Ebro wants to replicate the success of MG: its cars will be Chinese and will have very little Spanish

Chery’s arrival in Spain had been brewing little by little, simmering since September 2023. But last April, the Chinese group decided that the time had come to go ahead. He put into a new gear, fanned the flame and confirmed that he was staying with the old Nissan facilities in Barcelona.

The Omoda and Jaecoo units will come from there. The first is a brand that has begun its journey with the Omoda 5, an SUV that will have combustion, hybrid and electric versions and that wants to fight as in the lower and middle part of the market with really interesting options in relation to quality/price.

For its part, Jaecoo will offer high-end SUVs. In this case, they also want to offer themselves as an alternative that gives more than their rivals but for less money. Of course, the barrier to entry to this company will already be high.

But in addition to all this, Chery has more plans for the Nissan plant. From there we will also see cars leaving with the badge of Ebro. In its day, this company filled a good part of the Spanish countryside with cheap tractors and some investors had long proposed to rescue it.

Now, we know that we will have cars on the market with the Ebro logo. But, from Ebro, it will have little.

Spanish brand, Chinese car

In 2022, the rebirth of Ebro was already planned for 2023. Jaton Racing, Api Brothers, Btech and Nexus Projectes They said they had reached an agreement to put an electric pickup on the market in a single year. The doubts, however, did not take long to arrive.

In their presentation, those responsible for the project said they could manufacture 40,000 units of its pickup based on the Nissan Navara. In Europe, Ford is the manufacturer that sells the most cars of this type and places 50,000 units annually. Experts like Guillermo García Alfonsín made publicize their criticisms in X.

We don’t know how much of that movement simply wanted to capture the spotlight or how much was real. The truth is that it seems that Ebro will come back to life but he will do so in a much more competitive field. And it will come because, really, it will be a third Chery brand.

Presented as the Ebro S700a plug-in hybrid SUV, the new Spanish car is born on the skeleton of the Chery Tiggo 7 Pro and Chery Tiggo 8 Pro (Ebro S800), as explained in Hybrids and Electrics. Under the name Ebro, an SUV will be sold that promises 80 km of completely electric autonomy and engines that will generate 350 HP to compete with the Toyota Rav4 in its plug-in hybrid version.

To carry out the project, the same process will be followed as with the Omoda 5 or the Jaecoo that are sold in Europe with Catalan origin. The vehicles will arrive in kits of parts produced in China and the Nissan factory He will only be in charge of finishing the puzzle and distribute the finished units throughout Europe.

The strategy is similar to that SAIC applies with MG. The Chinese group bought the brand and has used a name and an image that was already popular in the European market to eliminate possible prejudices that existed towards its models, which are much cheaper than those of the competition.

Chery will do something similar with Ebro. Of course, it must be taken into account that Ebro’s commercial journey, especially outside Spanish borders, was much shorter than that of MG. All in all, it is very cheap for the Chinese group to try this alternative since it is really using cars that it already produces and will change the name. Whether it works or not, time will tell.

Image | Ebro

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