Supposed to have been revealed at the Kyalami Festival of Motoring, the competition to pick a name for Chery's first ever bakkie closes at midnight on Monday (31 August).
The almost production-ready KP31 earlier this year at Chery’s test track outside its factory in Wuhu. Picture: Charl Bosch
In a move similar to Australia’s, Chery has shortlisted the names South Africans can vote on as part of a competition to reveal the denominator of the KP31 bakkie.
Suggestion box overflowed
Announced earlier this month, the brand confirmed at the Kyalami Festival of Motoring on Thursday (27 August) that more than 20 000 recommendations had been received upon the opening of the competition more than a week ago.
While it was supposed to announce the name at the Kyalami showpiece, a final decision couldn’t be made. As such, voting has been extending till midnight on Monday on Chery South Africa’s website.
Selected at random, the winner will get R100 000 towards the purchase of any new Chery vehicle, as well as the possibly of travelling with the brand to its hometown of Wuhu in China in October.
Final choices
Whereas the winning name in Australia turned out to be Stockman, in South Africa, the final options are more traditional as per Chery insisting on a local term being selected.
As such, the six finalists South Africans can vote on are:
- Bakkie;
- Brahman;
- Chief;
- Grootman;
- Nduna;
- Orca.
“We could have introduced this bakkie with a name decided elsewhere, but we wanted to give South Africans a meaningful role in its story,” Chery South Africa National Marketing Manager, Verene Petersen, said in a statement.
“South Africans are inventive, expressive and rarely short of an opinion, particularly when it comes to their cars. The winning entry will go beyond the competition itself. It will become part of Chery’s journey in this country.”
Known so far
As with the Stockman, the KP31 will use a plug-in hybrid 2.5-litre turbodiesel engine outputting 350kW/800Nm.
According to carsales.com.au, the Stockman has the following dimensions:
- Length: 5 450mm;
- Wheelbase: 3 250mm;
- Width: 2 010mm;
- Height: 1 890mm
The Australian publication further reports the Stockman as having a tow rating of 3 500kg, an all-electric range of 100km and a payload of 1 000kg.
Riding on a new ladder-frame platform, the Stockman, and for that matter the eventual South African-spec KP31, will have a low range transfer case and up to 247mm of ground clearance.
Known as the P3X in China, where it sold under the Rely brand similar to the R08 – previously called Himla – exact details about the KP31 haven’t so far been confirmed.
No rush for local production
However, what is known as that the newcomer could be produced at Chery’s Rosslyn plant outside Pretoria, despite Chery Executive Vice-President, Zhang Guibing, telling the media in July at the plant’s acquisitioning from Nissan that it is no hurry to make it a core model.
“We will start to introduce different pick-ups in South Africa from next year and definitely consider producing the most popular model here,” he said.
“We can’t build all of them here. But when one model is big enough in terms of numbers, it will make local manufacturing more economical.”
Initially, the facility will first produce the Tiggo Cross and sister brand’s Jaecoo’s J5 and Jetour T-Series from the second half of 2027.
