5 reasons to love and hate Chery Amulet

Nowadays, this car can hardly be seen on the Moscow streets, but in the Russian outback they are not at all uncommon. But this is not interesting, but the range of opinions that characterize reviews about him on the Internet. After all, very polar opinions literally coexist here – from “I would not recommend it to anyone if you are not a masochist” to “a great car, my wife even shed tears when we sold our Mule after so many years of impeccable service!” Yes, it’s about Chinese liftback Chery Amulet.

No longer a copy, but not yet the original.
Amulet refers to the period of life of the Chery brand, when the company made the transition from the production of copies (licensed and not so) to self-development of their cars. At one time, the company acquired a license for the production of the first-generation Seat Toledo, whose body (hatchback, styled as a three-volume truck) was designed by Maestro Giugiaro himself. In the Chinese market, the car was sold first as Wingscloud, and after the modernization of 2003 – as Flagcloud. However, for Russia this name was considered not too melodious, and in our country the car appeared at the end of 2005 already under the name of Amulet, which is quite clear to the Russian citizen. The car was built at the Avtotor plant in Kaliningrad.

Chery Amulet (A15) ‘2003–10Chery Amulet (A15) ‘2003–10
Amulet was supplied with only one engine option – a 1.6-liter eight-valve unit with a capacity of 88 or 94 hp, in combination with which a five-speed mechanic worked. Regarding the genetic roots of this engine, sources disagree: some consider it a copy of the Ford 1.6 CVH (the original was put on the Ford Escort), others consider it to be produced under a Mitsubishi license.

WHAT DOES SUSPENSION AND TRANSMISSION CONCERN, THERE AMULET COMPONENTS ARE COMPATIBLE WITH MANY MODELS BUILT ON THE VOLKSWAGEN GROUP A2 PLATFORM (LIGHTING IN THE BASIS OF THE SECOND VW GOLF AND MANY FRIENDS

The car was sold in three trim levels, without afoot called A1, A2 and A3, and already in the basic configuration included air conditioning, power steering, power windows and velor interior. However, in March 2008, the production of the model on the “Autotor” was discontinued. Firstly, Chery was not able to get customs privileges for the import of components, and secondly, the car did not meet the ever-growing requirements for passive safety. In 2010, production was stopped in the PRC, but after some modernization from 2010 to 2012, the car was manufactured at the TagAZ plant under the Vortex Corda brand.

Today in the secondary market a fair amount of Chery Amulet is offered at prices ranging from 35-40 thousand to 185-190 thousand rubles. There are individual originals who want to get 285-350 thousand (however, there are few of them). The most interesting thing is that today buying a ten-year-old Chery Amulet for very modest money seems to be very reasonable: it is the owners of used cars that left the most positive feedback, but those who once bought a new car in the cabin, very often respond to the car extremely negatively. How is this possible? Let’s figure it out.

So, in a huge number of reviews of those who bought Chery Amulet in salons in 2006-2008, you can find complaints about the build quality – and not just complaints, but, I would say, indignation!

Quite often there are references to not tightened hub nuts. Naturally, it was not only the hub nuts that were not tightened and tightened, and many of the owners of Amulet found bolts that could be screwed in by hand during the first year.

There are few complaints about uneven body clearances, but there are plenty of complaints about poor-quality installation of glass and doors. And, of course, in the mass of reviews mentioned “the characteristic chemical smell of a new Chinese car.” Someone went through 1,000 kilometers, someone had to put up with him for several months, someone noted that the smell only appears when the car stands in the sun, someone helped get rid of the smell of removing the felt which was laid under the floor mats … Well, the owners only had to be joking – they say, this is the smell of progress. But somehow, love, this factor is not added.

I did not come across a single review, in which the main reason for acquiring Chery Amulet would be an external or internal design. This is not surprising: in the middle of the two thousandth, the exterior and interior of the model clearly looked like people from the past. The body was created by Giugiaro in 1991, and the internal arrangement clearly evoked the times when newspapers were filled with ads for the sale of German-made German-made automobiles of European concerns. No, the main reasons for choosing a Chinese car lay in the economic plane.