Chery says the Stockman’s friendly face is deliberate

Chery’s design boss says the approachable front end on the brand’s first ute was a deliberate move away from the aggression that dominates the segment.

Steve Eum, the company’s vice president and general manager of design, was speaking to EVs and Beyond following the local preview of Lepas, the electrified Chery brand due in New Zealand shortly. He says the Stockman was drawn to look capable without looking threatening.

“Personally, I think it has a very friendly approach to a truck,” Eum says. “A truck doesn’t always have to look super utility, super Mad Max, if you don’t mind my reference. That kind of runs over everything.”

He says toughness was still the brief, with a limit on it.

“Yes, it should look tough. It should look confident. But it doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly aggressive.”

Most recent arrivals in the class have gone the other way, with taller grilles, heavier brow lines and more visual mass at the front. Eum says the Stockman was meant to read differently to the person standing in front of it.

“I think the ute that’s going to come out for Chery is quite friendly in terms of how it connects to the person visually gazing at the front end, or even the body side. It has a tough look, but it has a friendly approach to it, which I think is a great formula to design any sort of tough-looking truck. It’s a good personality to have.”

The split headlight treatment is the most obvious departure from the segment norm, and the front end was the element Eum singled out when we raised the ute’s styling with him. He would not say whether the same design is being developed into a three-row SUV, saying only that Chery has three-row SUVs, two-row SUVs and utes coming across the group in a number of variations, and that he could not say which brand or model each would appear under.

The Stockman is Chery’s first ute and one of the first diesel plug-in hybrids in the segment, pairing a 2.5-litre turbodiesel with the brand’s hybrid system for a combined 350kW and 800Nm, and a claimed 100km of electric-only running on the NEDC cycle. Diesel is an unusual choice for a plug-in hybrid, where petrol engines are the norm, and it suits a class where torque and towing matter more than refinement.

Chery has told us the Stockman will not reach New Zealand until the first quarter of 2027. Australian deliveries begin late this year. It joins a plug-in and electric ute field that has grown almost weekly: BYD’s Shark 6 was the fourth best-selling ute outright in August, GWM’s Cannon Hi4-T arrived at $58,990, MG’s U9 EV lands before the end of this year and Nissan’s Frontier Pro is testing in Australia.