Chinese-made cars now offered for sale in North America!

No, it's not any make of car that you would be likely to guess.
Additionally, Canada is the only North American nation where the cars are being sold at this point.

For the somewhat surprising (at least, to me) information, take a look at:
http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1070993_first-chinese-car-goes-on-sale-in-north-america?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=outbrain

the same mountainbike

I guess that confirms that the automobile industry is truely, totally global now. The days of knowing where a vehicle is built by its maker or model have disappeared in our rear view mirrors.

jtsanders

"The days of knowing where a vehicle is built by its maker or model have disappeared in our rear view mirrors"

As the article said, just look at the VIN. Someone like you, SMB, can easily ferret out where a car came from. I wonder what ""Fit" means in Chinese?

dagosa

And good old John Deere has been making lines of it 's tractors in India for more then twenty years. This is nothing new, but the scale of in breeding is changing. Now, heck it's been going on for ever......

cigroller

The VIN might tell you where it was assembled, but it won't tell you where "it" came from b/c there are so many its in the car. So it might be assembled someplace but the parts are globally sourced.

But the global economy is not new - as dagosa noted. And its even way older than John Deere's forays into India. The whole notion that companies somehow "represent" or come from or belong to a nation state is a long standing fiction carefully nurtured by both companies and nation-states.

Caddyman

The backlash has started..The United Steel Workers have filed several complaints alleging China has violated trade agreements by subsidizing industries that produce auto parts for export to the U.S. and dumping them here at below cost pricing..The Obama administration has upheld similar complaints of unfair trade putting China on notice that our trade agreements will be enforced and that unfair trade and labor practices will not be tolerated...

the same mountainbike

And we will do WHAT again?????????

China's history on complying with trade agreements is about as compliant as Iran's is with not creating nuclear wepons, or North Korea's is with respecting the autonomy of South Korea.

I don't have an answer to offer, but I don't think anything we can do will make China change its ways.

MikeInNH

20 years ago when the US had a bigger economy then China and much of China's industry relied on the US....THEN we could have forced China to change it's ways.

But now with China having a bigger economy (or at least faster growing)....we need them more then they need us.

Caddyman

Corporate Politics has convinced Americans that Duties & Tariffs levied against imports are the most terrible, evil, thing in the world.. But from 1776 until 1913, it was the revenue collected from Duties and Tariffs that ran our entire Government....No income taxes, no sales taxes...Buy today, in the era of global "Free Trade", duties and tariffs have become dirty words and sadly, everyone believes that...

It is the lack of duties and tariffs that has destroyed our middle class manufacturing jobs and allowed corporate executives to pay themselves millions of dollars a year, sometimes hundreds of millions, along with the investment bankers who raise the capital to finance these corporations. Well THAT'S GREAT if you are one of those people. But membership in that club is restricted to maybe 5% of us and that's it...The rest of us are expected to consume all this imported material and goods while OUR incomes slide down towards those in the "Low wage" countries corporations seek to "trade" with....

These are the kinds of policies that lead to social revolution...Blood in the streets....

Bing

Soon to be on sale at you local Walmart Super store. I thought I saw a year or so ago that they were just taking popular European models and copying them. Kind of like they have done with everything else. Doesn't mean the bolts won't break or they'll last any better than the no name tools, but they'll look nice.

I think I pretty much agree with Caddyman. I don't know if tarriffs are the answer anymore but our own business leaders sold us down the river to advance their own net worth. This upper eschelon of business leaders care less about the people, the national interest, or anything else except lining their own pockets. I'm reading the book "Retirement Heist" now that shows how low some of these folks have stooped to grab as much as they can regardless. How the people have been duped by these guys is astounding.

VDCdriver

I would find it very hard to disagree with any of the sentiments expressed by Caddyman, above.

dagosa

I second your "vote" VDC. Though I' m not an isolationist by any means, doing what ever is necessary to preserve our industrial base is as important as buying appropriate weaponry or training our troops for national defense.
If I'm not mistaken, Caddyman's observation was instrumental in bringing Toyota jobs here and making GM one of biggest car manufacturer IN China.

Triedaq

I just read in the latest issue of Consumer Reports (March 2012 issue) about the problems with fires in home appliances from coffee makers to refrigerators. In many cases, the fires were traced to components imported from other countries. Many of these faulty components did come from China. Several years ago, Consumer Reports tested lawnmowers and mowers that had Briggs and Straton engines manufactured in China had engine problems. I would be concerned about the quality and durability of an automobile manufactured in China.

keith

I would be concerned about the quality and durability of an automobile manufactured in China."

A few years ago, someone said that about Korea, and before that it was said of Japan. And before that, it was said of Germany.

jtsanders

"A few years ago, someone said that about Korea, and before that it was said of Japan. And before that, it was said of Germany."

And that was exactly true. For a while. It was also true of the Detroit 3 for a while. These days, most manufacturers selling the the USA build reliable cars and trucks. If you look at the difference between highly reliable cars and low reliability cars in Consumer Reports, the difference can be less than 3%.

Docnick

Although I would not rush out to buy a Chinese made car right now, it won't be long before you'll see many of them. That may start with low priced electric cars. The Chinese are already selling those for about $20,000 or less for a compact model.

I've bought 3 Dell computers over the years; the first one was made in Austin, Texas, the second one in Malaysia and the third one in China. They were all good.

My current laptop is made in Taiwan, my keybard in China, and my large LG monitor in Korea. My multifunction phone is Chinese, my printers are Chinese and the other is made in Thailand. And so on. The only really crappy piece of equipment was a California-made $55 DESK lamp with a touch on-off switch. It not only did not work well, but the instructions said: "DO NOT OPERATE NEAR ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT"!!!!! This was a product of Silicon Valley!

I can visualize an old couple watching MASH reruns (a program that made the Koreans out to be illiterate country bumpkins) on an LG (Korean made) wide screen TV, while their popcorn was popping in their Korean Samsung (world's largest Micro manufacturer).

jtsanders

During the Korean War, Koreans were largely bumpkins; especially in rural areas where the MASH unit operated. I met bumpkins in college on the east coast of the USA. Several had never been outside their county before they went to college.

MikeInNH

The only foreign car that entered the US market in recent memory that was extremely unreliable was the Yugo. It was cheap...and very very unreliable.

VDCdriver

That may be true, Mike, but the early Japanese models to enter the US were...pretty close to crap.

My brother had the misfortune to own a Datsun SPL-310 (or 311?), made in 1967, and that car was essentially a total disaster. Nobody could ever figure out why the engine would crank, but not start, if the temperature was below ~45 degrees. The water leaks were so bad that the passenger's legs (mine, usually) would be totally soaked if you drove during a rain storm. Despite several requests to seal the leak (apparently from the base of the windshield), the car leaked atrociously until the day that my brother dumped it.

The convertible top was a bit too tight, thus leading to a struggle every time that the top was put up. The tonneau cover was so small that it could not be attached.

Everything on the car rusted very quickly, but the winner of the oxidation race was the chrome. The bumpers were totally rusted within a little more than a year.

But--the most ridiculous problem concerned the air filter. The engine had twin side-draft carbs, and there was so little clearance between the air cleaner housing and the inner fender that it was not possible to remove the top of the air cleaner housing in order to replace the air filter! The only way to remove the air cleaner housing was to disconnect the carbs from the intake manifold. Whoever released a design like that had to be either totally incompetent or absolutely unconcerned with customer satisfaction.

Also, Datsun was giving/selling dealership franchises to anyone at that point.
The dealership where that Datsun was bought was really a used car lot, owned by two brothers who certainly resembled a couple of Mafioso types, both in appearance and in their attitude toward customer service. There was no service department! If you brought a car back to them because of a problem, they would take it to the Gulf gas station about a block away, where it would sit for days and then be returned without the problem being rectified. The guys at the Gulf station admitted to us that they had not been provided with Datsun repair manuals and they clearly had little interest in trying to put things right with these little rolling automotive disasters.

Put it all together, and you had the formula for major problems with your new 1967 Datsun.

Docnick

Mike; there were also the Hyundai Pony (in the 80s), it did have a good engine but the rest was "fragile".Hyundai learned very fast, but others, such as Renault (Le Car), and Fiat never bothered to find out what US buyers expected and demanded in a car.

dagosa

I had Japanese cars as early as the 70's. Though they were no where near as good as they are now, at least by then, they were no worse then the American and European cars they competed against.