It seems that the Chinese car manufacturer Great Wall has copied the Fiat Panda due to the lack of copyright laws in China.
tinyurl.com/2vknwo
It is no doubt inferior in many ways, but the Chinese are not doing themselves any favours by allowing outright copying of a well known brand.
I had never heard fo this manufacturer (and a number of others) until I looked at the infomotori.co.uk web site.
The Japanese car designers originally copied American and European designs before learning how to fully design cars in all their aspects and now do this very very well. Should we expect the same from China?
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Roger
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
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The Link is a duffer
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Wonder what would happen if Euro ncap tested the Panda & its clone, which one would come of better.
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The Link is a duffer
Worked ok for me.
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You can see the Chinese agents at Motor Shows, one will be crawling inside and outside the car with a tape measure while another scribbles away in a note book.
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It seems that the Chinese car manufacturer Great Wall has copied the Fiat Panda due to the lack of copyright laws in China.
Have they just copied it and are producing "pirate" copies , or are they making it under licence?
It is no doubt inferior in many ways ...........
My final employer granted a licence to a Chinese company to make some of their automotive products, and the quality of the first batch was every bit as good (if not better) than the UK production. I've bought lots of things that were made in China and I've had no complaints whatsoever.
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L\'escargot.
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It is no doubt inferior in many ways ...........
... like my crappy Chinese-made iPod. Oh, hold on, my iPod is really good.
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It seems that the Chinese car manufacturer Great Wall has copied the Fiat Panda [snip] It is no doubt inferior in many ways
Well, it won't be a copy, then!
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I'm surprised.
Unlike the Chinese to copy anything.
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It is peculiar that China is prepared to go to huge lengths to ensure the population is well behaved, but condones obviously immoral practices such as this.
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Looks quite a nice car. When are they importing it to Europe? :-)
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Looks more than a cut down Note or Modus to me.
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"It is peculiar that China is prepared to go to huge lengths to ensure the population is well behaved, but condones obviously immoral practices such as this."
Hardly. The whole odious regime is completely morally bankrupt. Here's hoping and praying that the Chinese people will be set free some time soon.
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The whole odious regime is completely morally bankrupt. Here's hoping and praying that the Chinese people will be set free some time soon.
Obviously the civilised democratic nations have had it up to here with those cunning reds in Peking!
They've punished them now by buying up tons of clothing and awarding them the Olympics!
Dragging this thread, kicking and screaming, back to motoring, we've just had the local launch of the CHANA light delivery vehicle.
They are selling like hot rice-cakes, and we see a fair few on the roads.
Cheap as chips, relative to most other vehicles available, but look a bit 80s in terms of styling.
www.motoring.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=928&f***icleId=3304759
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Cheap as chips, relative to most other vehicles available, but look a bit 80s in terms of styling.
Cheap as chips as they've not invested anything in R&D.
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It is no doubt inferior in many ways ........
I've just looked at the labels on a few of the items in our house, and it says "Made in China" on .......
BT Freestyle 610 cordless phone
BT Big Button + phone
Tefal Delfinium toaster
Acctim alarm clock
GET desk fan
They're all superb products. I've no doubt if I kept looking I could find lots of other "Made in China" goods in our house.
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L\'escargot.
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I only recently discovered that "CE" does not mean "Made in China".
Are we still paying royalties to China for copying their invention, gunpowder?
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Having worked with Chinese engineers for a few years now, my take on it is that the proffessional class of worker in China are very hard working but for the most part do not have the mind set (cultural differences made worse by communist party) to come up with original ideas. As for quality of goods, it is usually the Western owned brands that are fine, mainly because these firms send in their own engineers to make sure the Chinese follow processes and run quality metrics to make sure product is of good quality. Chinese owned companies suffer with quality
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Having worked with Chinese engineers for a few years now, my take on it is that the proffessional class of worker in China are very hard working but for the most part do not have the mind set (cultural differences made worse by communist party) to come up with original ideas. As for quality of goods, it is usually the Western owned brands that are fine, mainly because these firms send in their own engineers to make sure the Chinese follow processes and run quality metrics to make sure product is of good quality. Chinese owned companies suffer with quality
Well said BobL. I am off to China soon to visit some automotive component manufacturers. Most of the stuff that you see with 'Made in China' on it is actually designed in the West and made on Western tooling with Western engineers going in to keep the whole show on the road and quality up to a reasonable standard. The stuff that is designed in China and made without Western intervention is truely dire. I have been round some Chinese companies in the past and you just wouldn't believe some of the stuff I've seen. Moreover Chinese companies are operated in a very strange fashion - the senior staff are usually party functionaries. Corruption (of all kinds) is rife. As per the subject of this thread, the Chinese pay scant regard to IPR. I think I once heard that 99.9% of all software in use in China is counterfeit! They think nothing of obtaining a European car part and copying it down to the last detail - the concept of 'ownership of ideas' is strange to them. Its an interesting experience crossing into China at somewhere like Lo Wu (Shenzhen). If you go into the Lo Wu commercial centre (like a massive shopping complex) there's all manner of Western 'designer' gear - all of it fake! You get followed around endlessly by touts and pickpockets - not for the feint hearted.
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According todays Telegraph Business Section, Nanjing Automotive have approached the Chinese government for £200M. This is part of the finance needed to resart production in Longbridge of the MGTF at the end of May. Sorry could not find the article online.
There is no way the Chinese could build a sports car without Western design help and buying the old Rover production seems a quick way into leapfroging the technology required. Whether they master it well enough to be able to launch any new models on their own remains to be seen.
As to whether a copy Fiat Panda without Western help would ever match the quality of the original, I strongly doubt it. Their mentality is orientated to copying items to produce them as cheaply as possible. The concept of original ideas seems alien to them, let alone manufacturering parts from the best materials for the job. Most Chinese businesses seem to rely on the greed principle rather than the profit principle, and due to this seem to have scant regard to the long life of the product and its effect on purchasers.
If we look at the rebadged Tata that was the Rover City you will realise that the engineering and design skills of this commercial enterprise were not up to Western standards and the vehicles were slated by the motoring press and disliked by the public - besides being too expensive. I would consider Indian skills to exceeed the Chinese for car building, so my original statement regarding poor quality of Chinese manufacture seems backed up by later posts.
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Roger
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
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