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Test Your Ford Car from an Alibaba Cat-Themed Vending Machine

If by any chance you are Chinese and live in the city of Guangzhou, you now have the chance of test driving a Ford vehicle without the car dealer employers hassling you.
Tmall FOrd vending machine 5 photos
Photo: The Verge
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All you have to do is go to the weirdest building in town, the one with two cat heads sticking out on either side, pick a car, drive it and, if you like it, buy it.

According to Gasgoo, residents of Guangzhou who qualify under at least two social credits systems (yes, China does rate its citizens like that), can use Alibaba's Taobao mobile app or the Tmall platform to book a test drive in one of ten Ford vehicles available, including, for instance, the Ford Mustang.

Thing is the whole affair is not free. The source says potential customers will have to pay some fees, depending on whether they want just to drive the car or are planning to buy a vehicle. After that is done, all they have to do is pick up the car from the building the companies involved call “super test-drive center.”

The test drives are not limited to a few minutes, as you would normally get from your neighborhood dealer, but last for three days.

The unique test drive feature will only be available until April 23. If those testing the Ford models are satisfied, they can’t just drive away with the vehicle they got from the vending machine. They have to return it and then head off to a standard dealership to purchase the car.

Thanks to the fact that they have used this service, however, customers can get various discounts.

As a side note, if you’re wondering what’s with the cat thingies that pop up on the roof of the structure, those represent the logo of the Tmall platform, an Alibaba owned Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer online retail.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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