Car accidents inspiring bouts of nationalism aren't all that new. However, this could be the shakiest case of it that we've heard of recently. Wang Zhan, the Chinese owner of a Mercedes S350, rear-ended a DongFeng van. In spite of the rather severe damage done to the car, the airbags didn't deploy, and Zhan and his daughter had to make a trip to the hospital. When the medication wore off, Mr. Zhan knew immediately what he needed to do: hold a press conference and announce that he'd only be buying Chinese goods for the rest of his life.
Based on the damage, it looks like he was doing some serious speed when it happened, and it's clear that the airbags should have deployed. Mr. Zhan said Mercedes never gave him a satisfactory answer as to why they didn't. Still, it happens, and we can imagine a number of other vehicles in which such an accident would have prevented Zhan from doing anything else, ever -- like, oh, some models from China. And we wouldn't mind knowing how the DongFeng van fared. Yet while we all know this never would have happened in a Geely, we might recommend that Zhan perhaps try something from Sweden first...
[Source: Winding Road]
Based on the damage, it looks like he was doing some serious speed when it happened, and it's clear that the airbags should have deployed. Mr. Zhan said Mercedes never gave him a satisfactory answer as to why they didn't. Still, it happens, and we can imagine a number of other vehicles in which such an accident would have prevented Zhan from doing anything else, ever -- like, oh, some models from China. And we wouldn't mind knowing how the DongFeng van fared. Yet while we all know this never would have happened in a Geely, we might recommend that Zhan perhaps try something from Sweden first...
[Source: Winding Road]
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