*This article is reprinted from the autocarweekly official account.
Author: Joey
Many years ago, a friend of mine bought a Toyota 86. And he further modified the car that originally cost over 200,000 yuan with over 200,000 yuan racing upgrades. I asked him in amazement, “Why are you doing this?” He rolled his eyes at me.
From this eye roll, I understood that he was playing the West Coast! Absolutely authentic West Coast!
In fact, the reason why I was puzzled and confused about the fact that he bought a car and modified it, doubling the car’s price, was mainly because owning a car for household use was still the mainstream idea at that time, and buying a car for oneself to “have fun” was still a very niche demand.
Nowadays, times have changed!
At the Guangzhou Auto Show this morning, the Tank 500 model officially started nationwide pre-sales, which reminded me of a long-awaited trip to Tibet I experienced with Mercedes-Benz last month. During this journey, I encountered many Tank 300 models under the WEY brand. For a newly launched hardcore SUV, such a high “encounter rate” is indeed enough to make me wonder whether Tank 300 has already become a phenomenon-level “legendary car”.
Keep in mind that almost a decade ago, Tibet was still dominated by Land Cruisers and Mitsubishi Pajeros. And now, the frequent appearance of Tank 300 not only indicates that Tibet’s infrastructure can accommodate more car models to explore, but also shows that buying a car to have fun rather than for practical purposes is gradually becoming a “popular demand”.
The urgency of this “popular demand” may not be fully reflected in sales figures, as only waiting time and people willing to wait can roughly reflect users’ love for it.
Only the chips may prevent the sales of Tank 300
How popular is Tank 300? According to sales data from January to September this year, a total of 52,572 units were sold, and in the recently released October sales data, Tank 300 achieved a new high for the month by delivering 9,950 units.
Obviously, from the absolute sales data alone, this is not a particularly impressive result. But don’t forget that Tank 300 is a niche off-road SUV model that is not designed for everyone. Moreover, the sales of cars nowadays also depend on the “mood” of chips.
Currently, there is hardly any automaker that can announce that they are not short of chips, and the Tank 300 has also suffered from the “chip shortage” problem. Currently, the waiting period for buying a car from a dealer is basically three months. In other words, what people are buying is a futures contract and what they are waiting for is a dream. For those who are not willing to wait, they can try their luck in the second-hand market, of course, at a higher price than a new car (which is quite ridiculous).
The power of this “dream” is so strong that it is unanimously praised. In the first half of 2021, the Tank 300 occupied the first place in the “China Passenger Car Brand Net Recommendation Rate Ranking” produced by an automotive research institute. The respondents participating in this survey indicated that the proportion of recommending the Tank 300 to the surrounding population may be more than 70%.
It should be noted that this kind of word-of-mouth marketing, especially spontaneous word-of-mouth marketing, has always been an important battlefield that new forces, pure electric vehicle categories, etc. must compete for. A traditional tough SUV model with a 2.0T internal combustion engine can stand out in such a word-of-mouth war, indicating that its product strength has directly hit the deepest part of users’ hearts and seduced you to ultimately give up your wallet.
You may have noticed my wording just now: traditional internal combustion engine vehicles and tough SUVs. How popular can this type of product be? WEY is not the first to launch this type of product, why can it sell well?
In fact, timing is very important.
Finding the right timing is sometimes more important than creating the right product
How difficult is it to grasp timing, an unpredictable thing?
In 2009, Great Wall Motors once launched a small SUV with a very eye-catching and square shape – Great Wall Coolbear. This car had a cute design style, which was biased towards the Japanese style, and received very good market reputation when it was first launched.
But reputation belongs to reputation, while sales belong to sales. At that time, although the category of cars was already very rich, people’s aesthetic and demand for cars still remained in a conventional stage. Family cars were basically still in the stage of purchasing the first car to meet all the demands. Therefore, this small car could not gain an advantage in actual sales. In just over a year, Great Wall Coolbear was quickly discontinued.If put in today’s era and transplanted with a pure electric power system, the fate of such cute-themed cars would be completely different. Obviously, timing is the most crucial factor for any product.
Speaking of Tank 300, its design reminds us of the famous tough off-road vehicles like Jeep Wrangler. Therefore, it is not a completely new design and category. So, WEY is not the first Chinese automaker to want to produce this type of product either.
A few years ago, Beijing Automotive tried this and released the BJ40 and the BJ80 models which are reminiscent of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class. (In fact, the models with BJ badge have formed a series with 30, 40, 80, and 90 models of different levels.) But for the same reason of timing, these models did not get better sales.
Taking the best-selling model BJ40 as an example, it sold only 2,690 units in September, which was the highest sales volume so far this year. But it only crossed the 2,000 unit mark in July. Actually, in terms of level, BJ40 is more like a small SUV (targeting Jimny as a competitor) and is not a perfect match for Tank 300.
The bigger BJ80 sold even worse, with a total sales volume of less than 1,000 units in the first three quarters of this year. Obviously, compared to Tank 300, BJ series is not on the same level at all.
Of course, you must have a question now, if you say that the timing is not right and previous models of the same type as Tank 300 did not sell well, why is only Tank 300 selling well now, while BJ series is still not selling well?
Having the right timing is one aspect, but those who “play with cars” cannot play with just any car, and playing too much is also a burden. Therefore, choosing the most suitable car to “play with” is the choice of most ordinary people. At this time, we cannot ignore the overall product strategy of Tank 300.
In terms of price, all of Tank 300’s sales prices are concentrated in the price range of RMB 200,000 to 300,000. For off-road enthusiasts who do not have too much disposable funds but want to experience having the “three locks” (strictly speaking, Tank 300 only has two locks in the front and rear, the middle one is a transfer case), this price is very suitable.
At the same time, for off-road enthusiasts with sufficient funds, the Tank 300 is also suitable. Buying and modifying it can significantly improve its off-road capability, making it possible to “play on the West Coast” without worrying about damage. In other words, thanks to WEY’s excellent pricing strategy, the Tank 300 has a wide audience.
At the same time, in terms of market segmentation, WEY has fully made choices, ignoring the highly competitive urban SUV market and allowing the Tank 300 to focus on the niche off-road market. This has allowed it to gain an advantage in the competition with the Wrangler and BJ80. After all, the price of the BJ80 ranges from ¥298,000 to ¥398,000, which completely sets it apart from the price range of the Tank 300.
With this price as the basis, adding several thousand yuan can buy a Wrangler. However, it is unlikely that any potential consumer would choose the Wrangler over the BJ80. After all, the monthly sales of the Wrangler are also less than 1,000 units (923 units in September). Obviously, in such an environment, it is even more difficult to stimulate people’s desire to buy the BJ80.
Of course, the more modern and comfortable interior design, better materials, and improved riding experience, as well as many original modification options provided by the manufacturer (including the launch of models like the Cyber Tank 300), have all made more people willing to buy it.
Obviously, Tank 300 was lucky to meet an era when people began to take driving as their hobby instead of just a means of transportation. More importantly, precise pricing mechanism and product strategy have given more people enough reasons to buy it.
However, such opportunities are not only open to the Tank or WEY brands. If other manufacturers can seize the changes of the times and launch suitable products, they can also replicate the success of the Tank 300.
Therefore, I say the success of Tank 300 clearly represents the advent of a new era. And today, we are starting the pre-sale of Tank 500, which evidently further propels and accelerates the pace of this era.
This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.