Financially impossible
The plan to build supercar Hongqi S9 in Italy seems to be canceled after much uncertainty. Silk, which was responsible for production, has withdrawn.
According to reports from Automotive News Europe, the Silk Sports Car Company simply cannot make ends meet. One of the reasons is that the government of the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna does not dare to make a promised contribution of several million euros.
It doesn’t come as a complete surprise, because the plans seemed to go wrong earlier. At the beginning of 2021, it was announced that the Chinese Hongqi S9, then still a concept car, had to go into production in Italy. The production version appeared later that year, underlining that the car would be built in Italy. Last year that turned out to be more difficult than expected, although the Italian/Chinese joint venture Silk-FAW later reported that it would work out. That now seems to be incorrect, because Silk is said to have withdrawn from the project.
This raises the question of whether we will ever see the S9 in real life. That’s a shame, because it’s a pretty spectacular device. The Hongqi S9 is a plug-in hybrid with a 4.0-liter V8, which delivers a whopping 1,419 horsepower in total. Hongqi itself is a brand from the stables of the Chinese giant FAW. Since last year it has also been active in the Netherlands, with the electric SUV Hongqi E-HS9.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl