Chery Automobile Co., owned by the Chinese government, has signed a deal with the privately held Visionary Vehicles LLC of New York to sell Chery's cars in U.S., said Malcolm Bricklin, Visionary's chief executive.

It would be the first deal to import Chinese-made cars to this country, The Detroit News reported in Sunday editions.

Bricklin was behind the selling of the low-cost Yugoslavia-made Yugo cars in the United States in the late 1980s and early '90s. His company, Yugo America Inc., collapsed in 1992 amid falling sales and production problems in war-torn Yugoslavia.

He also started importing Subaru cars from Japan in 1968. In 1974, he founded a short-lived Canadian company to build a gull-winged Bricklin SV-1 sports car.

Chery is China's eighth-largest automaker. It was founded in 1997 and sold about 90,000 vehicles in China in 2004.

Bricklin said his exclusive distribution agreement is for five Chery models that would go on sale in January 2007. The agreement was reached Dec. 16, he said.

"The North American automobile market is complex, competitive and always changing," Chery President Yin Tongyao said in a written statement. "We are looking forward to working with Visionary Vehicles and taking advantage of Malcolm's expertise as we enter it."

Calls to Chery's headquarters at Wuhu, China, were not answered Sunday.

South Korea's GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. sued Chery in December, accusing it of illegally copying one of its car models, the Chevrolet Spark.