Best of Beijing 2014: Top Chinese cars

The 2014 Beijing motor show might have featured headline acts from Western brands, but domestic manufacturers have also shown off their latest wares.

While cars from the likes of Fengshen and BYD aren't going to shake Peugeot and Volkswagen from our front pages just yet, there are still a number of models worth keeping an eye on. Here's our round-up of the best domestic or China-only models at the Beijing show.

Bejing Auto Senova D50

Saab has returned to a life of sorts with the reveal of the 9-3 based Beijing Auto Senova D50. Beijing’s parent company BAIC bought the rights to both the 9-3 and 9-5 designs from General Motors in 2009. The D50 is a conventional three box saloon, reclad entirely to reveal nothing of its Swedish/American origins. Power is provided by just one engine at launch, a normally-aspirated 1.5-litre petrol motor made in China by Mitsubishi and boasting a modest 110bhp. A rather perkier turbo version of the same motor with over 150bhp is believed to be in the pipeline. Sales will be restricted to the Chinese market.

BYD Tang

BYD’s (Build Your Dreams) Tang might look like just another chrome-heavy Chinese SUV with too much air in its outsize wheelarches, but in engineering terms the BMW X3-sized off-roader packs a real punch thanks to mating a 201bhp 2.0-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine to a 147bhp electric motor to create what is claimed to be a 348bhp package which, with the aid of permanent four-wheel drive will take the Tang from rest to 62mph in fewer than five seconds. With Chinese government green grants, its list price is reduced from around £30,000 to £26,000, which is rather less than you’d pay for any SUV capable of packing that kind of punch in Europe.

Hawtai A25

Interest in the Hawtai A25 small SUV concept (also known as Shengdafei) goes beyond it’s rather startling grille treatment. Behind that striking appearance lies a neatly conceived small off-roader powered in the main by a 135bhp, 1.5-litre turbocharged motor. However and unlike most Chinese domestic products at the show, the A25 can also be chosen with a 150bhp 2.0-litre turbodiesel intended not just for export, but the domestic market too. "Diesel is still very small in China," Daniel Zheng, group vice president of strategic operations told Autocar, "but it is growing in popularity from about two per cent of the SUV market and we think the A25 is well placed to take advantage of that growth."

Fengshen AX7

Fengshen is a brand owned by Dongfeng and its new AX7 a rebodied version of the first generation Nissan Qashqai built by the Dongfeng-Nissan joint venture in China. Hitherto referred to by its D29 codename, the AX7 is a cleanly styled, well proportioned compact SUV with none of the attention-grabbing, sometimes unfortunate visual addenda employed, usually in chrome, by other domestic SUV manufacturers to draw attention to their products. Power is provided by a 2.0-litre Nissan petrol engine with 141bhp, though the smart money will likely wait for a newly developed 1.6-litre turbo with around 160bhp scheduled for later in the year.