bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

I watched Motorweek this week and they showed Chinese brands/models some of which will be coming to the U.S. soon. They may start out sucky but so did Japanese cars and then Korean cars.


Cherry - 5 models coming in 2007

Landwind - an SUV

Geely
Freecruiser / CK (small sedan)
FC sedan
Maple Marindo (luxury car)
Haoqing HQ
China Dragon / CD (sports compact)

Brilliance - sedan

flipside909

Ummmm. Landwind? wtf...can you say infringing on the legendary name Land Cruiser. Freecruiser?

LexFather

Not to get political but I wonder if anti-Chinese sentiment would prevent them from suceeding here. Its becoming more well known that with their emergence, the USA will have more issues with them as we fight for resources.

STIG

i doubt. It didnt prevent from wal-mart being #1 retailer in the whole entire world. People want cheap stuff. And chinese cars are not a total POS. They are actually pretty good.

XeroK00L

DON'T BUY CHINESE VEHICLES!!! ...if you value your life, for now, that is.

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/art...783784,00.html

Chinese 4x4 gets zero in safety test

The first Chinese car to be sold in Europe has scored zero — the worst-ever score — in safety tests.

The JiangLing Landwind was displayed at the Frankfurt Motor Show last week and is expected to arrive in British showrooms within months. It is already on sale in Holland, Germany and Belgium and has been billed as the vanguard of a new invasion of Chinese vehicles.

The two-ton 4x4 scored zero stars in crash tests last week by the ADAC, the German automobile club, which carries out tests for Euro NCAP. “It had a catastrophic result,” said a spokesman for the ADAC. “In our 20-year history no car has performed as badly.”

Testers calculated that a driver would be unlikely to survive a head-on collision at 40mph, and in a side-on collision at 30mph the driver would suffer severe head and chest injuries due to a lack of side protection.

“This car seems to belong in the 1990s in terms of engineering,” said Chris Patience, head of technical policy at the AA Motoring Trust. “We will wait for the official Euro NCAP results, but if it really is that bad we hope people will think very carefully before buying this car.”

With an expected £10,000 price tag, the Landwind is designed to rival cars such as the Kia Sportage and Hyundai Tucson, both about £5,000 more expensive. The Chinese maker plans to sell at least 1,000 models before July 2006.

Kaban

I don't think the Chinese will have problem selling cars here in the states, the most hurdle they will face will be safety as they will be pounded by IIHS over and over untill they get it right.

Besides, the Chinese already controls the production of shoes, electronics and computers, autos will be pretty natural for them I guess.

Leets

This seemed pretty inevitable to me as well. The Chinese have established themselves as a giant among industrialized nations... it was only a matter of time before they dipped into the international automotive market. I think we have a few decades before they really become a force to reckon with. I've noticed that a lot of the complaints about Chinese vehicles seem to be the same or very similar to the complaints that were made about Japanese vehicles when they first went international, or Korean vehicles when they went international. After all the time that Korean cars have been in the United States, it's only now that we're starting to see a shift in their reputation. Look at how long it took the Japanese to gain their reputation in the United States. I sure wouldn't buy any of the "first" generation of Chinese vehicles, but I wouldn't dare go so far as to say that I would NEVER own one.

mmarshall

Well, if these entry-level Chinese cars sell in the $6000-$7000 range like the rumor goes.....and can meet U.S. safety and emissions regs....a lot of people are going to buy them. Low price.....quality or not......is often a powerful attraction. Twenty years ago, when Hyundai brought the first Excels over here and sold them dirt-cheap I cautioned people then that these cars were untested and did not have the proven quality that Japanese cars were getting a reputation for at the time....and the rest is history. The low prices seduced a lot of people into buying lemons. To be honest, though, I did not know at the time that the Excel was not a true Korean product but just a rebadged Mitsubishi Precis....Mitsu started selling the Precis here in the U.S. under their own name soon after. But the Precis, even though it was a Japanese nameplate-car, was a piece of junk...and so was its Excel twin.
Ditto with the Yugo.......a rebadged and decontented POS Italian Fiat 128 which was THEN ALREADY some 15 years out of date . There are reasons why the Yugo started at only $3990. Trust me....with that car, you got what you paid for.........until the Serbs put the Yugo factory out of its misery during the Yugoslav war by blowing it up.

Today, of course, Hyundai CAN produce quality at a low price. It will remain to be seen if the Chinese can also do it.......and I myself have an interest in these ultra-low price Chinese cars and will be reviewing some of them, not for myself but because I shop with a lot of people with low incomes that cannot afford expensive vehicles. But I will not recommend any car that I feel is poorly built, low-priced or not..

Falcon LS

I have actually seen quite a number of Chinese vehicles on the roads at this end, most of which were used as taxis. I suppose it would serve the fleet market pretty well, considering the price factor.