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China’s Dongfeng makes a lot of cars with several joint ventures. It also makes its own cars. In a way. It’s ode to the Hummer is legend. Now, Dongfeng found inspiration in another legend: The Unimog. At a show in Shanghai, Carnewschina found the Dongfeng v-Tiger, or EQ2070FQJ, which it says is a spitting image of Daimler’s inconic Unimog workhorse. Well, that’s up to debate. One thing isn’t:
For the snow-clearing version, Dongfeng didn’t even bother to build a Unimog lookalike. Instead, Dongfeng put real Unimog photos in its own catalog. If the fake Unimog is so close to the original, why bother taking new pictures?
12 Comments on “Dongfeng Copies Cars While They Are Still In The Catalog...”
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the best form of flattery is … wait what?
I’ve always wondered about the details of these knockoffs of iconic vehicles – just how flimsy are they? Do people actually buy them?
Local and 3rd world markets only, as far as I am aware.
It is a very indicative fact that, say, in Russia even a local Lada (awful, awful product) has a better reputation than the Chinese.
Wow!
Russians would rather buy a Lada over a Chinese knockoff.
That says *VOLUMES* as to how bad Chinese cars are.
I was in China in January, and rode in a few locally-built cars (gen-2 Jettas, a couple of ’90s-Toyota-Crown-ish knockoffs, etc). Most had harder interior plastics and more suspension noise than the name brands, but they were surprisingly un-unpleasant (I’ll admit I didn’t experience crashing in them).
Moreover, despite the thousands of Chinese-branded cars on the roads, there weren’t any more of them stranded on the roadside than usual.
I reckon China’s cars are about where Japan was in the ’50s (superficially shoddy license-builts and knockoffs), and on a similar development trajectory. Given how many Audis, BMWs, and Mercedes they’re now importing into the country, their standards are rising quick. Automakers used to playing the ‘more stuff for less’ would do well to have a Plan B in the medium-to-long term.
Classic… Hope they at least photoshopped the Mercedes logo out…
If you buy Chinese, you deserve what you get. That apparently goes for cars, too.
Its fake digital camo is interesting. It’s also not done “properly” but if you are buying a Chinese copy of a Unimog you probably don’t care.
I’ve seen some Chinese tractors up close and the quality level was amazingly poor. The engine was some kind of Perkins clone, a sketchy one at that.
I think the real question is, can the average Chinese farmer keep the thing running with backyard crappy tools and very little understanding.
If he/she can even if it breaks down a lot, they will sell in decent numbers.
Quality may be low, but if it can keep running with crap maintenance, it will serve it’s market.
I recall reading an article about the Libyan revolution recently. I thought it telling that the author was more concerned about how badly built the Chinese SUV they were in was than the threat of pro-Qaddafi forces.
Hey, Zara does it. Why not China?