Show — described in industry coverage as the first Great Wall production model not to draw direct visual comparison with a foreign reference. By 2013 the Haval brand would be spun out as an independent SUV marque, the Voleex passenger-car nameplate retired around 2016, and GWM’s subsequent Wey (premium, 2017), Ora (electric, 2018) and Tank (luxury off-road, 2021) sub-brands would establish the multi-brand strategy that came to characterise the company through the 2010s and 2020s. The 2007 Shanghai showing, viewed from this distance, was the last major auto show at which Great Wall presented a portfolio dominated by direct foreign-design references — and the first at which European IP concerns became central to mainstream coverage.
