I bet you didn’t know this! One of the world’s largest car manufacturer is probably the least least famous as well. Iran Khodro (IKCO) is a government-owned car maker in Iran which has facilities that can make up to 1 million cars per year easily!

And when every single car maker is affected by global financial crisis they post constant rise in sales! And that is not because they make great cars, they are still making the old Peugeot 405 under license! but they have a monopoly there. In fact their cars are the only cars that most of Iranians can buy so they always have a great market! They also export their cars to some of their neighbours and also some African countries and they sell them abroad much cheaper than they sell them in domestic market !! This is no joke, it’s a fact.

Now they are planing to conquer the European market by sending their first national car there. Samand is the first and as far as we know the only car that is actually designed and made in Iran. However the car brings the old Audi A4 or Scoda Fabia to mind. It apparently has three variants, Samand, Sarir and Soren, where Sarir is the most luxurious version with most of the uptodate gadgets.The engine in the Samands is based on the 405 engine which is like 20 years old and is available with either 100 or 120 hp! Crikey!

The car is generally rubbish and it takes no genius to realize it does not fit even in eastern Europe market, but when Chinese are selling their absolute piece of craps to all over the world why shouldn’t them?! And you have to say in comparison to most of the Chinese cars Samand looks like a fine product! And like them, it’s winner card is the price. You can expect the most loaded version of Samand to cost around 14000 Euros.

via : AutoBild