Interesting overseas brands.

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Some interesting car brands that I seen while in Thailand and Cambodia.

GAC Motor - Dealership in Cambodia
Great Wall Motors - Dealership in Cambodia
Chery - I seen a Chery SUV in Bangkok parked on the street
Tata Motors - Dealership in Thailand

I did see a few Great Wall pickup trucks (Wingle) and a Cool Bear (Scion Xb knockoff) while driving around Phnom Penh. The Wingle looked of very poor quality inside and out. The Cool Bear looked decent in quality outside, but tinted windows did not allow me a look inside. I didn't feel like visiting anymore dealerships (visited Mazda, Ford, and Mitsubishi already) so I passed on by the Great Wall showroom.

I did not see any GAC cars on the road, but drove by their large dealership by the Mitsubishi dealer in Phnom Penh. They had GAC sedans and SUV's displayed out front. No idea about quality.

I seen a Chery SUV in Thailand. Reminded me of a Suzuki Grand Vitara and second generation RAV4 mixed together in a bad way.

Tata I know is a large company out of India. We did not get a chance to stop by the showroom.

Just thought I would share some interesting brands some of you may have never heard of.
 
Great wall and Chery are both Chinese. They clone cars,with and without paying the original designers. Some of em are proportated to be good
 
Originally Posted By: 3for3

I did not see any GAC cars on the road, but drove by their large dealership by the Mitsubishi dealer in Phnom Penh. They had GAC sedans and SUV's displayed out front. No idea about quality.


That should say something! Surprised they don't use them as rental cars or taxis. Or, rather, both companies know better. What's the mix there, old hyundais and corollas?
 
Originally Posted By: hansj3
Great wall and Chery are both Chinese. They clone cars,with and without paying the original designers. Some of em are proportated to be good
From what I've read they have the bodywork and interior down but the engines are slugs.
 
Originally Posted By: bubbatime
Tata motors was going to bring a small diesel pickup to the US market, but they pulled out.


you sure? I know Mahindra was fairly close, until their us "partner" folded....

never heard of TATA doing such..

and as of the industry restructuring following the 2008-9 "collapse", or "Great Recession", Tata now owns Jaguar and Land Rover.(bought both from Ford, IIRC)
 
Out of all things brands TATA is only one that has potential to produce decent car. I think they produce Suzuki Swift for Indian market, and probably have knowhow after buying Jag and Land Rover.
 
Originally Posted By: HerrStig
Originally Posted By: hansj3
Great wall and Chery are both Chinese. They clone cars,with and without paying the original designers. Some of em are proportated to be good
From what I've read they have the bodywork and interior down but the engines are slugs.


Have driven a couple of Great Walls, and they aren't the hardest running diesels out there, they were pretty OK...a workmate had issues with surge, and after Great Wall reflashed it, it went a lot harder (whatever reflashed means).

They have a great following downunder, as at less than half the price of a Toyota Hilux, people are more "adventurous" in their new vehicles than with $60k of Toyota.

As to knocking off brands, Foton are available down here with their Tunland...it's all licenced, and uses Cummins, ZF, and Dana from their Chinese factories.
 
Not too sure on GAC but Chery and Great Wall are Chinese and Tata are Indian of course. All 3 have entered the Australian market, and well none have so far taken off really.
Great Wall took off really well at first because of their extremely cheap pricing (by Aus standards anyway) but they hit a brick wall recently and I don't think a single one sold this year!

They really are horrendous! The plumber at a house I was working on bought a brand new one in 2012. At the time I met him, his Great Wall was 18 months old, we walked outside and he said "here check this out" and walked over to his GW. The amount of rust EVERYWHERE was disgusting! And I don't just mean surface rust I mean blown out, rusted completely through under every rubber seal, screw, joint, hinge and even just in random places! I couldn't believe what I was seeing and I would have honestly been disgusted to see it on a 30 year old car!
Another work collegue also fell for the price and the head warped and blew the engine for no reason at about 35k miles.
Me and my dad were laughing just yesterday at a 2010 model with just 100k KM (62k miles) was selling for $4,900, and a 2004 Toyota Hilux with 158k on it was selling for $10k! That's why no one buys them now.

As for Chery I've seen about 5 in my life haha and yes they are another rip off brand with that terrible Grand Vitara Rav4 Mash up.

Tata, well I've seen a few billboards advertising them but I've never seen a single one on the road!
 
Originally Posted By: Kiwi_ME
We have Chery and Great Wall but also now have Mahindra whose Thar 4x4 is not even street legal.

http://www.mahindra.co.nz/thar-crde



Mahindra builds some of the most basic, no frills vehicles in the world, but I have FAR more respect for them than I do the Chinese companies who can just pump out knock offs.

While the Thar is clearly rooted in the Jeep CJ, that is by license. Mahindra has been building licensed Jeeps for almost as long as Jeep has been around. That is where they got their start, and by legitimate means.

Mahindra's other vehicles are either licensed, or are an original design. Their pickups and other SUVs are definitely "developing market" kind of vehicles, but not necessarily bad ones. They are built for the market they are sold in, and do well there.

Increasingly the Chinese companies have licensing to build their knock offs, but often they don't. Which is why they have been repeatedly sued by everyone from Ford to BMW, probably with little success. The design of the 2009-2014 F-150 headlamps seem to be the current favorite...every Wingle, Dingle, Derp, etc. has them.

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3 different knock offs from 3 Chinese companies. Absolutely shameless.

That's not to say every Chinese vehicle is automatically bad, but it's a fraction of their industry that follows the rules and doesn't just shamelessly rip off every semi-popular car design.
 
That should say something! Surprised they don't use them as rental cars or taxis. Or, rather, both companies know better. What's the mix there, old hyundais and corollas? [/quote]



I seen a few taxi's over there that I would swear were 2003-07 Corollas, but they were BYD brand. Exact knockoff of a Corolla.

There are now a lot of new KIA Rio sedans as taxi's.

As far as everyday commuters, people love their Toyota's and Lexus' over there. Highlanders, Camry, Corolla, RX300, RX330, RX350, ES300, ES330, ES350, LX460, and Landcruisers dominate the roads. I would say the majority are models from the early 90's to the late 90's. But there are a surprising amount of early 2000's up to brand new Toyota's, Honda's Mazda's, BMW, MBZ, Porsche, Jaguar, Range Rover, and now Rolls Royce.
 
Since there is far more to automotive engineering than just the exterior styling, I assume by referring to these as "knock-offs" you are talking about the complete design including power train and suspension?
 
Originally Posted By: Nickdfresh
I wish Škoda was in North America...

Skoda were seen as quite embarassing when I lived in Europe despite the quality issues of old being rectified by the VW takeover.
There was an old joke that went "What's the difference between a Jehova's witness and a Skoda? You can close the door on a Jehova's witness!"
My aunt in the UK had an early 90s(?) pre VW Skoda and it was just appauling!
That bad taste is still in people's mouths and hey are mainly bought by taxi companies because they are basically getting a VW but at a lot cheaper price because of the embarassment the badge still causes to some
 
Skoda is a popular brand here and they are more or less a Volkswagen at 3/4 the price.

From the pre-VAG models, I once owned a 1975 S100R Coupe which was one of the more fun cars I've driven, mainly due to the swing axles. Plus I only paid 100 quid for it.

I crawled all over the Mahindra Thar at a car show and found it was of quite low quality. For the price of the Thar I could buy a Suzuki Jimny which is a little jewel of a 4x4.
 
We used to have Skoda here, but they have about as much work to do as Yugo and Lada and rebuilding brand confidence. Of course, the average person today is old enough to remember the pre-VW Skoda's and too young to have even paid attention to the brand's fortunes to know where it is now.
 
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Originally Posted By: HerrStig
Originally Posted By: hansj3
Great wall and Chery are both Chinese. They clone cars,with and without paying the original designers. Some of em are proportated to be good
From what I've read they have the bodywork and interior down but the engines are slugs.


Have driven a couple of Great Walls, and they aren't the hardest running diesels out there, they were pretty OK...a workmate had issues with surge, and after Great Wall reflashed it, it went a lot harder (whatever reflashed means).

They have a great following downunder, as at less than half the price of a Toyota Hilux, people are more "adventurous" in their new vehicles than with $60k of Toyota.

As to knocking off brands, Foton are available down here with their Tunland...it's all licenced, and uses Cummins, ZF, and Dana from their Chinese factories.


A reflash is reprogramming of the Engine Control Unit (either actual code or adjustment tables). I think the term originates from the use of flash memory, an electrically erasable, non-volatile memory that can be re-programmed in flash mode (page write mode) which is much faster than the old method of address-write-address-write. Kinda funny, we don't use the term in Aerospace, we use the term "reprogram". Maybe it just sounds to tuner-ish??:)
 
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Re Skoda, yes, I can park my car, and walk past a Skoda probably once a week...they are moving in in Australia.
 
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