[kscherer]

Originally Posted by Moogs Gah. It's the 4th coming up... we should take a break from this thread for a couple days and enjoy the fact we don't live (permanently - right Luca?) in these countries. I.E. appreciate what we have, hopefully without too much flag-waiving patriotic drivel.

Halle—!#$%&—lujah! Amen, brother!

Here's to the good ol' US of A!

[Robo]

The first Chinese car to be sold in Europe, the ironically-named "Brilliance BS6," recieved a one-star crash test rating. One. Star.



Here it is, at a whopping 40 mph (!!).

I'm not one of those people who considers buying imported cars to be treason. In fact, my general rule of thumb is "Buy anything but American." But the death cab that is the BS6 just depresses me. BS, indeed.

Oh, and even though all but three of their European dealers have dropped them, Brilliance is still coming to the good ol' US of A next year. Whoo!

What bothers me just as much is how Chinese businesses don't seem to have any concept of intellectual property whatsoever.



Yes, that car is a dead ringer for the Toyota Yaris. And yes, it is transforming into an, um, Transformer. "Great Wall" also produces ripoffs of the Fiat Panda and the Scion xB (Toyota ist).

Why does a series of Chinese car ads bear a disturbing similarity to a promotional tie-in for an American car company and movie? The ads also identify each robot's favorite celebrity (the above "Transfomer" likes Paris Hilton), movie (in this bot's case, Mission Impossible) and music (Justin Timberlake). This might sound inflammatory, but maybe Chinese people would be less obsessed with (bungled versions of) American pop culture if they, y'know, developed their own? I mean, Justin Timberlake really isn't all that great. Maybe it just pisses me off because I like to think I'm an artist, but Chinese knockoffs are just so...pathetic (like fake Harry Potter novels, featuring Gandalf!) that I have to wonder why the Chinese government - in full pre-Beijing-2008-image-improvement mode - doesn't try to enforce intellectual property standards like, well...the rest of the developed world.

Linkage:

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/06/22/b...-anything-but/

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/03/b...008-u-s-debut/

http://www.autoblog.com/2007/07/03/c...e-transformer/

[Chinney]

Originally Posted by Moogs It's FUBAR... no doubt about it. I've driven by that Micron plant several times and I know that's a huge part of the local economy there. You are correct that the government does not do right by its citizens in this case. And the reason is because the government is ridiculously influenced by corporate lobbyists. Rest assured... [there are plenty of big business executives who want to leverage Chinese manufacturing to fill their coffers, and don't want the government playing hardball over there]. For every job sent overseas, some executive up on the top floor is getting more money because of it. Everything these assholes do in the name of "shareholder value" is a euphemism for "we executives are going to restructure our costs so that the workers have to make all the sacrifices (i.e. less benefits, layoffs, lower salaries, et al) and we make all the fucking money..." [snip - got on a rant, sorry...] There ought to be a freaking rule: if your company has more than 1000 employees, you don't get to lobby congress. All we need is for small and medium-sized business' interests to be protected ; the big dogs can fend for themselves IMO and have no business molding policy. Especially a-hole energy and pharmaceutical companies, who have economies larger than some small countries.

Whether it is the importation of dangerous food or the exporting of manufacturing jobs, I blame the companies who are driving these trends, not the Chinese. This is being domestically planned and run in the boardrooms of our developed nations, all so Walmart, Costco can sell for a few dollars less.

[Windswept]

I just heard a story on NPR today about a new Chinese SUV that'll be shipped - disassembled - to Mexico, and then assembled there.

The reason it'll be shipped to Mexico is so China can get around the American importation restrictions (tariffs?) that would apply if it came directly from China.

By coming into the US from Mexico, it will fall under NAFTA, and be able to come in with no restrictions. Apparently - according to the reporter - this vehicle will cost around $13K or so... and will drive American car companies even closer to going out of business.

*sigh*

[Luca]

Originally Posted by Roboman Yes, that car is a dead ringer for the Toyota Yaris. And yes, it is transforming into an, um, Transformer. "Great Wall" also produces ripoffs of the Fiat Panda and the Scion xB (Toyota ist). ...This might sound inflammatory, but maybe Chinese people would be less obsessed with (bungled versions of) American pop culture if they, y'know, developed their own?...

Great Wall also rips off the Toyota 4Runner. I've seen several of them around.

Every other Chinese car maker has at least one or two other copies. Well, they're copies on the outside, at least. On the inside, they're much worse (as evidenced by that crash test).

I actually did a full-on term paper about Chinese intellectual property theft and copyright violations. During my research I came across more copycat cars than I could keep track of. Here's a (partial) list:

BYD F3 = Toyota Corolla
BYD F6 = BMW 7-series
BYD F8 = Mercedes CLK
BYD logo = BMW logo
Chery QQ = Chevy Spark/Daewoo Matiz
Chery Tiggo NCV = Toyota RAV4
Chery company name = Chevy company name
CMEC Electric City Smart = Smart Fortwo
Geely Merie = Mercedes C-class
Greatwall Deer = Toyota Tacoma
Greatwall Safe = Toyota 4Runner
Some Other Greatwall SUV (unknown name) = Nissan Frontier
Some Huanghai SUV (unknown name) = Hyundai Santa Fe
JMC Landwind = Isuzu Rodeo/Honda Passport (the Landwind, incidentally, also has a disturbingly bad crash test video, complete with delayed airbag deployment)
Shuanghuan Laibao SR-V = Honda CR-V
Shuanghuan logo = Audi logo

Links:

http://www.autoblog.com/2005/04/16/chinese-copy-cats/
http://www.engadget.com/2006/11/24/k...-strike-again/
http://paultan.org/archives/2004/12/05/china-pirates/
http://thirdeyedumb.com/2007/04/chin..._likes_to.html
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...ticleId=117145

[Robo]

The Geely Merie (in the first link) looks fantastically bad. You can seriously see a line where the design of the car changes. It's such a failure, you'd think it was a Gigli. BUH-DUM-TISH!

[Luca]

Originally Posted by Windswept By coming into the US from Mexico, it will fall under NAFTA, and be able to come in with no restrictions. Apparently - according to the reporter - this vehicle will cost around $13K or so... and will drive American car companies even closer to going out of business. *sigh*

Only if the people of this country are stupid enough to buy these rolling deathtraps (which, of course, they are).

Honestly though? If you're worried about American car companies being severely undercut by Chinese cars, I don't think you should worry too much. People do care about safety here, and they also care about things not breaking all the time. Any Chinese cars that make it into the US will be so unreliable and their companies will provide such bad service that they'll fizzle within two years. Besides, anyone stupid enough to buy cars as unsafe as these probably deserves to have their defective brains splattered all over the pavement.

After watching the video for that Landwind SUV (which apparently they want to import as well), I think the IIHS should create a new rating that's one below "Poor," to showcase the cars that do especially badly. But again, anyone who would even consider buying a cheap Chinese knockoff of the already shitty Isuzu Rodeo needs to have his head examined, and probably won't bother looking at crash test results.

[Robo]

But...but...it's only $8000!

[Windswept]

Originally Posted by Luca Only if the people of this country are stupid enough to buy these rolling deathtraps (which, of course, they are). Honestly though? If you're worried about American car companies being severely undercut by Chinese cars, I don't think you should worry too much. People do care about safety here, and they also care about things not breaking all the time. Any Chinese cars that make it into the US will be so unreliable and their companies will provide such bad service that they'll fizzle within two years. Besides, anyone stupid enough to buy cars as unsafe as these probably deserves to have their defective brains splattered all over the pavement. After watching the video for that Landwind SUV (which apparently they want to import as well), I think the IIHS should create a new rating that's one below "Poor," to showcase the cars that do especially badly.

I hope what you say is true. However the report seemed to indicate that the vehicle was pretty amazing for the price.

I'll try to remember to go to npr.org to see if I can find the transcript of the story... but for some reason I always have a *terrible* time finding anything at that site. And the search function there never finds what I'm looking for.

(The comma key isn't working on this keyboard... so I keep trying to improvise.)

[Robo]

Originally Posted by Windswept (The comma key isn't working on this keyboard... so I keep trying to improvise.)

I think I could live without a comma key. But just try to take away my ellipses...

[Banana]

While I generally agree with the cries for making our companies accountable, refusing to buy thing that hasn't been properly QC'd, I feel I should say something about protectionism here...

On the surfact, it seems like a good idea to keep everything within our borders, and tariff the heck out of all other imports. After all, that'll keep more jobs here, and we know what to expect from products we buy, right?

Well, the important point here is that the standard of living would be much lower in a protected country than one tending toward free trade. It's simple economic of scales; more specialized any country's economy is, the more productive they are. By allowing unrestricted trade, everyone gets to do what they do best, and trade in for what they needs, and as result, standard of living is much higher among the group than if everyone tried to do everything themselves.

While there definitely are hidden prices to what you buy from your local Wal-Mart, be it lax pollution laws, shoddy quality, sweatshop labor, the economic of scales still applies; we enjoy a high standard of living because we do not generally impede trade with much higher tariffs and other protectionism actions. Furthermore, partner countries who trade with us also will have their standard of living rised, because there's now more jobs that otherwise would not have been had, and even if the country's economy is much more primitive, free trade will progress it faster than if it was isolated from the rest of world, yielding same result.

As for unemployed due to outsourcing, this represent a flaw with the system, not the free trade. Either private companies or government has to pick up the ball and try to employ those people, whether by re-training, or creating a new opportunity that would ulimately expand the operation or whatever. But it's easier to blame it on free trade when you're laid off when someone over the pond can do it cheaper (and ideally, better than you but that is not the case in real world).

Instead of trying to create new opportunities, the response has been to cling to that dear old mill because it's the only thing holding up the whole town economy and I say that's pretty shortsighted. Heck, same thing would happen if the company was totally annihilated by competition- you can support mediocrity only for so long.

Now, people who are pushing fair trade (you might have seen some coffee marketed as fair trade-certified), and I think this is far more reasonable action to take than simply calling for more tariffs and effectively putting our economy in a goldfish bowl. At least someone is making sure the product is made with quality and in socially consicious manner, and the producers is getting a fair shake. But I think we've agreed that a big part of burden rests on the US stockholder and consumers to vote with their money. As kscherer said, (I think?) if you buy their crap, they'll come.

[Dorian Gray]

I agree with Banana re protectionism and the myopia of throwing up barriers to international trade. If you have a problem with Chinese car companies selling crap products in the US then improve your safety regs accordingly, forcing the Chinese to make better products (which will also cost more, incidentally).

40 years ago the Japanese were becoming the world's workshop at everyone's expense. "Made in Japan" was a slur that suggested low quality. 100 years ago the USA itself was becoming the world's workshop, putting European and especially British companies out of business left, right and centre. This time the Chinese are moving in, only they're bound to progress through the various stages of development far quicker than any country has done in the past.

Take car safety, in fact. Here is a 40 MPH test of the Ford F-150, a notoriously unsafe vehicle of just a few years ago ('97-'03). As a car with terrible "active safety", accidents were likely to occur, and when they did, the woeful "passive safety" evident in the video ensured maximum carnage. As you can see, the F-150 arguably fares even worse than this new Chinese abomination, yet it sold very well indeed in the US market. The only difference, and it's admittedly a large one, is that the structural integrity of the F-150 was dramatically improved for the next model, whereas the Brilliance is just now entering the market. Let's call it a difference of 10 years. Anyone want to take bets on how long it will take for Chinese car companies to close a technology gap of just 10 years?

Compare with:

Honda Civic
Volvo XC90
Ford Focus
Citroën C1

By the way, Citroën launched a Transformer ad campaign back in 2004. The videos are still available for download on the Citroën site:

Dancer
Skater

I found the ads bordering on embarrassing, but many people liked them and someone even made a decent spoof.

So it seems more likely that Brilliance copied Citroën than the "American car company" that is using Transformer ads now.

In short: I agree that China's current state of development is extremely ugly, but we shouldn't forget that "Western" countries were in a similar state just a few generations ago. The Chinese economy is growing at over 10%. It won't be long.

[Robo]

Idunno. GM launches a massive ad campaign that ties in with what is arguably the Hollywood summer blockbuster of the year. Great Wall releases a similar ad campaign shortly thereafter. And they were actually inspired by...three-year old ads from Citroen?

I don't buy it. Do you really think Great Wall would have released those ads if it weren't for GM and Michael Bay's latest cinematic vision? I mean, really?

But I agree with most of the rest of your points.

[Banana]

Dorian's link led me to this cool gems. Was really fascinating.

OMG!

But this is definitely the car you want to drive if safety is a concern!

[Robo]

If any of those involve the smart fortwo, then I'm not watching.

[Banana]

No Smart ForTwo in those videos. No gore, either.

[Luca]

Originally Posted by Roboman If any of those involve the smart fortwo, then I'm not watching.

I think the Smart is actually really safe... I saw a crash test where it was sent into a set of concrete barriers at 70 mph and the passenger compartment was still fairly intact, and they were even able to open and close one of the doors. No one would have survived that crash, regardless of how well the car seemed to hold up, but at 40-50 mph I bet you'd be pretty safe. At any rate, you'd be a lot safer than you'd be in that Isuzu Rodeo knock-off.

[Mac+]

Luca - you never saw the smart car post that murbot made?

[Robo]

Originally Posted by Luca I think the Smart is actually really safe... I saw a crash test where it was sent into a set of concrete barriers at 70 mph and the passenger compartment was still fairly intact, and they were even able to open and close one of the doors. No one would have survived that crash, regardless of how well the car seemed to hold up, but at 40-50 mph I bet you'd be pretty safe. At any rate, you'd be a lot safer than you'd be in that Isuzu Rodeo knock-off.

I've heard it's really safe too - I've researched it a lot because it's cute, cheap, and green, which are all good things in my book. But then a certain...ahem...GM-loving member of these boards, hearing that I was saving up for such a car, IMed me links to photos that (surprise!) turned out to be a highway collision with a fortwo and a semi, including the bodies. Well, parts of them.

I know no other car - not even the Saturn Astra he was pimpin' - would hold up any better. But that's not exactly going to make me forget a picture of half a person. FUD ftw.

[Luca]

Oh.

[cosus]

See Yugo.

[Moogs]

Regarding 1 Star crash vehicles from China. Trying to [imagine] which dealers will have the balls to sell them, knowing what kind of litigation is likely to ensue after the first couple bad accidents. Won't be long before there's a 20/20 segment, then those POS will no longer be sold most likely.

I agree also that in cases like this, it's not just Chinese lack of ethics but dealer-side greed on the part of anyone who actually agrees to sell them. That thing should be E-legal before it ever arrives in this country.

[Dorian Gray]

Moogs, what makes you so sure there'll be litigation, or at least, successful litigation?

I think you're all making far too big a deal of this. The car passes all US safety regs (or it wouldn't be going on sale). From the videos, it's at least as safe as the '97-'03 Ford F-150, which I am led to believe is a common vehicle in North America. It's certainly safer than the majority of cars over ten years old (cabin integrity has advanced enormously in recent years due to emphasis on NCAP ratings among other things). It's an order of magnitude safer than the average twenty-year-old car, of which there are still plenty on the roads.

A 40 MPH collision dissipates mind-boggling amounts of energy. Non-engineers (and yes I'm one of them ) generally have no grasp on how much energy is involved. A few years ago I was passenger in a Renault 21 Savanna that hit a tree head-on at 40 MPH. Trust me, I thought the seatbelt would cut me in two. The tree drove a deep "V" through the engine bay (which contained a heavy diesel engine) and ended up at the windscreen. 40 MPH is not a minor collision: it is insanely fast to hit something. All you guys driving old cars would be shocked to see what your vehicle would look like after a similar impact.

[Luca]

I guess you have a point - the existence of videos like this show that, even at their worst, modern vehicles are much safer than old ones.

However, it still bothers me that there are manufacturers continuing to bring unsafe vehicles into the market. Ultimately it's the customer's fault for buying such an unsafe vehicle and failing to do any research on safety, but either way, I would have hoped that cars like the old F-150 were behind us, not in our future. And that applies to all manufacturers, not just Chinese ones.

I'm also of the opinion that side air bags should be a standard feature on every car, and that US crash test standards should be raised, even slightly. But I'm not sure when was the last time they raised them, so maybe it's not necessary. Thing is, no matter how many government regulations you try to put in place, it really just comes down to the citizens. China is a prime example of an overprotective government that treats its citizens like children. There are more stringent safety tests, NCAP and IIHS and stuff, specifically so people can inform themselves and get a better look at just how safe a car is before they buy it.

[Moogs]

Originally Posted by Dorian Gray Moogs, what makes you so sure there'll be litigation, or at least, successful litigation?

I was under the mistaken assumption that part of safety standards was beating a 1 star rating? I thought getting a 1 star rating is akin to getting an "F" / failing the standards test. IOW I thought dealers would be selling non-safety-certified (new word) vehicles at their own discretion, because they're cheap.

[kscherer]

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I'm looking forward to Chinese airlines starting to make their way into the fleets of United, Southwest, etc.

[Windswept]

I think it was CNN yesterday that reported how outraged the Chinese are getting, now that so many of their shoddy products are continually under the spotlight of world scrutiny.

The network highlighted Chinese cows (destined for market) that had been force-fed sewage, the harvesting of fish that were floating dead on the water, and the disgusting conditions under which pigs are raised. Honestly, I felt ill after watching the broadcast.

I think one of the things that amazes me the most is that 'civilizations' so ancient, like in China and 'Mesopotamia', seem to have brought forth *so little* into their present-day cultures that would show evidence of the *civilized* behavior that should have been developing in those places since the dawn of time.

I mean, what's the point of having a civilization that's thousands of years old, if the present people think nothing of beheading innocents snatched off the street, or feeding sewage to livestock?

I very much have wished to respect and learn from these ancient cultures; but it's hard to do when the behavior of their current people seems so medieval, ignorant and barbaric.

*sigh*

[kscherer]

It's not just the Chinese making their own cars. Some of our guys are signing deals with the Chinese to make our cars over there!

[Windswept]

Google Earth shows secret Chinese submarine that will carry nuclear weapons.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/scienceands...n-class-s.html

The Jin-Class Submarine July 05, 2007 6:35 PM The U.S., constantly wary of Chinese military might, knew China was developing a new submarine that could carry nuclear missiles. It was called JIN-class, or Type 094. Now an image of it, according to Hans M. Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, has turned up on Google Earth. I called Kristensen, and he gave me the coordinates: 38 degrees, 49 minutes, 4 seconds North, 121 degrees, 29 minutes, 39 seconds East. If you have Google Earth downloaded in your computer you can see for yourself--a secret submarine, hiding in plain sight near the Chinese city of Dalian. "China and the United States are in a nuclear arms race," wrote Kristensen and colleagues in a report last November. "Not an arms race of the intensity and proportions of the U.S.-Soviet arms race during the Cold War, but an arms race nonetheless. The U.S.-Chinese adversarial nuclear relationship goes back to the Korean War, but the scope and sophistication of the race appears to be increasing." The Defense Department has been keeping an eye on this too, reporting how the sub's missiles are part of a plan to "give China a more survivable and flexible nuclear force." The idea of Chinese military aspirations is no surprise. But finding proof right there on your own computer?

[Banana]

Dear NSA:

Why do we need you anymore?

Much love,

Banana