Chinese presence at Frankfurt noticed by other manufacturers
When three Chinese automakers made a splash at last week's Frankfurt Motor Show, Chrysler Group's Joe Eberhardt took notice. While only one of the three has product in Europe and none have yet to come to the United States, Eberhardt, in a chat with The Car Connection, felt their presence at Frankfurt was "daunting" and expects them to become prime contenders in the coming years. As a reference, Japanese companies such as Toyota took 20 years to entrench themselves as competitors to domestics and Korean manufacturers took only 10 — with that half-life, Chinese companies will be global competitors in just a few years.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
aleandro 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
wow the chinese are taking over. Anyways I have yet to see an appealing car from china that is not a total rip-off of western or japanese models.
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iQuack 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
Looks like the Crosley has returned.
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Tim 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
if memory serves, the kia sephia was created by buying the intellectual property surrounding the mazda protege from the previous generation... now look how far they've come.
lexus's STILL look like copies of mercedes benz
imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and innovation is just around the corner. china is going to be an economic force to be reckoned with... it's just a matter of time.
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John 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
Nut until they can prove themselves, we will not see Chinese brands on our shores. We don't need another Hyundai Excel or a Yugo clogging up our streets.
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Gandhi 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
Those Hyundai Excels led to today's Hyundai Sonata, Accent and Elantras.
No one comes out of the blue to make the next Rolls Royce or Ferrari. You start out small and work your way up.
Having said that, I still think Toyota makes derivative designed cars, even after all these years. ANd I am a Camry owner.
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Jay 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
Everybody is guilty of copying designs...pretty much all mainstream manufacturers do it, some more than others. Hyundai gets picked on quite a bit because each year there are increasingly fewer reasons to not buy Hyundais and some people just need more reasons to hate them :D I imagine the Chinese manufacturers are going to face a lot of the same stigma, simply because they're Chinese.
Everyone copies...though I rarely see BMW copy anyone...they're the target of a lot of the copying that goes on :D
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I_hate_Chinese 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
The rise of Hyundai doesn't mean Chinese could duplicate Hyundai's success. Key to Hyundai's success was the massive capital investment made possible by being a part of a $60 billion/year industrial empire. This allowed Hyundai to spend several tens of billions of dollars on R&D build-up and capacity expansion, to quickly build the economy of scale that only the likes of GM, Ford, Toyota, and DCX enjoy. Only when Hyundai broke 2 million units/year in volume did it become truely competitive.
It takes at least $500 million to define a single competitive and fully regulation compliant automotive platform, and you need 8 of those to have a complete product line up.
How many Chinese auto companies can afford to spend that much? None. Notice that not even Samsung could compete with Hyundai on capital expenditure and folded its auto business. Hyundai's rise was a one-of-a-kind event that is unlikely to be duplicated.
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Hobart 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
They may be be in capitalist in economic terms but politically the Chinese government is no better than a bunch of gangster thugs holding on to power with brutal force and gestapo police tactics. Sick Communist regime and I wouldn't support even they ever make an appealing car! First they steal our manufacturing secrets by forcing us to teach them how to make cars if we want to sell in their billion market of peasants and corrupt officals, then they turn it back onto us by selling cars in the USA and taking more of our capital into their Communist banks richer to buy more weapons. Don't suport them.
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ChinoPride 10:37PM (12/18/2005)
What's wrong with buying Chinese cars? Just because it's a Chinese car doesn't mean you are supporting the Chinese government. Besides, Geely is a privately owned automobile company which I take pride on compared to those other "Big Three" Chinese car company that simply builds foreign cars with foreign brands. Those are the one you should be watching, not Geely.
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