Chinese car brands copying European designs is a story British motoring has grown familiar with. The Jaecoo 7 arrived in the UK in January 2025 wearing styling that drew so heavily from the Range Rover Evoque, Velar and Sport that the internet promptly nicknamed it the "Temu Range Rover." The jab stuck. The sales did not suffer.
In March 2026, the Jaecoo 7 became the UK's best-selling car, recording 10,064 sales in a single month and achieving a 2.66% share of the total UK car market. Jaecoo only began selling cars here in January 2025, yet has already outperformed Citroën, Mazda and Mini in year-to-date figures. For an established industry used to watching the Ford Puma and Nissan Qashqai trade places at the top, it was a seismic result.
Now its sibling brand is arriving with a car built on the same bones.
Lepas, whose name was constructed from the words leopard, leap and passion, is another brand under the Chery Group umbrella alongside Jaecoo and Omoda. The five-seat Lepas L6 will be offered with either a plug-in hybrid or battery-electric powertrain. The PHEV uses the same 204bhp setup as the Jaecoo 7, combining a 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engine with an electric motor and 18.3kWh battery. The electric version offers 270 miles from a 67kWh battery, while the Super Hybrid claims over 700 miles of combined range.
The L6 made its European debut this week at Milan Design Week, before a planned UK arrival in the fourth quarter of 2026. Pricing has not yet been confirmed, though given its shared platform with the Jaecoo 7, analysts expect it to sit somewhere between £28,000 and £35,000.
The design language is presented as original. Lepas says the L6's aesthetic is intended to capture the agility of a running leopard, while the LED headlights evoke a leopard's gaze. The reality is harder to miss: from almost any angle the L6 reads as a softer, slightly more premium reworking of the car Britain just made its bestseller. Architecture, dimensions and powertrain are shared. The styling is cleaned up, repositioned one rung higher, and given a different badge.
Lepas UK managing director Ray Wang described the L6 as "as clever as your smartphone, with intelligent technology woven into every journey, and as sophisticated as your home."
Whether that pitch lands is a separate question. What Chery has demonstrated with Jaecoo is that British buyers will consider a Chinese SUV if the price is sharp enough and the interior credible enough. Autocar, which ran a Jaecoo 7 for 6,000 miles, found it brilliantly spacious, well finished, and genuinely admired by people who had never heard of the brand before.
The Lepas L6 is targeting buyers who want something a step above that. The rapid charge capability allows a 30 to 80 percent recharge in around 20 minutes. A 13.2-inch portrait touchscreen, physical climate controls and wireless charging are expected, based on the larger L8 flagship.
The broader context is striking. Chery has quietly built the UK's most popular car, and is now deploying a second brand, built on the same platform, aimed at a slightly wealthier buyer, making its debut at one of Europe's most prestigious design events.
The industry called the Jaecoo 7 a knockoff. The UK made it number one. Lepas is betting the same logic applies one step further up the market.
Sources: Autocar · T3 · Car Dealer Magazine · Jaecoo UK · Carscoops · Motorpoint · GB News