Geely bolsters its technology bank to grab more customers.

Geely is growing fast in the China market but does it have what it takes for the US and Europe?

You expect Chinese businessmen to be suspicious. Decades of state-set targets after all don't bring out the flip-chart-flipping entrepreneur in people. But Li Shunfu flips charts as we sit in his roomy office in Hangzhou, a garden city south of Shanghai. His charts of figures suggest decades of frustration and determination have paid off since the 42-year-old farmer turned businessman passed evenings after a day's toil in the fields tinkering with engines.

Today Geely, the company Li founded 20 years ago, is getting ready to sell Americans a "high quality" family sedan for "less than ten thousand dollars." The number eight is lucky to the Chinese, hence 2008 will be Geely's breakout year on the American market, promises Li Shunfu. America will get the fifth generation of Geely's CK sedan, says Li. He's hired John Harmer, a former US senator, as the CEO of the automaker's US subsidiary. Geely wants to sell in the US by late 2008, but suddenly every privately owned Chinese automaker seems to want to get there too. Auto impresario Malcolm Bricklin has set 2008 as the date Americans will drive Cherys, the Chinese sedans he's been hired to lead into the US. A hardworking design team at Chery has come up with a seven-seater people carrier called the New Crossover. Beijing-based Great Wall Motors has also been throwing shapes with the Hover CUV, its latest sports utility vehicle.

But Geely may be ahead of the pack, certainly on guts. Founded in 1986, Geely made refrigerators when Li tired of farming. He turned to scooters in 1994. The first cars came after two years trying: the 1.0-liter Haoqing hit the road in 1998 and is still in production today. A legend in his hometown, Li figures that the joint ventures between large state firms and foreign marques that currently control China's auto market will eventually fade from the scene and private Chinese companies like his will dominate. "We produce cars for the ordinary people. They want quality at low prices."

Prices are kept low because Li has only recently begun to spend significantly on R&D. Up to now Geely has avoided investment by styling car bodies similarly to models produced at local joint venture companies and approaching the parts suppliers to those joint ventures. A new 400-person R&D center was opened last year to come up with better design and technology but on the firm's Ningbo-based assembly line much of the work is done by hand, with forklifts and trolleys darting in and out to feed the assembly line. Management zooming in and out on small pickup trucks add to a sense of productive chaos that hyper-kinetic Chinese executives like Shunfu seem most comfortable in.

The name "Geely" is derived from a Chinese language phrase that means, "I am lucky' but Li says he's been reading up on the hard-won path to success of Korean and Japanese automobile manufacturers who fought for decades to take significant market share in Europe and the US. He refuses to estimate the number of vehicles that Geely will sell in the US market in its first full year there. Rather, heeding lessons learned by Japanese makers when they entered America, the Geely boss is preoccupied with getting his technology right. Geely cars don't yet meet stringent US emission and safety regulations. "There will be many more improvements in design and engineering in our model by the time we sell in America," said Li, promising a catchy All-American name for the US-bound car.

Geely has plenty to do on the comfort, safety and technology of its cars before American motorists will be allowed a test drive. But the company's export figures tell a hopeful story. Total exports of 12,000 cars in 2005 represents a fast jump on the 5,000 cars it sold abroad the previous year. At home, Geely accounts for a 4.7 percent share of the China market in 2005. Toyota is barely on four percent and Mazda is on similar figures. Ford holds 2.5 percent.

Geely's "Life Beyond Expectation!" slogan has gone down well with China's thrifty white-collar families seeking wheels and some face. Thrifty Americans will be able to buy a Geely for between US $8,000 and US $10,000, says Li, clearly relishing an underdog image. None of his domestic peers, he points out, had the nerve to show cars at any of the world's major annual auto shows, until Geely took five cars to Frankfurt in September 2005 and Detroit in February this year.

But the quality of his cars hasn't always matched Li's promises and his bravado. Geely has scored poorly on looks, and has been accused of turning out ugly hodge-podges of lifted designs. Li has also been accused of borrowing more than a business model from Japanese marques. Toyota is suing Geely for copyright infringement while the centerpiece of Geely's offerings at both shows, the CD, a sports coupe, has been compared unfavorably to a Hyundai. A 54-hp bright green five-door HQ meanwhile "wore some of the waviest body panels this side of a demolition derby," wrote one Detroit critic.

A reputation for low-quality materials and poor workmanship - even its luxury-level Maple Marindo 303 has been ridiculed in the trade press - will take fixing in the image-conscious West. But then Japanese cars were also jeered when they first came to the United States. Li meanwhile is looking after the people who made him big. New plants under construction in poorer south-central provinces of Hunan and Gansu will keep production costs down and bring lost-cost Geely staples closer to the unfussy masses it had always promised to serve. And if the American dream turns sour, there's going to be plenty more room in China for small cars. A recent circular from China's policy-making State Development and Reform Commission, since approved by the government, proposes incentives for manufacturers of environment-friendly and economical cars. Sounds like Geely country.