Chery outsells Honda and Mazda combined in UK after less than a year

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Chery brand reached 2 percent market share less than one year after UK arrival.

It logged 3,212 sales in July, 300 more than Honda and Mazda put together.

Sister brands include Jaecoo, which has two models in top 10 best-sellers list.

Launching a new car brand is supposed to take years. Chery appears to have skipped that chapter. Less than a year after registering its first customer cars in Britain, the Chinese automaker has already grabbed a 2 percent market share, and last month sold more cars than Honda and Mazda combined.

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July was Chery’s strongest month yet. The company registered 3,212 SUVs, according to Britain’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), comfortably beating Honda ‘s 1,362 and even edging past Honda and Mazda put together, with the Japanese pair managing a combined 2,912 registrations.

Related: Chery’s Reborn Land Rover Freelander Wants Half Its Sales To Come From Abroad

It also outsold Citroen , Dacia, Suzuki and several other long-established European and Japanese brands. Even year-to-date, despite only beginning UK deliveries last September and not completing its current SUV-only lineup until March, Chery has already amassed 21,191 registrations. Citroen – active in the UK since 1919 – moved 18,324.

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The speed of Chery’s rise is astonishing. The company officially launched in Britain last August before recording its first customer registrations the following month, growing its range of Tiggo SUVs to four by this past spring. In less than 12 months, it has gone from complete unknown to genuine volume player, and it’s only going to get bigger if models like the new Freelander hit British shores.

Twice As Many Buyers As Toyota

That’s impressive enough on its own, but the picture becomes even crazier when you add Chery’s sister brands. Omoda contributed another 3,403 registrations in July while Jaecoo piled on 5,502. Together, the three brands shifted 12,117 vehicles during a month in which Toyota only secured 6,653 sales, and VW bagged 14,054.

Jaecoo has arguably been the surprise package. Its Jaecoo 7, affectionately dubbed the ‘Temu Range Rover’ by some corners of the internet for its no-doubt intended similarity to a certain British SUV brand’s metal, became the first Chinese car ever to top the UK’s monthly sales chart when it claimed the number one spot in March. It currently sits third in the year-to-date model rankings, proving that success wasn’t a one-month fluke. In the July table, it ranks fourth, three spots ahead of its Jaecoo 5 little brother.

An Omen For America

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British buyers aren’t the only ones paying attention. Across the Atlantic, Ford CEO Jim Farley has already warned employees that Chinese brands are likely to reach America within the next 5-10 years , even with today’s tariffs and regulatory barriers slowing their arrival.

Watching Chery’s progress in Britain, it’s easy to understand why. If a brand can arrive from nowhere and start outselling household names inside a year, Detroit has every reason to wonder what happens when those same companies finally gain meaningful access to the US market.

Data: SMMT, Images: Chery

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