Chinese Clones - The Story of Soulless and Affordable Cars (Page 3)

← Continued from Page 2 of "Chinese Clones - The Story of Soulless and Affordable Cars"In other short news, Laibo S-RV is a clone of the original and much more famous Honda CR-V, Chery QQ is inspired by Chevrolet Spark/Daewoo Matiz, Geely did it again with its C300 model that copied Mercedes C-Klasse W203, Toyota RAV4 and Land Cruiser Pradogave birth to UFO RV and Dadi Shuttle, respectively, BYD had a dream that its F8 is a Mercedes CLK Cabrio, while Shuanghuan CEO offered Chinese a glimpse into how BMW X5 looked like.

Now, you're probably wondering how come no company actually managed to do something about it and stop the invasion of the Chinese clone. Oh well, they did try it, and while some really managed to win the battle and stop the blatant copies from reaching the market, others surrendered and hoped to see clients dumping the fakes.

Here are three important attempts started by some very important car manufacturers: Rolls-Royce, BMW and Ford.

As we've said, the Rolls Royce Phantom served as “development platform” for the Chinese Geely GE that was presented a few years ago at the Shanghai Motor Show. At that time, most people described the rip-off as an outrageous attempt to steal the luxurious design of the Phantom, so they called for Rolls Royce to file a lawsuit. The answer was a rather disappointing one: we're looking into it, so we may go to court very soon. It never happened.

Here's the official statement of the company: "Our colleagues in Shanghai are taking a serious look at it," a RR spokesman told the Daily Mail. "Rolls-Royce Motor Cars is very protective of its brand image and takes seriously any attempt to imitate its products.
"Rolls-Royce is currently keeping its options open and is in consultation with its legal advisers."

BMW 7 Series vs. Brilliance BS6 in safety crash tests.

BMW on the other hand dipped its toe in the water and files a lawsuit against Shuanghuan, the Chinese company that copied its X5 for the creation of the so-called CEO. An Italian court however rejected the claims, saying that the CEO doesn't look at all like an X5. What do you think? Here are the two models.

What's worse is that Shuanghuan also released their model in Europe and even sold more than 200 units, which kind of affects the Bavarian car manufacturer.

Ford managed to prove us that the impossible is possible by filing a lawsuit against Chinese manufacture JAC. Their model, baptized 4R3, copied Ford F-150, so the Americans decided to bring the whole case to court and let the judges make a decision. Finally, Ford managed to block the model, as the court ruled in its favor and thus forced the Chinese to stop production of this rip-off.