"The Baoding Car God" staged a comeback

Author | Zhou Zhiyu

Editor | Zhang Xiaoling

"At 35, it seems like a hurdle to others."

When Wei Jianjun, chairman of Great Wall Motor, said this line with his distinctive Baoding accent in the short film "35 Years Old," he touched on the most sensitive nerve of an entire era. This statement from the car industry leader, known as the "Car God of Baoding," not only accurately depicts the "35-year crisis" faced by contemporary professionals but also serves as a profound self-reflection on Great Wall Motor itself.

In 2025, Great Wall Motor, celebrating its 35th anniversary, finds itself at a complex crossroads. This leading private car manufacturer in China must navigate the intense competition in the domestic market while also finding its direction amid the waves of transformation towards new energy and intelligence. Against this backdrop, its second-quarter financial report provides a key insight into its strategic resilience and future direction.

Data shows that Great Wall Motor achieved significant performance recovery in the second quarter of 2025. Its operating revenue reached 52.348 billion yuan, creating the best second-quarter revenue performance in history; net profit was 4.586 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 19.46% and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 161.91%, setting a new high for the company's quarterly net profit.

This series of data marks a successful quarterly turnaround. The market is particularly concerned about how Great Wall Motor has restored its profitability amid widespread profit pressure in the industry.

Specifically, the value upgrade of the product structure is the core premise for the profit rebound. The growth in revenue and profit directly stems from the strategic optimization of its product mix, which is reflected in the significant improvement in average selling price (ASP) and gross profit margin.

The six major brands under Great Wall, like a well-coordinated army, each exert their strength in precise market segments. The Haval brand, as the foundation, not only solidifies its SUV base but also covers two high-value scenarios of family travel and outdoor exploration through models like the second-generation Xiaolong MAX and the Menglong fuel version. The WEY brand is more firmly focused on the high-end intelligent new energy track, with the new MPV Gaoshan series equipped with advanced intelligent driving assistance technology and Hi4 performance version, directly competing in the high-end market and exchanging technological premiums for profit margins.

The brand that contributes the most to profits is undoubtedly the Tank brand. It not only continues to lead the domestic high-end off-road vehicle market but has also become a phenomenon, with cumulative global sales surpassing 700,000 units, making it the only off-road brand in China to achieve this milestone. The hot sales of the Tank essentially signify that Great Wall Motor has created and dominated a high-profit niche market, serving as the "ballast" for its significant profit recovery. Meanwhile, the Great Wall pickup, which has been the top seller for 27 consecutive years with nearly 50% market share in China, continues to elevate the value ceiling in this traditional advantage area through high-end and new energy models like the Shanhai Pao Hi4-T.

This multi-brand, high-value collaborative offensive avoids internal competition within a single brand, achieving precise coverage and value harvesting across different consumer tiers, which is the fundamental reason for its net profit soaring against the tide in the industry's "price war." Great Wall's meticulously constructed "forest ecosystem" system serves as both a shield in its hands and an amplifier of profits.

This vertical integration model, covering everything from the three electric systems, intelligent driving to core components, is demonstrating strong strategic value in the current market environment. On one hand, it builds a solid cost defense line. Subsidiaries such as Honeycomb Energy and Honeycomb Automotive ensure stable supply and cost advantages for core components, giving Great Wall more initiative in the supply chain game. On the other hand, this "forest" is exporting energy outward. The three subsidiaries—Honeycomb Automotive, Jingcheng Engineering, and Nobu Automotive—have entered the global top 100 automotive parts list, gaining the capability to supply external clients like BMW, transforming from a past cost center into a new profit growth point for the group.

This "dual offensive and defensive" system not only builds high walls in the domestic market but also provides ample confidence for Great Wall's globalization journey.

As the domestic market becomes a red ocean, the vast overseas market is rapidly growing into the core engine of its development from Great Wall's "second growth curve." In the second quarter, its overseas sales reached 106,800 vehicles, accounting for more than one-third of total sales.

Great Wall's globalization is no longer simply about exporting complete vehicles; it is an "ecological overseas" model that integrates R&D, production, supply chain, and services. The establishment of complete vehicle production bases in Thailand, Brazil, and other locations enables it to successfully replicate high-value models like Tank and Shanhai Cannon in global markets, opening up a broad and more profitable new battlefield overseas.

From a financial perspective, this deeply localized global layout brings multiple benefits. First, effective risk hedging and sales growth reduce over-reliance on a single market. Second, it offers higher profit margins.

Institutions like Guohai Securities have also expressed optimism about Great Wall's upcoming performance in their research reports. Guohai Securities stated that Great Wall's overseas competitive advantages are solid, with high profit certainty. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, new vehicles equipped with the Coffee Pilot intelligent driving solution are expected to accelerate their market entry, driving demand.

Frankly speaking, Great Wall's second-quarter report is far from just a quarterly success or failure; it is a test of its industrial model.

In the current automotive industry, facing rapid technological iteration and market uncertainty, corporate strategies have shown clear differentiation. One approach is the mainstream horizontal division of labor and platform alliances, where automakers act as "main integrators," deeply binding with Tier-1 suppliers to achieve light asset operations and rapid product iteration through modular procurement and collaborative R&D.

The essence of Great Wall's "forest ecosystem" system is to strive for full-chain autonomy and control from underlying technology to upper-level applications in core areas such as new energy and intelligence. This is a typical heavy asset path that requires continuous massive capital investment, testing the strategic determination and operational efficiency of enterprises, while also bringing higher sunk cost risks.

However, the potential returns of this path are equally enormous. Once successful, the enterprise will possess unparalleled cost control capabilities, faster internal collaboration and technology iteration speeds, as well as the ability to create highly differentiated, deeply integrated software and hardware products The competition in the future automotive industry will not only be a contest at the product level but also a deep game of two entirely different industrial organizational models and business philosophies.

Great Wall Motor's gamble will not only determine its own future fate but will also explore, on a larger scale, whether a traditional manufacturing giant can achieve a leap in the new era by building a self-controllable industrial kingdom. After this "35-year-old" deep squat jump, the real test is just beginning.

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