Over the wall, over the Iron Curtain
It’s going fast, isn’t it, with those Chinese cars. Within a few years they have gone from rarity to everyday appearance in the Netherlands, but that certainly does not apply to this Great Wall Voleex C30.
Thanks to Lynk & Co, BYD, Nio, MG and many other brands, the Chinese car has now really arrived in Europe. In a few years we will know who stays and who disappears, but the gap left by the latter will undoubtedly be filled by other newcomers. A brand that we are not yet familiar with here is Great Wall, which, like roughly half of the once popular Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands, is named after the famous Chinese Wall. According to our own research, the other half is called ‘Rose Garden’, but it is said that there is no car brand yet.
Anyway: Great Wall is not just a brand, but even a real car manufacturer. It is truly a standalone company that was China’s sixth largest car maker in 2021, according to Globaldata.com. That is not something you shout from the rooftops as a company, but it does mean that Great Wall is still a very large player in hard numbers. Great Wall was founded in 1984 and in 2010 introduced the car you see here, the Voleex C30.
You could just overlook it, because the Voleex is not striking at all. Its neat little carriage doesn’t resemble any specific other model, but it doesn’t actually have anything that makes it instantly recognizable as Great Wall, or anything special at all. You can bet that it is indeed special to come across this car in the Netherlands and with a Dutch license plate, because we rarely see gray imports from China. It is therefore suspected that he did not come directly from his home country, but came to our country via Bulgaria. According to the Wikipedia page about this model – sorry! – there was a company that imported them new. The red Voleex C30 rolled off the production line in 2012, came to the Netherlands in 2016 and has not left the side of its first Dutch owner ever since. Apparently the car does not cause many headaches and that is not surprising, because the engine is said to come from Toyota. The 1.5 delivers 105 hp, great for a vehicle that weighs less than 1,200 kg. The condition of the car seems quite nice, but there is clearly no question of being pampered. For example, it is quite dirty, and the clear coat of the hood is peeling off on a fairly extensive scale.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl