23 February 2011 - Proton is working with a company from China Youngman is rumored to be introducing a new SUV at Auto Shanghai Exhibition in April 2011. Youngman was previously marketed in China by using the Gen2 brand named Europestar and it is named as Europestar RCR (JINGSU) GHK 7160 / GHK 716.
Outside of Malaysia Proton are rivals only to second hand car sales, in China their biggest rivals are themselves. Sales have failed to pick up under the Europestar brand, which was hastily rebranded to Lotus Autos but has still failed to pick up any traction in the market against other joint ventures or even Chinese car companies.
Youngman Auto, primarily a bus maker, saw that the automotive business was the way forward and signed a deal with Proton to introduce their vehicles into China under their own brand, so far they have introduced 3 cars into the Chinese market but plan to launch teh below SUV into China soon:
It’s not entirely clear if this SUV was developed in cooperation with Proton or if Youngman have developed this model under their own steam, its likely that it was a joint creation as Proton have mentioned before that they plan to develop an SUV. According to Chinese media reports this SUV sits on top of the China only Lotus L5 sedan, making the SUV a compact model. An eventual launch date has not been announced but we can expect to see this on show in Shanghai in April.
