Sales of the XCITE X-Cross 7 crossover have started in Russia. The renamed Chery Tiggo 7 Pro, assembled at the former Nissan plant in St. Petersburg, arrives at dealerships without service books and manuals. They promise to send them later.
It is planned to produce about 10,000 crossovers by the end of June. Further prospects for the project are unknown. According to industry experts, the "St. Petersburg Automobile Plant" wants to agree with Chery on continued cooperation. In addition, negotiations are underway with another unnamed company.
Interestingly, against the backdrop of the start of sales, 317 employees were sent on downtime until May 31. What this is connected with is unknown.
As a reminder, it was planned to assemble X-Cross model crossovers under the LADA brand. In November 2023, about 100 LADA X-Cross 5 cars were even produced. They had nothing to do with Chery and were a renamed FAW Besturn T77.
At the beginning of 2024, the Russian auto giant fell under sanctions, the former Nissan plant was renamed from "Lada St. Petersburg" to "St. Petersburg Automobile Plant", and cooperation between AvtoVAZ and the eastern partner ceased. But the XCITE brand appeared and cooperation with Chery. Sales of cars were planned to start in April, but the start of sales was postponed several times.
