Through its subsidiaries, joint ventures and associated companies Brilliance Auto has become one of the leading automotive manufacturers in China. Brilliance Auto’s operations are divided into two sections, the manufacture of minibuses and automotive components and the manufacture of sedans. Brilliance Auto’s commercial brands include ‘JinBei’ and ‘Granse’, the company’s sedan brand is ‘Zhonghua’. In 2003 Brilliance Auto also entered a joint venture with BMW to produce BMW 3 Series and 5 Series sedans in China.
In 2004 Brilliance Auto sold 61,618 minibuses and 10,982 ‘Zhinghua’ sedans, the company’s joint venture with BMW saw sale of 8,708 BMW sedans. Brilliance Auto currently has a total yearly productions capacity of 120,000 minibuses and 100,000 sedans.
The company is supported by a wide network of vehicle distributors including 800 minibus distributors, 100 distributors of the ‘Zhonghua’ sedans and 40 distributors of BMW sedans. Brilliance Auto also maintains a network of 330 after-sales centres for minibuses, 120 centres for ‘Zhonghua’ sedans and 24 for BMW sedans.
Brilliance Auto employs over 9,100 employees and during 2004 earned revenues of 6,542 million RMB. Brilliance Auto's own-brand business (separate from its BMW joint venture) entered court-supervised bankruptcy restructuring in November 2020 after defaulting on billions of yuan in bonds, and BMW subsequently raised its stake in the BMW Brilliance Automotive joint venture to 75% in 2022. In order to support the company’s earlier goal of becoming the leading automotive manufacturer in China Brilliance Auto group had established strategic partnerships or working relationships with many global automotive companies. These include Toyota, BMW, Mitsubishi, FEV Motoentechnik, Porsche and Italdesign.
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