- Would it surprise you if I told you
that you've never heard
of one of the biggest car companies in the world?
(car engine revs)
I'm talking about Geely.
Now the badge might be only 30 years old,
but in that time,
they managed to sell millions of cars.
Win an FIA manufactures cup
and set a lap record at the Nurburgring.
But how in the world,
did they go from making junky cars in the 90s
to buying Volvo?
And what made their founders so mad,
that he drove a steamroller
over an entire lot of cars?
Hold on your sweaty bums
cause we're about to find out.
This is everything you need to know
to get up to speed on Geely.
(upbeat music)
Chapter One, the legend of Lee.
It all started back in 1963,
in a small Chinese village called Zhejiang.
I'm gonna say a lot of words wrong here.
I'm gonna do my best,
but a lot of these are going to be pronounced wrong.
It all started back in 1963,
in a small Chinese village called Zhejiang.
Where a young boy was born by the name of Li Shufu.
Li was an ambitious kid,
and often said outrageous things to make people laugh.
Kinda like me.
I can relate.
Li would ride his bike around town,
you know, normal kids stuff,
take portraits of people and sell them for money.
Normal,it was a valuable first business
for a young entrepreneur.
And after that, he took up recycling precious metals,
which proved to be more successful than photography.
And by 1986, he was doing
what most of us were doing in our early 20s.
Selling our hugely successful metal recycling business,
to start a refrigerator company.
This man knows how to make a more money baby.
But by the end of the 80s,
Li was bored with the refrigerator business
and donated it to the local government.
You know, like you do.
Sure he was making money but he wanted something knew,
something less competitive.
He wanted a market he could really scale up.
I'm talking about the car market.
Carbide you're factoring,
is one of the most competitive markets out there.
Yeah, maybe in the US or Europe,
but in the 90s, In China,
the market was just starting up.
A few foreign badges have been able to sell cars in China,
but there were no privately owned car companies.
The Chinese government owned all of them at this point.
They sold models that were designed,
manufactured in China,
but they also sold re badged foreign cars,
which were considered exotics.
And by exotics I mean,
like second gen Passats.
Which sold in China for 29 years,
that's longer than Nolan's whole life.
Needless to say many people thought,
Li was riding the cuckoo train crazy Berg.
He even went to a manufacturer
who provided parts for Shanghai Volkswagen.
And was hoping to sign a contract,
but when the man in charge heard Lee's plan,
the dude literally left the room without saying a word.
He ghosted him in person.
That's cold man, that's ice cold.
Now despite the overwhelming odds against him,
he remained undeterred
and felt confident in his ability to design a car.
Li said, "cars are just two couches on four wheels,
"How hard can it be?"
That is a literal quote from the dude,
I wanna put that on a shirt.
Cars are just two couches with four wheels.
Have truer words ever been smoking?
I don't know.
But since cars are proving difficult,
Li went to the next best thing.
He bought an old motorcycle factory,
that was on the brink of bankruptcy
and started producing his own motorcycles.
Making it the first privately owned
motorcycle company ever in China's whole history.
And China has a lot of history.
I think there's a restaurant in China,
that was established in the year four,
I'm not making that up.
The Year four.
He named the company Geely,
which roughly translates to propitious,
which roughly translates to
indicating a good chance of success.
So propitious,now the Avengers endgame here
was not to keep making motorcycles
but to produce the opposite of a motorcycle.
I'm talking about a luxury sedan.
There's a problem though.
No one in the factory knew how to make one.
So Li bought a Mercedes E 280,
and started taking it apart.
He studied and reassembled it piece by piece,
to fully understand the precision of its engineering.
Then he bought a different car a home key.
To provide a chassi and engine for his prototype.
Creatively named Geeley number one,
this car, how do you say?
Um,
was not very good.
It looked bad, drove bad,
broke down a bunch.
And Li quickly realized
that building a luxury car, for his first car,
might not have been the least ambitious idea.
So, Li turn his focused to making cars,
that everyday Chinese citizens could afford.
I mean, just simply owning a car
was seen as a luxury in China at the time
and even the cheapest cars on the market.
I'm talking Suzuki altos Daihatsu Chirades,
rap worths of $13,000.
That's 24 K, in today's money.
Li wanted to make these hatchbacks better,
but more importantly,
he wanted to sell them cheaper.
So, like the Mercedes E 280.
He bought a few Chirades,
and took them apart piece by piece,
and began to make them his own.
Chapter two, a crushing defeat.
On August 8 1998.
The very first production Geely model rolled off the line,
the Haoqing which translates to ambition,
featuring a 1.8 liter Toyota four banger,
the same engine as the Chirade.
It only made 83 teenage horsepowers.
But for such a small hatch.
It was pretty pretty pretty.
Pretty good.
Unfortunately, though.
Pretty good.
Didn't matter because no one bought them.
Okay, they looked exactly like that's of Chirades
except the build quality was worse.
The interior was full of hard plastic.
The paint was terrible,
and there were huge gaps in the panels,
which let water into the cab.
We had a huge premiere party
and only one person showed up.
He got so mad ,that he took a steamroller
and drove over all 100 cars that he's made.
That is a true story.
That is some Enzo Ferrari type stuff.
Down and out, but not down for the count.
Li did what all of us would do.
The dude started making buses under the name Boeing.
That's until the Boeing called him and was like,
hey man, you can't do that.
So he quickly went back to the name, Geely,
and while going back,
Li would turn to the drawing board,
determined to make his dream.
The Haoqing, finally a success.
Debuting in 1999.
The much improved new Haoqing started selling.
They're infinitely more reliable
than the first generation
and provided cheap means of transportation to people,
who in the past couldn't afford,
a cheap means of transportation.
Geely started turning a profit
and before long,
they bought a second factory
and started producing a new model,
the Meir which translates to
♪Beautiful day ♪
I don't like you too.
Geely like you too,
you are allowed to like him but I don't.
Up until this point Geely,
had been operating in a gray area of Chinese law.
Okay, they weren't fully allowed
to produce cars as a private company.
But everything changed in 2001.
Six years after Post Malone was born
when China joined the World Trade Organization.
Geely was now a fully privately owned company.
But during this time, Geely got to work on building
the first self developed sports car,
in Chinese automotive history.
It was called (foreign language)
Which translates to auspicious beauty Leopard.
And a 1.5 liter Toyota Motor
and a five speed manual gearbox,
which seems like it could be a decent car.
But again, it didn't matter.
Toyota who'd been supplying Geely,
decided to double the retail price
of their engines making it financially impossible
to continue with the develop of their sports car.
So left with no other choice.
Geely began developing an engine of their own.
Something similar to the four cylinder design
of the Toyota Effie.
These little Geely econo boxes,
sold like frickin hotcakes.
And over the next decade,
Geely became a ubiquitous brand.
They were selling 140,000 cars a year and in 2009,
Ford announced that they were selling
the Volvo brand to Geely for $1.5 billion with a b.
This was huge news.
A company that 10 years before
couldn't even sell one car.
Was now buying one of the most recognizable car brands
in the world.
Yeah, it's Seems like a bunch of luck,
but what if I told you Li had planned this all out
from the very start?
Chapter three, Sweden the deal.
$1.5 billion hairs for a legacy car company Volvo.
and in truly fashion he let Volvo remain
pretty much independent.
And allow them to continue designing
and producing their own cars with minimal oversight.
Sure, it would have been more cost efficient
to produce baubles in China,
but Li kept the factories in Sweden and Belgium open.
Appeasing the homeys at Volvo,
and all of their unions.
In 2010,the deal is finalized
and Geely started using Volvo technology
to make their own cars much, much better.
Not only were they able to upgrade
the existing Gili econo boxes,
but Li was finally able to achieve his lifelong goal,
of developing luxury cars,
and it couldn't have come in a better time.
Chinese citizens were becoming wealthier.
They wanted an affordable luxury car,
that could give them as the kids say, "clout."
In 2015 Geely debute the Bo Rui.
This large family sedan was a cancelled Volvo concept
that found new life with Geely.
It features different trim levels
and engine options including a 1.8 liter turbo,
3.5 liter V six and a hybrid engine
capable of 261 horsepowers.
I know that's not sports car territory,
but as we've learned time and time again,
it didn't matter,
because Geely was,
about to launch an all new brand dedicated entirely
to sports cars.
Chapter four, a lynk to the future.
In 2016, Geely launched Lynk & Co
using the CMA platform designed by Volvo.
They developed a front wheel drive 03,
named after the year that I graduated from high school.
This feisty little compact comes with
a few power training transmission options,
including a two liter turbo ,
four cylinder,
makes 190 horsepowers
but the hot version.
The 03 plus, comes with a 254 horsepower.
Turbocharged inline four
made into a seven speed dual clutch
with them fuckin paddle shifty boys.
Geely wanted to prove their sports car brand,
on a global scale.
So they entered an 03 into a race
that Volvo was known for win.
The touring Car championships.
Using Volvo's connections,
Geely contacted a race team,
that have been working with the Swedes since 2003.
Cyan Racing, you may know them
by what they used to be called,
Polestar.
(upbeat music)
A little history on science.
They want a bunch of touring car championships
in the late 90s through the early 2000s,
with some of the sickest Volvo's ever.
A super touring 850 and an S 40.
Both with five cylinder motors
which are right up there with my personal face.
And starting in 2018.
They use the Lynk & Co 03 as their platform.
The Cyan racing 03 TCR makes 350 horsepowers
And help Cyan win.
The WTCR manufacturers cup in 2019.
Making the first Chinese company
to win an FIA sanctioned race.
And in early 2019 Volvo performance division,
started working on a 528 horsepower
per road car concept of the lynk 03.
And I just wanna point out that,that
this is an almost 600 horsepower four cylinder motor.
Impressive, pretty impressive.
Now, it was this car driven by
team driver Thed Bjork,
which is a sick name.
I don't even know Thed was a name.
Well, all Thed did a lap
at the Nurburgring.
In an insane seven minutes and 20 seconds.
It broke both the lap record
for fastest front wheel drive car
and the Ford or production vehicle record.
That's frickin nuts.
And that's why we did this episode.
You guys need to know who these guys are
because their future is fast.
We learned a lot researching this episode.
I was fortunate after making new friend
and talk to him.
Shout to Lulu.
- More power baby.
- I think you're better.
If you wanna learn more about Chinese car culture,
check out this episode of wheelhouse.
I love you