A Landwind X7 SUV, seen in Beijing in 2016, with Hebei Province license plates. The good X7 was painted in a light shade of green with black and silver pillars and the factory multispoke alloy wheels.
The Landwind X7 debuted to much scandal in 2015. It was a near-perfect copy of the Land Rover Evoque. Design was very similar and size was basically exactly the same.
Range Rover Evoque 5-door: 4365/1900/1635, wheelbase is 2660 and kerb weight 1850 kilo. Landwind X7: 4420/1910/1630, wheelbase is 2670 and kerb weight 1775 kilo.
Landwind was a Chinese car maker jointly owned by Jiangling Motors and Changan Auto, both joint venture partners of Ford, with Jiangling-Ford and Changan-Ford respectively. Ford owned Land Rover-Range Rover until 2008 when they sold it on to the TATA conglomerate of India.
The Landwind brand appears to be dead today. The company’s website is down and the only car that is still officially on sale is the Landwind Rongyao, although I can’t find any dealer price information anymore.
There is a large government-led restructuring operation going on in China’s automotive industry, with many brands closing down or transferred to larger automakers. Landwind appears to be one of the victims.
The Landwind X7 received a small facelift in 2018 and remained on the market until 2020. The green car that I saw in 2016 is, obviously, a pre-facelift example.
The interior of the Landwind X7 was kind of classy and it was only partially a copy of the Evoque. Either Landwind wasn’t able to copy it totally or they thought they could do a better job. Probably the latter. The interior came with a 10.2 inch screen, a flat-bottomed steering wheel, pretty fake-leather seats and a lot of fake-wood trim.
The Landwind X7 was powered by a 2.0 turbocharged patrol engine sourced from Shenyang-Mitsubishi. Output was 190 hp and 250 Nm. It wasn’t very fast, top speed was 170 km/h and 0-100 took 11.25 seconds.
The motor was mated to an eight-speed automatic gearbox. At the time, it was quite special for a small Chinese automaker to have an eight-speeder. Most competitors had only 5 or 6-speed ‘boxes.
Price for the X7 started at 129.800 yuan. For comparison, price of the locally made Chery-JLR Land Rover Evoque started at 398.000 yuan.
And for that money, the X7 was loaded with stuff, including: ABS, EBD, ESC, TCS (traction control system), PBA (emergency brake assist system), HAC (uphill start assist system), lane departure warning system (LDWS), HDC (downhill assist system), CBC (a set of 8 other unspecified safety support systems), heated and electronically adjustable exterior mirrors, electronic parking brake, dual front airbags, electronic parking brake, dual front airbags, keyless start / entry, electronic dimming inside rear view mirror, reverse camera imagery, automatic air conditioning, automatic wipers, that 10.2 inch touch screen, cruise control, GPS navigation, and Bluetooth connectivity.
It was quite successful. Even in Beijing, where Landwind was earlier considered as a brand for the countryside, the X7 sold in droves.
Characters: 陆风, Lufeng, literally Landwind. Funny fact: the Chinese name of Land Rover is 路虎, Luhu, literally ‘road tiger’. But that is not really a direct copy. It is a different character lu and Landwind had been using the name long before it launched the X7.
It was fashionable in those days to use red lettering on cars, especially on turbocharged vehicles. Here we have 20T 8 AT.
Note the enormous sensors on the mirror stalks for the LDWS. The Landwind X7 was a real blatant copy and that wasn’t good. But that didn’t make the X7 a bad car. Still, one could say that the X7 was the beginning of the end for the Landwind brand, and that is a sad thing.