Will your next car be a Geely?

Did anyone see their car at the Detroit Auto Show? Can they make the jump to the American market in 2008? Is this the next Toyota or just another Yugo?

Here is an article with photos of the Geely at the auto show.

Looks like a tiny Mercedes.

We’ll get a preview of what China can offer the auto market in Europe before the US market.

There is a car called the Innovech Mycar coming out in Europe soon. It is similar to a Smart car, but at a much lower price. Interestingly, it was designed by the famed Italdesign studio in Italy.

What I will find interesting is where the quality will be. Will they use quality plastics? Will they upgrade certain components to be more durable for the American market? Time will tell.

http://www.innovech.net/

Here is a link to the 2004 China Auto Show in Beijing 2004.

http://www.cardesignnews.com/autoshows/2004/beijing/index.php

There are a couple of images of the previous Greely models. They tend to be more in the Yugo realm of automotives. Even the newer models don’t give me anything to get too excited about. Though the styling seems to have improved, I keep telling myself, its Chinese.

WHEN WILL ID GET IT!!

YOUR DESIGNS ARE NOT MADE(manufactured) IN USA…anymore.

Think of it like this. A nice baseball analogy that IDers can understand.

China currently has the best pitchers that money can buy. They might be rookies but they are really good. Your team has 44 year old professional pitches that have been in several world series.

Game day comes.

CHINA is and will continue to throw 103 MPH fastballs from the first inning to the 9th without a slowdown. Your team goes through all of your decent pitchers. They tire quickly and keep throwing wild pitches because they are grabbing for anything.

A car is a lot LESS complicated than most other things made in China. If china throws a ball or two (an ugly Design or shape) they can recover easily by throwing 100 more 103 MPH fastballs.

Sure there are some crappy material choices and but the Japanese and koreans invented SPC to increase quality in the 1970’s. China uses a lot of SPC currently.

China is just getting warmed up and will absolutely CRUSH the world market for th next few years. Manufacturing labor is still almost free for their companies comared to all other countries in the world.

Any car made in china is a professional major league contender. The YUGO is T-ball by comparison.

Actually, I should give credit where due. W. Deming was really the father of SPC. but the Japanese made the broadest leaps with Demings work.

A couple of thoughts:

  1. According to your line of thought Moderator, the Chinese are really dumb. After all, they keep hiring westerners to design their products. Don’t they know there are 100,000 Chinese designers that will work for 1/10 the pay to design their cars?

  2. If labor cost is everything, the Big 3 must be the top auto companies in the world. After all, they have plants in Mexico where workers are paid much less than the US, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Canada, South Korea or Japan. Somehow, I don’t think many Core readers will agree with that analysis.

Maybe mr-914 you missunderstood, I never meant to give an impression Chinese are dumb. No insults were thrown at the Chinese, in fact you need to give the chinese credit for taking fully functioning high quality products to the american market sooner than you could do in the US at a cheaper price.

I do not think creative design is coming out of China right now.

Many products are still designed around the world, but usually sourced in china yep, sourced (manufactured in China)

Being underpaid is pretty different from cost of labor to make a product.

The labor to make a product in the US is more expensive than mexico, the labor to make the same product in mexico is more than china.

I agree, As Bob Lutz I can underpay my Mexican auto workers compared to my chinese auto workers but my product will still cost less overall in China.

I am a living breathing red blooded American with a 35 foot flagpole in the yard that has old glory waving. It still does not change the current fact that labor is cheaper in china.
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