Chinese Clone Cars

The real Honda CR-V and the Laibo S-RV.


Chery QQ vs General Motor's Chevy Spark


W203 Mercedes C-class and Geely C300

Notice that not only are they similar in their looks, but also in their model names!


The Shuanghuan Noble and Daimler's Smart ForTwo


UFO RV and Toyota RAV4


Toyota's Land Cruiser Prado and Dadi Shuttle



Shuanghuan CEO and BMW X5 (E53)



Scion xB (Toyota bB) and Greatwall Coolbear (what a name...)


BYD F8 and Mercedes CLK Cabrio

And today, BYD released another new model. It's called the Toyota Previa / Estima BYD M6.


Also, Chery will be launching two new premium / luxury brands; Riich and Rely.

If you think that the Riich logo looks suspiciously familiar, take look at Bentley "Flying B" badge below.

The first premium car to wear the Riich badge is the Riich G6.


It maybe funny to laugh at Chinese clone cars. But there are also a couple of small fact in the history of today's established car brands that many are not aware of. Check out the below.
You really think Volkswagen and Ferdinand Porsche are the creator of the the "People's car?"

The car on the left is the VW Beetle that we all know. The car on the right is the Tatra T-97. In case you didn't know, Tatra is one of the earliest car companies in the world, with a history dating back to 1850 in the Czech Republic. Austrian genius Hans Ledwinka was Tatra's star engineer. In the 1940s, Dr Fritz Todt, the German general inspector of the Autobahn network, once called the Tatra T87 was the ultimate Autobahn car. Not even Mercedes had that kind of recognition.

Tatra's could have easily been Czech's equivalent of Porsche or VW, but its history was abruptly cut short in World War II by the Nazi invasion. In the post-war years, Tatra suffered a slow death into oblivion when the company fell under Communist control.


Above is the KdF-Wagen, an early prototype for the VW Beetle. Below is the Tatra T-97, which is powered by a flat-four rear mounted engine, a configuration that Ferdinand Porsche would use in the Beetle.

To cut the long automotive history short, Adolf Hitler once called Ferdinand Porsche to a meeting in Berlin. He laid down vision of an affordable people's car. Ferdinand Porsche was under huge cost and time pressure to deliver and all his early prototypes failed to meet the necessary cost, performance and space requirements. Meanwhile, Tatra's star engineer Hans Ledwinka was working on a few small streamlined body rear engine cars. In the book "Car Wars," Ferdinand Porsche admitted that he had occasionally "looked over" the shoulders of Hans Ledwinka in designing the Beetle. Hitler would later noticed that Ferdinand Porsche's prototypes were too similar to Tatra T97, and ordered the T97 to be removed from the 1939 Berlin AutoSalon.

Tatra would eventually sue Porsche for damages, and Ferdinand was willing to settle the matter. However Hitler intervened and told Ferdinand he would "settle the matter." Czechoslovakia was later invaded by the German Nazis and production of the Tatra T97 halted. After the war had ended, Volkswagen paid Volkswagen paid Tatra 3,000,000 Deutsche Mark in compensation in 1961.

Also, everybody knows Toyota is the largest and richest car company in the world. Some even call Toyota Motor Co. the Bank of Toyota. But take a look at Toyota's first car, the Model AA.

Toyota's official history would say that the Model AA is "based on a Chrysler model." But there was never any licensing agreement between Toyoda Automatic Loom Works (before Toyota Motor Co. was created) and Chrysler. The Model AA was in fact a loose copy of the 1934 Chrysler Airflow. But of course, the resemblance is not that obvious and Kiichiro Toyoda took greater effort to differentiate the two cars.

History is written in the eyes of the victor. Just as the name Edison is often wrongly credited for the progress of electricity, when in fact James Swan was the inventor (Edison merely improved the filament material) and Nikola Tesla invented AC current while Edison fought against AC power to promote his less efficient DC power. Do you really think Marconi invented radio? Again, it was Nikola Tesla.

In other words, it's just history repeating itself. But maybe the scale of China's automotive industry and state of today's global competition have magnified these greatly.

Related link :
Top selling cars in China..
China is officially the world's largest car market.