That must be an old Knock-off of the style only. I liked seeing knock-off designs of cars when I was in China. My favorite was a Micro-Van with a BMW grille. BTW, Huibin has a nice thread of the real Prius being sold in China now: http://priuschat.com/forums/prius-main-forum/44483-prc-version-prius.html
like to see some inside pics maybe somewhere on the internet there are some. i like it! Toyota Prius becomes a three wheeler! at China Car Times from this company Qingqi Group Ningbo Rhon Motorcycle Co., Ltd.
LOL, China is full of crappy knock offs, including cars! Chevrolet is suing Cherry Motors of China for copying the Daewoo Matiz, the smallest car made in Korea. The Cherry QQ is such a blatant copy of the Matiz that you can get the doors off a real Matiz and install them on the QQ and they fit perfect: The Daewoo Matiz The Cherry QQ BMW is suing another Chinese unscrupulous copy cat for an SUV that is a clone of the X5: The real X5 The CEO Sceo Here in South Korea we get all kinds of Chinese low quality copied crap trying to pass for Korean made stuff (which is a whole lot better). You name it, clothing, movies, electronics, even food, they try to slap a Korean label on it and try to pass it for Korean. The quality is clearly a whole lot worse, but it's also the Koreans' fault because many of them are just trying to make a quick living by selling crap at premium prices. Koreans also love to buy buy buy anything, there is a lot of people here with tons of money, and even more people without tons of money trying to sell Chinese crap, hoping to make tons of money. Now with the new Olympic games in Beijing many celebrities and rich folks will be staying in Korea and flying their bizjets daily to China, as we are less than 2 hours away. China worries me. What a weird world we live in!
I have always said, that the dumbest thing the auto companies ever did, was to move tech to China. China will take that tech, design and manufacturing, and turn it around and destroy those same companies. Knock off parts, using the same designs as the auto companies, knock off autos coming back to hurt sales, and the worst quality of anything sold.
I think BMW is actually suing over the Sceo. Maybe Toyota should sue over the Chinese Prius. It looks similar enough to cause confusion and potentially diminish the branding. The Chinese make nothing but crap in theie domestic market. Only the quality control of some (not all obviously) of the western companies that have products made in China keep everything from being crap. Except stuff made in Taiwan, they can make quality stuff when they want to.
Theres a new truck coming out over there that i saw pictures of...the front looks like a Nissan Frontier and the rear looks like the Gen 1 Tundra...
I see nothing wrong per se with knock-offs and borrowing of styling cues. People do it all the time everywhere and in all fields. E.g., The Ralph Lauren catalog is really the Brooks Brothers catalogue (hey, lets out-shiksa the shiksa, anyone?). And some recent knock-offs of note in the car design field: -- Honda Civic sedan of recent years looks A LOT like the BMW 3 series. -- Toyota Prius itself borrows HEAVILY from a 10+ years old Chevy 5 door Malibu Hatchback design, not to mention some old Citreons. Get over it.
Design cues is nothing new TSX fender flares similar to the new S-Class Gen 5 Camry's rear taillights and the current E-Class rear taillights Hyundai Genesis rear lights vs. the current 5 Series rear lights But blatant copies (Matiz, 4Runner, X5, CR-V, Silverado etc etc) violate intellectual properties.
Personally, as a consumer of the product, I couldn't care less about either subtle or blatant violations of intellectual property laws.
The triangle window by the side view mirror is not functional! You can't see through it as seen in that side shot.
