GAC may be coming to America?

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CharBaby

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GAC, the Chinese auto manufacturer, may be coming to our shores. They're a full on Chinese auto mfg unlike vehicles that are only built in China from GM, Volvo etc. GAC has a full line of vehicles and has been building vehicles for quite some time as-well-as selling their vehicles around the world. GAC is not a startup company with unproven vehicles. However, should they sell here in the U.S. & Canada, their quality & reliability is an unknown for us.

I'm not sure how I trust another country bringing vehicles into our country. Just the way I was unsure about the Japanese car companies in the early-mid1970s and the Korean car companies in the '80s&'90s. Now, the Chinese in the U.S. ~2020???

It took me till the late '80s(1988) to buy my first Japanese car and I would certainly buy a Hyundai/KIA today. I would also certainly buy just about any of our domestic autos as well as, come'on, we're building some nice/reliable vehicles

But, it'll take a good 10 years for me to grasp the idea of buying a vehicle from an actual Chinese car company. It remains to be seen. They certainly look very nice!

Alex on Autos(AoA) has a decent video from the Detroit International Auto Show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj9qq5Mba0M
 
Originally Posted by Char Baby
GAC, the Chinese auto manufacturer, may be coming to our shores. They're a full on Chinese auto mfg unlike vehicles that are only built in China from GM, Volvo etc. GAC has a full line of vehicles and has been building vehicles for quite some time as-well-as selling their vehicles around the world. GAC is not a startup company with unproven vehicles. However, should they sell here in the U.S. & Canada, their quality & reliability is an unknown for us.

I'm not sure how I trust another country bringing vehicles into our country. Just the way I was unsure about the Japanese car companies in the early-mid1970s and the Korean car companies in the '80s&'90s. Now, the Chinese in the U.S. ~2020???

It took me till the late '80s(1988) to buy my first Japanese car and I would certainly buy a Hyundai/KIA today. I would also certainly buy just about any of our domestic autos as well as, come'on, we're building some nice/reliable vehicles

But, it'll take a good 10 years for me to grasp the idea of buying a vehicle from an actual Chinese car company. It remains to be seen. They certainly look very nice!

Alex on Autos(AoA) has a decent video from the Detroit International Auto Show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj9qq5Mba0M


We have already had one "Yuego". Will this be another?
 
Typically Chinese vehicles are built for looks but not for reliability.

If they can overcome that maybe but the last Chinese car company here sold few cars and went under
 
I never heard anything about GAC but I wouldn't be surprised that they will be good quality and reliable. China can make crap and they can also make awesome products, depends on what their customer requests. For example iPhones and maybe other apple products are made in China and they are the best phones out there when it comes to quality and reliability.
 
China has had plenty of time to break in to the American market. I remember a decade ago I believe it was the Cherry car company or something like that was on the verge.

It's certainly not going to happen in 2019. If you let them in you can kiss your domestic auto industry goodbye when they copy domestic models and sell them for half price.
 
Originally Posted by diyjake
I never heard anything about GAC but I wouldn't be surprised that they will be good quality and reliable. China can make crap and they can also make awesome products, depends on what their customer requests. For example iPhones and maybe other apple products are made in China and they are the best phones out there when it comes to quality and reliability.
This argument is such a cliche, always with the IPhone. Can you name any other examples of them producing quality products?
 
I am not here to argue with anyone, that is absolutely pointless to me. Us Americans need to realize that buyer demand for low prices yields poor quality products. A reduction in price is almost always met with a similar reduction in the quality of the finished goods.
 
Competition will make the companies in America that want to be more competitive and build better cars. The ones that just want to keep screwing you are going to be gone.
 
China is an industrial giant and an auto manufacturing powerhouse. Like it or not, the Chinese auto manufacturers are coming. GAC (in bed with Toyota and FCA, manufactures vehicles for both of them as well as Honda), Great Wall (China's largest SUV and pickup manufacturer), Geely (Volvo's owner), SAIC (China's largest auto manufacturer, in bed with GM), Chery (in bed with Jaguar Land Rover), and BYD (the world's largest EV manufacturer, in bed with Daimler) have ALL announced that they are coming to North America. If you think that the Japanese auto manufactures have had a big impact on the North American market, you ain't seen nothing yet!
It looks like GAC will be the first one to arrive, which is not surprising since they are in bed with Toyota and FCA. Toyota is helping to guide their entry into North America. Before Toyota started doing business with GAC, Toyota already had a lot of respect for them. GAC's copy of one of Toyota's popular models was so good you could take the doors off of it and put it on the corresponding Toyota and the door seals would work perfectly. The one thing that the Chinese have done better than anyone else is steal intellectual property and produce copies/clones CHEAPLY!
IMO, direct Chinese entry into the North American auto market is going to put some of the other auto manufacturers out of business in fairly short order.
 
"The one thing that the Chinese have done better than anyone else is steal intellectual property and produce copies/clones CHEAPLY!"

These look better than Chinese cars of five years ago and are not complete clones, although they undoubtedly have grabbed lots of intellectual property from their alliances. Although I have no intention of being a Chinese fanboy, I find myself with three Lenovo products: a Chromebook, a Moto E4, and a Lenovo ThinkCenter Tiny. All have excellent build quality for the price point. I was looking at my local seller of corporate off-lease computers and was primarily looking at Dell and HP, the other two corporate brands they stock. The Lenovo had better performance specs and great looking build quality for $150 less the Win10 license that I didn't need-- money thrown away. No doubt their first corporate move was grabbing IBM's PC business. Suspect GAC is pulling the same moves. Is it stealing intellectual property if American companies enter into technology transfer agreements willingly in order to get their foot in the door in Chinese markets?

I suspect GAC may be running American factories in five years.

To repeat an oft repeated maxim "Americans think in profitable quarters, Chinese think in decades."
 
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Will they be available at Harbor Freight?
grin2.gif
 
Originally Posted by csandste
I suspect GAC may be running American factories in five years.

If the US Government slaps large protectionist tariffs on Chinese auto imports, like they did to the Japanese in 1981, you can count on it. As a result, the very first thing that the Japanese auto manufacturers did in the 1980s was to start manufacturing vehicles here. The same thing happened with motorcycles.
 
Originally Posted by maxdustington
Originally Posted by diyjake
I never heard anything about GAC but I wouldn't be surprised that they will be good quality and reliable. China can make crap and they can also make awesome products, depends on what their customer requests. For example iPhones and maybe other apple products are made in China and they are the best phones out there when it comes to quality and reliability.
This argument is such a cliche, always with the IPhone. Can you name any other examples of them producing quality products?


How about Milwaukee cordless tools everybody has to have. Makita makes most of the cordless stuff there so does Hilti, Nikon, Canon and other well known camera's make may models there also.
Hella/Behr/Sanden make a very good A/C compressor there. Pirelli tires made there seem to be just as good as those made elsewhere. It seem they can make anything in any quality you are willing to pay for.
 
Most of the Chinese people I know value prestige so they tend to favor well known car brands like Lexus and BMW.

So a Chinese car company is going to be producing cars that are meant for China's growing middle class. To me this means copied designs and low quality.

Could things change and mimic the Japanese car situation of decades ago? Potentially but I'm not holding my breath. Even within Asia there are vast cultural differences in regards to quality and craftsmanship.
 
Originally Posted by Reddy45
Most of the Chinese people I know value prestige so they tend to favor well known car brands like Lexus and BMW.

So a Chinese car company is going to be producing cars that are meant for China's growing middle class. To me this means copied designs and low quality.

Yes, they just need to bring Cayenne clones over here and they're golden.
 
Originally Posted by DoubleWasp
GAC is always at the NAIAS and they are always coming to the US "next year". This is a joke even to the company reps there.

Chery has been saying the same thing for quite some time, but I think that the time is close now for one of them to break the ice, and when the ice finally gets broken watch for the flood.
 
GAC has some very nice looking vehicles. I suspect they may not be refined as domestic car manufacturers, but they certainly are attractive automobiles. If they are priced right-they will sell.

I am sure any Chinese auto manufacturer looking to enter the U.S.market looks at Hyundai as a case study. In other words, they won't make the same mistakes.

Those on this board under estimate the Chinese manufacturing sector-and the quality they can have.

No body on here talks about the Michelin plant that is in China-where those tires are shipped to other parts of the world-but not currently the U.S.
 
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