WEY Coffee 01, ORA Funky Cat… Great Wall has brought five cars to Paris

If we had a pound for every time a Chinese manufacturer had promised to launch in Europe, we’d be able to afford the entire TG Speed Week line-up. Thrice over. And with Great Wall’s presence at the Paris Motor Show, it looks like we’re quids in again.

Two of its brands - WEY and ORA - are represented in the French capital this week, with Great Wall Motor Europe president Henry Meng calling the continent “the most important market for us outside China”.

To the cars then: WEY has brought a pair of plug-in hybrids, thus named Coffee 01 and Coffee 02. The former claims a 91-mile EV range and almost 500 miles in total courtesy of its 2.0-litre turbo petrol engine, which’ll propel it from 0-62mph in five seconds flat and on to a top speed of 146mph.

Meanwhile the latter uses the same four-wheel drive layout (the base-spec car is 2WD, mind), and is laden with tech including a 14.6in touchscreen and various active safety systems.

The ORA brand (which is said to stand for ‘the joie de vivre of young, creative and progressive people’, among many other things) is busy showing off a trio of electric cars. There’s the supermini-sized Funky Cat that packs a 48kWh battery for 193 miles of range, plus the sportier GT version which is a full tenth of a second faster to 62mph (8.2s) and gets… front and rear bumper inlays and a ‘version-specific’ wheel. Hmm.

Then there’s The Next Ora Cat (yep, full sentence case there), a four-door coupe offering 4WD and 0-62mph in 4.3 seconds thanks to 402bhp from the motors.

Deliveries for the Funky Cat will begin in Germany before the end of the year, with the UK and then Israel next in line. Online ordering systems will open in November. Curious?