China’s Great Wall Motors to Build Cars in Bulgaria

Chinese automaker Great Wall Motors is planning to start building cars in Europe in a new joint venture with a Bulgarian partner near the city of Lovech. The project was announced during a meeting on Tuesday between the Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev and two of Great Wall's Vice Presents, the government said in a statement. According to Reuters, Bulgarian media have reported that Great Wall's investment partner is most probably a local firm called Litex. The Bulgarian government said that Great Wall will invest approximately €80 million to build the new car plant at Lovech, which is located about 170 km northeast of the country’s capital city, Sofia. The Chinese-Bulgarian joint venture, which will employee around 1,500 workers, is scheduled to begin in early 2009.

Great Wall Motors, whose GWPeri minicar was recently banned from Europe because its appearance was ruled to be too similar to that of the Fiat Panda, is considered China’s largest sport utility vehicle maker. As reported here on Carscoop -see here- , over the past few months, the Chinese company has being patenting designs of various cars whose appearance is conspicuously similar to Japanese models at the European Patent Office.