Here’s a Landwind X7, seen alongside the road on a hot summer day in Beijing in 2018. The X7 was painted in Kunlun White, named after the Kunlun Mountains. It was in great shape, with darkened windows and the original multi-spoke alloy wheels.
The Landwind brand
At the time of the X7’s launch, the Landwind brand was a joint venture between Jiangling Motors and Changan Auto. Landwind launched the X7 in 2015, and it caused a major shit storm immediately, in China and abroad.
The X7 was a near-perfect clone of the first-generation Land Rover Evoque, five-door version. It didn’t just look similar; it was the same car! At the time, cloning was still cool in China, and many Chinese car makers and motorcycle makers cloned foreign vehicles.
Let’s compare
Let’s do a size check:
Landwind X7: 4420/1910/1630, 2670.
Range Rover Evoque: 4365/1900/1635, 2660.
Consumers could buy fake Land Rover badges at the Land Wind dealer! And if that went too far for the consumer, well, he could just have a Landwind badge in Land Rover colors. Everything was possible.
The license plate is from Hebei Province. Landwind produced the X7 SUV from 2015 until 2019, with a small facelift in 2017. The car in the photos is a pre-facelift example.
Characters: 陆风X7, Lùfēng X7, Landwind X7. Even the brand name was a play on the Brits, because Land Rover’s Chinese name is 路虎, Lùhǔ.
Specs
Red detailing on car badges was common in the 2010s. I loved it! The X7 has 2.0T and 8AT, for Automatic Transmission. The only engine option for the pre-facelift Landwind X7 was a 2.0 turbocharged four-cylinder gasoline unit. The output was 190 hp and 250 Nm. The top speed was 170 km/h, and 0-100 took 11.25 seconds exactly, according to Land Wind.
The 8-speed automatic was quite special at the time; most other Chinese brands were still offering only 6-speed automatic gearboxes. Even Land Rover didn’t offer an 8-speed automatic in the Evoque!
Landwind priced the X7 competitively. In 2015, the Landwind X7 cost only 147.800 yuan, whereas the base model Evoque sold for 398.000 yuan. That was a good deal indeed, and initially the Landwid X7 was quite popular in China. However, when the Chinese car market matured, consumers weren’t that much into clone cars anymore, and sales dropped. The Landwind brand eventually went bankrupt in 2022.