Production ORA Ballet Cat Pulls A Clark Kent Move To Hide Its VW Beetle Identity And Appeal To Females

Great Wall’s ORA brand has big plans for its oddly-named Punk Cat show car, a retro-modern… copycat of the classic Volkswagen Beetle in a four-door, electric twist.

The ORA Punk Cat was first unveiled at April’s Beijing Auto Show, looking very much like the classic VW Beetle and complete with nearly-identical round headlights and taillights. However, since then, they’ve also presented a so-called ‘feminine’ version named the ORA Ballet Cat, with images of the production model filled with China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Read More: A Four-Door Electric Beetle Debuts In China But It’s Not Made By VW

The changes made at the front are particularly obvious as the Beetle-inspired circular headlights have been replaced by horse-shoe shaped lights with flat bottoms that mimic the taillights. Elsewhere, ORA has removed the thick chrome trimmings around the wheel arches while also making some minor adjustments to the shape of the front bumper and grille.

These images also reveal that the production-ready Ballet Cat now has a charging flap just in front of the wing mirrors whereas the original show car had a series of shark gills in this location. Speaking of the wing mirrors, they have grown in size for production.

Read More: VW Lawyers Looking Into Great Wall’s ORA Electric Beetle Rip-Off From Shanghai Auto Show

The production ORA Ballet Cat (above) swaps out the ORA Punk Cat show car’s (below) Beetle headlamps for flat-bottomed shaped units

Styling alterations continue at the rear where there are a new set of taillights with the same shape as the headlights and a pronounced trunklid spoiler has been fitted. A spec sheet released for the car reveals that it is 4,401 mm long, 1,867 mm wide, and 1,633 mm tall and comes with a 2,750 mm wheelbase. It also has a curb weight of 1,710 kg – not exactly what you’d call light.

Just a single powertrain will be offered, namely an electric motor producing 169 hp (126 kW) that will send the car through to 155 km/h (96 mph). Providing this motor with its juice is a lithium-iron phosphate battery pack, although no capacity details are known. It is also unclear how far the ORA Punk Cat can travel on a single charge.

See: Great Wall’s WEY Yuanmeng Is A Retro Americana Faced Version Of The Ora Ballet Cat Beetle Clone

Great Wall Motors’ third variant of the classic VW Beetle-inspired model is the WEY Yuanmeng

We’ll have to wait and see if the production version of the Punk Cat will keep its round headlights (as the company has suggested in its teasers) or adopt the Ballet Cat’s units along with the other minor changes to the body like the bigger door mirrors. Beyond those two models, Great Wall Motors also presented a third variant of the classic Beetle-inspired car at the recent at the Guangzhou Auto Show from its Wey brand. The Yuanmeng adopts a completely different face that draws inspiration from 1930s American classics.

Correction: An earlier version of this article erroneously said that the model was the production version of the ORA Punk Cat show car, when in fact, it’s the production version of the ‘feminine’ variant of said study called ORA Ballet Cat.