'Most important car on earth'

Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor made 180,000 minivans and multi-purpose vehicles in 2013. [Photo / China Daily]

Little-known Liuzhou is now a giant in minivans

A Forbes magazine story in 2010 said the Wuling Sunshine minivan is "the most important car on earth" because it is "the choice for China's small business owners and farmers, who use it to haul everything from electronics to sugarcane".

The birthplace of that vehicle is Liuzhou, a city far less famous than Changchun, Shanghai or Guangzhou on China's auto map.

But it ranks first among all Chinese cities in per capita automobile output.

With 1 million urban residents it now makes more than 2 million vehicles a year, nearly 10 percent of the national total, and annual production is growing 20 to 30 percent.

Shanghai-GM-Wuling and Dongfeng Liuzhou Motor are the two leading automakers in the industrial city in the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Both target a fast-growing market - the vast number of villages, counties and small cities in China. The Wuling Sunshine is the masterpiece of SGMW.

Liuzhou's two automakers produced and sold about 61 percent of the minivans in China last year at prices ranging from 50,000 yuan ($8,200) to 80,000 yuan.

Dongfeng Liuzhou, founded in 1954 with 3,000 workers, made 180,000 minivans and multi-purpose vehicles that carried the badges of Fengxing, Lingzhi and Jingyi, as well as 40,000 heavy trucks with Cummins engines, in 2013. Its sales revenues totaled 16.5 billion yuan.

Dongfeng Liuzhou did not produce minivans and MPVs until 2001.

That year its output was only 2,000 vehicles, but production has risen by 30 to 40 percent each year since.

The right market

"We focus on the right market with very competitive prices," said Ceng Juhang, sales manager at the company. "The foreign brands aim at well-off urban residents, leaving the vast rural and county markets to us."

The Chinese government wants to urbanize rural areas by developing local industries in towns and small cities instead of promoting more megacities, giving automakers like SGMW and Dongfeng Liuzhou an enormous and expanding market, analysts said.

The 300 million migrant workers working and living in cities of various size and another 300 million rural laborers set to be released from the countryside by the impending land reform and urbanization make up one of the largest and fastest-growing consumer groups in the world.

That includes buyers of vehicles like the Wuling Sunshine.

Assembly line at Shanghai-GM-Wuling in Liuzhou where the nation's top-selling brand is made. [Photo / China Daily]