Great Wall in SUV bid to climb upmarket (2)

Best seller

The Haval SUV family sold 280,000 units last year, a 71 percent increase over 2011. Its H6 was the best selling SUV model in China in each of the final four months of 2012.

The company's recently released annual report showed that the automaker based in Baoding, Hebei province - which started operations making pickup trucks - had a net revenue of more than 5.7 billion yuan in 2012, an increase 62.6 percent from a year ago.

By the end of the year, the carmaker's assets reached 42.58 billion yuan up 28.5 percent from 2011.

Traditionally, domestic automakers have carried the image of cheap prices and low quality, making cars that sell for less than 100,000 yuan.

Many homegrown brands have tried to make the leap to a higher end of the market, but none have made significant inroads.

In 2009, Chery launched its first higher-priced car, the mid-sized Riich G5, with a sticker price of about 150,000 yuan.

But it sold just a small fraction of the company's small, popular QQ model priced at around 30,000 yuan.

In 2010, the Riich brand unveiled another mid-sized model, the G6, priced at about 200,000 yuan, but it also failed to gain much traction.

Shenzhen-headquartered BYD, known for its small and battery powered cars, offered an MPV priced between 139,800 yuan and 239,000 yuan, but sales of the M6 model remained in the doldrums since its introduction.