Great Wall Motor at a glance: from township repair shop to top-ten Chinese carmaker

Great Wall Motor, which trades as GWM, is a carmaker headquartered in Baoding, Hebei, whose name nods to China's famous landmark. Established in 1984, the company has built its reputation on SUVs and pickup trucks and now ranks among China's ten largest automakers. It sold roughly 1.23 million vehicles worldwide in 2024 and booked revenue of about 173.2 billion yuan in 2023, with a payroll of more than 82,000 people.

The group markets vehicles under a family of nameplates — GWM, Haval, Wey, Tank, Ora and the Poer pickup line — and also builds touring motorcycles under the Souo brand. Since 2019 it has operated Spotlight Automotive, an equal-stakes venture with BMW Group that assembles electric Minis in China.

Its backstory is unusually entrepreneurial. The business grew out of a repair workshop set up in 1976 with a township government, and Wei Jianjun, today's chairman, took charge in 1990 at just 26. After national rules forced it out of sedans by the end of 1994, the firm pivoted to pickups: the Hilux-derived Deer, launched in 1996, made it China's pickup leader. It shipped its first trucks to the Middle East in 1997, privatized a year later, and listed in Hong Kong in 2003.