Brilliance BC3 coupé

It is quite uncommon today so far to see appealing car design in China (We meant for pure Chinese carmaker). Most of the designs are inspired by old japanese or korean models. China has developped its car industry for 2 decades now, but still you cannot see sexy design. At most they look classical, if not a little ugly. But the days when Chinese would follow with crappy designs may be over.

Brilliance has learnt from BMW

Fortunately, Brilliance have partenered with a good reference in carmaking, German BMW. And you can sense the german influence in the overall design.

Main specification

The BC3 is 4.48 m long, 1.81 large and 1.39 m high. The petrol engine has a max output of 125 kW, giving it a max speed of 210 km/h. Its performance at the moment are less impressive 0 to 100 km/h in 9.7 seconds. We are far from a Porsche 911, but hey, it's not a Porsche competitor. We expect Chinese sport cars to follow the same commercial path as their Japanese counterparts, as they are both asian, mainly sold in Asia, less known in Western countries, with its own characteristics. And Brilliance want genuine chinese products, the engine is entirely developped inhouse, while inhouse may mean "subcontracted to some foreign ICE reasearch company". The engine is also equipping the Brilliance BS4.

The engine is also equipping the Brilliance BS4. the transmission is a manual 5 speed gearbox, or for potential US market an automatic gearbox. Special attention was paid to the chassis which is according to its manufacturer very stiff, a sport car constraint.

The equipment

here are the default options :
Metal looking paint, power steering, alloy rims, automatic air conditioning. Brilliance has made a good job for the seat which are []. For those of you not good in parking, there is a parking assistant, coupled with the now familiar to everybody back car radar (in China you can buy a kit for 30 US dollars). The roof window and the other windows are electric (of course !). The driver seat has a 6 position memory, this should make you comfortable whileas not necessary in our opinion. The dashbord has many chromes on it.

the sound system is a simple CD player-radio (no mp3?)

For the security features : front airbags and lateral airbags. 3 point belt with pretensionner, ABS and servobrake. The differential are electronically blocked, all the wheels have disc brake.

Theses security features should reassure people who might be shocked by the mediocre crash-test conducted by the Germany base ADAC. Brilliance in a recent interview at the Paris Auto Show, said that they'll plan to come to the USA by 2009 and that they are working hard to meet the US emission requirements. And they will expose at the 2009 Detroit Automobile Show.