Chinese Copycat Korean Car Designs or More
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Ssangyong Motor, GM Daewoo Not Pursuing Legal Action Due to Red Tape
Korea Times
By Kim Yon-se
Staff Reporter
Chinese carmakers are suspected of copying Korean car designs without permission.
SG Automotive GroupÂ’s Aurora is almost impossible to tell apart from Ssangyong MotorÂ’s Rexton, while Chery AutomobileÂ’s QQ and GM DaewooÂ’s Matiz look like twins.
Avante, Terracan and Santa Fe of Hyundai Motor are also targets for Chinese copycats.
A Ssangyong Motor spokesman said that with Chinese companies, imitation is an habitual practice, adding, ``They are also producing fake models of Toyota and Honda.Â’Â’
Since June 2005, SG Automotive Group has been selling Aurora at a cheaper price than Rexton, a premium sport utility vehicle, which debuted in Korea in 2001. “The designs are very similar. But the Aurora’s structure of auto parts is totally different from that of Rexton,” the spokesman said. “It seems that the company is a highly-skilled modelling firm, rather than a carmaker.”
He said several Chinese molding companies are frequently changing their replication targets after selling a copied model for one or two years at a bargain. But Ssangyong Motor chose not to take legal action against SG Automotive, citing ChinaÂ’s lawsuit system which is favorable to their companies.
The Korean company only informed its largest shareholder, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. (SAIC), of the copycatting last year.
There has been no statement from SAIC about whether or not it issued a warning to SG Automotive.
Last November, GM Daewoo withdrew its lawsuit against Chery Automobile for copying its popular small-car model Matiz. The two sides have been in a dispute for a year since Chery Automobile was found to have copied designs and technologies used for the Matiz, a GM Daewoo compact car model.
The third-largest automaker of Korea filed a lawsuit against the Chinese firm at a Chinese court in 2004.
GM Daewoo also alleged it found the vast majority of parts in the Matiz and QQ were interchangeable, although Matiz technology had never been sold or licensed to Chery through authorized channels. -
what up with that?
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its just saying that those chinamen are only good at copying cars...not producing their own cars...and in fact they made the car worse than the original(one good eg is the crash test)
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That's why I say, want to copy, copy all the way.
Side bars, crumple zones, air bags all copy together. Don't leave it half fcuked, machiam turbine no blades.