China Concept Cars: The 2008 Geely GT And Its Successors

Today in China Concept Cars the 2008 Geely GT, the 2009 Geely GT. and the 2010 Geely Emgrand GT Tiger. These were a line of interesting concept cars with a traditional sports car shape. When the GT came out nobody expected production, but when the Emgrand Tiger GT debuted two years later we weren’t so sure anymore. It looked much closer to production and Geely, after all, had given up the Meirenbao coupe in 2003.

Timeline:
2008: first Geely GT concept debuts on the Beijing Auto Show.
2009: second Geely GT concept debuts on the Shanghai Auto Show.
2010: Geely Tiger GT debuts on the Beijing Auto Show.

The 2008 Geely GT concept

The Geely GT debuted at the 2008 Beijing Auto Show, where I met it in person. In the run-up to the show, Geely released several images of their new concept car, showing the GT thundering down a road.

As was, and is, common at Geely, there was quite a bit self-inflicted confusion about the naming. The official name was Geely GT (吉利GT). However, at the same time it was also called the Geely Tiger (吉利虎). It even had small tiger logo’s on the quarter window. At the time, Chinese media didn’t know what name was the real one, so they just used both, just like Geely did.

To add to the confusion, the GT had new logo on the hood. Chinese media speculated that this logo was designed by Geely for high-end models. They were not that far off. One year later, in 2009, Geely would launch three new brands: Emgrand, GLeagle, and EngLon. The Emgrand brand was positioned the highest and used the logo that was first seem on the 2008 GT concept. Indeed, the successor of the GT was called Geely Emgrand GE GT Tiger. But that’s for later. Now back to the 2008 GT.

It was certainly a looker, with a long low bonnet, headlights atop the fenders, a sharply raked windscreen, a large cabin without a sunroof, a long rear end and wildly shaped rear light units.

The Geely GT on the media day of the 2008 Beijing Auto Show, standing on a rotating platform. It was an eye catching machine, painted in a metallic dark gray paint with black windows and enormous shiny wheels.

The tiger logo, depicting a tiger with its beak open, growling!

The fenders were very wide and bulbous. The rear was tall, making for a racy stance. The rear lights were large and very red, partially surrounded by a thick chrome rim. The exhaust pipe tips were small relative to the car’s size, and there was a racy diffuser in the middle.

There was an English-language ‘GEELY’ badge on the left side of the license plate area.

But the most talked-about design element was the grille. And what a grille it was. It consisted of a chrome bar running between the lights with a V shape in the center. Then it runs down all the way to the road, really. There is no body work under the lowest part of the grille. The inside area has oval cutouts on top and in the middle, and the lower part is all black. The lights are lookers too, positioned atop the fenders. There is no bodywork above and on the inner-side of the lights. Interestingly, this lights-on-fender design idea is now the main design feature of the Lynk & Co lineup.

The Geely GT concept didn’t have an interior. On power, Geely only said it would get a new “3.5 liter V6”, without further specifications. So while wild on design, the GT was very short on details. Happily, that changed one year later on the 2009 Shanghai Auto Show.

On the same 2008 Beijing Auto Show, Geely also unveiled a concept car of a successor to the Meirenbao, called the China Dragon. It had scissor doors. The real thing would go into production in 2009, with normal doors.

The 2009 Geely GT concept

Geely unveiled a new GT concept on the 2009 Shanghai Auto Show, painted in wine red instead of black. Sadly I didn’t go there myself so the pictures are from the Chinese internet, all sources are mentioned below the article.

The new concept looked a little bit closer to production with a toned-down design, a real interior, and information on the power train. Not so close to production were the crazy scissor doors, in the best super car style! Geely had some experience with scissor doors, with the above-mentioned China Dragon concept.

Geely released renderings to the media before the start of the show, showing the new GT concept in front of a dark background and a water-like floor. On the renderings, it looked like the design was toned down more than it really was. Note especially the small wheels.

Again, there was confusion about the name. Geely called it Geely GT and Geely Emgrand GT simultaneously. The Emgrand brand had just been launched, so it made sense to use the GT as an attention grabber for the new brand. But that happened only halfheartedly. They did, however, clean up the Tiger situation. It was no longer called Tiger,  but Geely said its design was inspired by the characteristics of a tiger.

There was new info on the powertrain: the 2009 Geely GT concept was a four-wheel drive PHEV combining a 2.4 liter four-cylinder gasoline engine with an Integrated Starter Generator (ISG) with two electric hub-motors. The gasoline engine powered the front wheels and the hub-motors powered the rear wheels. Geely claimed a total system output of 277 hp and 735 Nm, which was quite impressive. Gearbox was a 6-speed automatic. Naturally, as this was concept, there wasn’t really a power train in the GT, but the idea sounded nice enough.

Electric hub-motors, located within the wheel hubs, have long been an interesting and promising technology for car makers. With the motors away in the wheels, there is more space between the wheels. However, hub motors for cars haven’t really caught on yet, mainly because they are still too heavy. They have caught on with other vehicles, like scooters and golf carts. I had an electric scooter with a hub-motor in Beijing for years and I loved it. The luggage space was huge and repairs were super easy.

The interior was sporty. The dashboard had two large round dials, a small screen, and a racy center console with red buttons. There is a secondary instrument pod atop the center stack. The steering wheel seemed very large. The seats were done in black and red leather.

The rear end looked shortened on the renderings. Actually, the car on the renderings looked quite good, certainly compared to the 2008 concept. But the problem was, it wasn’t real.

The real 2009 Geely GT concept had basically the same proportions as the 2008 concept, and many of the exterior details, like the light units, remained unchanged. The scissor doors were brilliant. Sadly, even today, not a single Chinese car maker has managed to fit these doors on a production car.

At the show in 2009, Geely said the “upcoming” production version of the GT would cost around 140.000 yuan. For comparison, the most expensive variant of the 2009 Geely Meirenbao cost 94.800 yuan.

The interior looked great. Only difference with the rendering was the color of the gear lever knob. It was black there and red here. Note the tiger badge on the quarter window. Same badge as on the 2008 concept, but finished in white on a red background. According to Geely, the car was equipped with a DVD system and a navigation system.

With the doors closes, it was a great looking little sports car. The tiger-inspiration was most visible at the front. According to Geely, the grille was the beak, the lights the eyes, and the lights in the bumper the teeth.

The 2009 concept kept the oddly small exhaust pipes of the 2008 concept.

The tiny exhaust pipes remained the same as on the 2008 concept. Badging: the 2009 car had a GEELY badge on the left and a GT badge on the right.

Sure looks like a tiger! A red tiger, that is.

The 2010 Geely Emgrand GT

The next update of the Geely GT debuted on the 2010 Beijing Auto Show, where I saw it in all its prettiness. The show also marked the launch of my then-new CarNewsChina website, and the GT was one of the first stories.

There were a lot of changes, bringing the GT much closer to production again. For starters, the scissor doors were gone and replaced with conventional doors. The design was cleaned up, especially at the rear, with a new bumper section with larger and round exhaust pipes, making it look much sportier. There was a shipload of new info and specs, and Geely even announced the factory location!

Sadly, the naming remained a bit messy. In most of its press released, it was called the Emgrand GT. But not always. Just take this official media image. It says ‘Emgrand GT’ on the license plate. But the Chinese text reads 吉利虎 GT, or Geely Tiger GT.

The overall design didn’t change much. The front remained the same, but there were some more changes at the back: the light units were new and the lower-bumper section was completely redesigned. Finally, the Geely GT got a set of proper exhaust pipes, located on each side of the ‘diffuser’, which was redesigned as well, and was now smaller than before.

From the side, the main update was the addition of a small cut-out for the door handle. The 2009 concept with scissor doors didn’t have any visible  handles. The wheels were new too, with new alloys and larger brake discs.

The tiger badge remained, but it was now back into its original white color on a black background.

Geely announced detailed specifications on the show, and happily I still have a photo of the spec sheet. To begin with, Geely called the GT a “High-tech and Luxury Sporty Car”. It was not a small car: 4856/1893/1358, with a 2728 wheelbase.

The power train remained the same as in 2009, but Geely disclosed very detailed specs: It was a plug-in hybrid (PHEV), combining a 2.4 liter four-cylinder petrol engine with an Integrated Starter Generator (ISG) with two hub motors. So that’s four motors in total. The 2.4 had 120 kW and 150 Nm. The ISG has 28 kw and 150 Nm. The hub motors had 27.5 kWh and 180 Nm each. Transmission was a 6-speed automatic, and it was four-wheel drive. Total output was 203 kW (277 hp) and 735 Nm.

Geely claimed that output of this complicated system was the same as the output of a not-further specified V8 engine. The GT was also equipped with various safety systems, including electronic stability control (ESC) and ‘BMBS active safety technology’. BMBS stood for ‘Blowout Monitoring and Safety Control System’, and Geely had been working on it since at least 2008. It was basically a tire monitoring system, able to brake automatically when it detected a blowout.

The interior design was unchanged, but much of the red trim was replaced by gray and black. The seats were now mostly black, and the red lighting on the center stack was gone. It sure looked more production ready but also a little bit less wild.

On the show, Geely said production of the GT would start in 2014, which was then still four years away. They also said the GT would be made in a new factory in Jinan, capital of Shandong Province. Geely had, and still has, several facilities there, including factories and an R&D center.

The badging situation had changed again. GT badge left and an Emgrand badge on the right. There was also a fog-light in the bumper.

Sadly, this was the last upgrade of the Geely GT we would ever see. The year 2014 came and went without the GT’s production version. I doubt if Geely ever seriously intended to produce it. I never saw any images of test cars, like we did with the Chery A6CC. The power train never made it to production either, likely because it was just too complex to work.

The Emgrand brand was killed off in 2014 but the name lives on in a series of compact sedans. Until today, June 2022, Geely never launched a new sports car. But they own Lotus now, so perhaps they can use one of those fancy upcoming Lotus EV platforms for a sporty two-door Geely called the GT Tiger Meirenbao.

All right. Like these folks with BYD bags I need a little brake. I’ll be back soon with more stories on China’s automotive history.

Other sources: Sina, Sina, Sina, Autohome, Sohu  ACfun, Sina, Sina, Baidu, Xcar, Sina.