Luxgen M7 Is A Chinese-Taiwanese MPV

This is a Luxgen M7 MPV, seen in the Chinese capital Beijing earlier this year. The MPV seemed in fine shape, painted white with darkened windows and fitted with the original tiny tires with multispoke alloys.

Luxgen is a Taiwanese car brand, owned by Yulon Motor. In 2020, Yulon started a joint venture with Dongfeng Motors in China to produce Luxgen-branded cars for the Chinese market. This joint venture was called Dongfeng-Yulong (东风裕隆). The Chinese name of Luxgen is 纳智捷, Nàzhì jié. The Chinese name of the M7 was 大7 MPV, Dà 7, literally ‘Big 7 MPV’.

The Dongfeng-Yulong Luxgen M7 was produced in China from 2011 until 2019. It was a 7-seat MPV with a nice but unassuming design. It had sliding doors on each side and the B/D/E/F pillars were in black. There was a small ornament on the front fender.

The interior was quite luxurious for the segment at the time. It had leather seats, wood trim, and a high-tech center stack with loads of buttons and switches. The audio system came with a CD/DVD player. The screen for the infotainment had a 10.2-inch diameter. The large armrest area came with a lot of storage space and a single cup holder.

The seat setup was 2/2/3. There was a small sunroof and two ceiling lights. Quite a dark place compared to modern MPVs!

The China-spec Luxgen M7 was available with 2.2 turbo and 2.0 turbo engines. The car that I met is a 2.0 turbo. The output is 188 hp and 275 Nm, which was impressive compared to the competition. Power went to the front wheel via a 6-speed automatic transmission.

License plates are from Heibei, the province surrounding Beijing.

Turbo with a red T. That was a big trend at the time. Almost any turbocharged China-made car had badges with something red inside. ECO Hyper was the name of the engine series, with ECO in blue. The top speed was 175 km/h and the fuel consumption was 8.7 liters per 100 kilometers.

The Luxgen M7 was decently priced, in 2019, the base model sold for only 169.800 yuan. Sadly, however, the entire Dongfeng-Yulong project failed, mainly due to a lack of investment in a proper dealer network. This is a problem that has plagued many new car brands in China over de last decades: setting up a country-wide distribution network in a country as large as China is extremely expensive! The joint venture ceased operations in 2020, and that was it for Luxgen in China. More on Luxgen’s other cars in later posts.