…vehicles in the US marketplace…sometime in the near future.
This might not be the best time foe a Chinese manufacturer to try to crack the American market.
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I guess that GAC’s executives don’t read the news coverage from The US on a regular basis…
But, if they do mange to crack The US marketplace, just imagine the commercials:
I just bought a new car, and all I can say is…GAC!
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My thoughts exactly. Maybe they will have the sense to call themselves something else here.
Still another brand you’d better not buy if you live in THIS small town in a galaxy far, far away.
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That would be logical, but because virtually anyone can get a job as an English language translator in China, the problems with that name may not be perceived by the GAC guys.
Here is an example of some apparently acceptable English translation on a Chinese airliner:
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Interesting that you should bring that up. There is an article in USA Today about pronouncing Donald Trumps name and the names of his cohorts. Transliteration can be a problem, and that is certainly the case with names. It goes in the other direction too, and not with just Chinese language.
Here is another example of…apparently…acceptable English translation for a Chinese corporate entity.
As I stated previously, almost ANYONE can qualify as a Chinese-English translator in that country!
Just imagine what their Owner’s Manuals will look like…
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How do you know the system isn’t staring…at you? Maybe Big Brother really is watching.
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It seems like only yesterday that people were looking down on Toyota, Honda, and Datsun (for you younger guys, that was Nissan’s old name). Even more recently people were looking down on Hyundai and Kia. If the reliability is competitive, and the price is affordable, I hope the Chinese cars do well. They look like decent cars. If they do well, perhaps they too will lend up employing more American auto workers than GM or Ford. I’d mention Chrysler, but they may not be here by then.
I saw my first Hyundai Genesis on the streets in Hollywood. I mistook it for Bentley. I looked at one later in a dealership and it was an absolute luxury sled, very well done.
I saw the new Lincoln Continentals recently at a dealers. They could have been mistaken for Buicks. Definitely now “world-class”.
We’ve lost our edge in luxury cars. And also in small cars. Since Camry, Accord, and Sentra have beaten us for years in mid size cars too, there’s no reason for China to not give it a shot. If we lose market share to Chinese cars, IMHO it’ll be because of our own failures, and for no other reason.
I look forward to checking one out.
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Go to Hobby Lobby looked for one thing not made in China, Now it seems I have so many options to buy made in China, and some stuff is good enough and some stuff, like my solar yard light that worked for a month is crap. I would not dismiss the car out of hand but would sure like to see a reliability rating before I bought one. I was almost going to go for a Fiat, but as I read it they are not the wisest choice.
…and with good reason, at least in the case of Datsun!
My brother’s first wife bought a Datsun SPL-310 (the previous model year, it bore the model name of “Fairlady”), and it was without doubt the worst piece of automotive crap that I have ever experienced.
As a blatant copy of an MG, it was indeed fast, and it handled reasonably well, but it was both very badly engineered and atrociously assembled.
In addition to a huge water leak underneath the windshield every time that it rained, and severe starting problems anytime the temp went below 40 degrees or so, it was ridiculously difficult to do some very basic maintenance on its engine.
What am I referring to? I am talking about the twin side-draft carbs that were positioned so close to the inner fender that it was impossible to remove the cover of the air filter housing in order to replace the air filter. In order to replace the air filter, one had to remove both carbs from the manifold. How’s that for idiotic design?
I don’t recall the actual details, but the indy mechanic to whom we started taking the car used to curse about the design of the disc brakes, claiming that they were different from the disc brakes on other cars he worked on, and that the Datsun design made it much more difficult to replace the pads and to do other repairs on the brakes.
Additionally, the tonneau cover was too small for the car and could not be secured properly, and all of the chrome on the car was completely rusted within ~1 year.
Because Datsun was essentially selling franchises to anyone who wanted one, the dealership from whom the car was bought was absolutely useless in regard to resolving all of the car’s many problems. It turned out that their “service department” consisted of one old man who simply washed the cars and removed the plastic on the seats, prior to delivery. If you brought the car to them for service, they would wait until you had left, and would then drive the car to a Gulf gas station a couple of blocks away for servicing. The mechanic at the Gulf station had neither factory training, nor specialized tools, nor the inclination to do much more than change oil and spark plugs. And, the two brothers who owned the dealership (shiny suits, broken noses, and a threatening demeanor) had a way of convincing you not to return again for the water leak, or the starting problem, or anything else for that matter.
And, then there was the Owner’s Manual, which was written mostly in Pidgin English. There were some other strange language usages, but the only one that I can recall was the description of the windshield wipers, which we were informed “have two kind speeds”. Trust me…there was nothing “kind” about that abominable Datsun or the Datsun dealership. Neither the car nor the company were yet “ready for primetime”, even though they saw fit to enter the US marketplace.
I wish the Chinese well, and hopefully they will do a better job of preparing both themselves and their vehicles for the US marketplace than Datsun did when they first started selling cars here.
I agree, I had an early Toyota (about 73) that had numerous problems. When I sold it at 25k miles, it was on the second differential, had lost compression in one cylinder, and the alternator was only partially working. And it was rusting badly.
You already KNOW what their manuals will look like… Have you bought any electronic gadget lately and tried to read the manual? Many are loaded with statements that look like they were done with Google Translate from Chinese to English. 
Hopefully the guys from GAC will not have their manuals translated into English by the same person who did the translation for this Chinese-made flashlight:
I think that using Google Translate would be a massive improvement over this ridiculous thing!
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I owned a 2 cylinder air cooled Honda Z600. Coupe. Build quality was very good and parts, such as battery and and exhaust system were cheap and in stock.
The owners manual had driving tips including “when encountering a pedestrian on the roadway, one should tootle one’s horn trumpet.” We of course would go “tootle, tootle, tootle,” when seeing a pedestrian in the street or road.
Hmmmm…That sounds extremely familiar, so it is just possible that the same (or very similar) text was included in our Datsun Owner’s Manual from 1967.
engrish.com has a wealth of mistranslations.
I was in a large tool store in Wichita, KS about 10 years ago and while browsing a bit I saw a mill that I was faintly interested in. It was Chinese made.
I pulled the operations manual out of the cabinet and started perusing it. It was Chinese translated to English and may as well have been written in Hmong. Anyone buying that machine would need to have a pretty decent amount of mechanical aptitude and the ability to sort out operating procedures on their own as it was equal to or worse than the example provided by VDCdriver.
Interesting that Buick is counting on the Chinese market and the Chinese are counting on the US market. I think the operative statement was “they look like decent cars”. Yep, all their stuff looks fine but the rest you never know.
I began getting fed up over the last ten years or so when I bought my Milwaukee chop saw. Got it home and discovered made in China. Then virtually everything you buy from smoke detectors to power tools are either made in China or Mexico. I bought my Toro snow blower because I wanted a US/Minnesota made unit only to find that the engine was Chinese and the rest was made in Mexico. Interesting that a class mate was the former CEO of Toro and we commiserated together about the need for this at our class reunion. I understand the competitive issue but like I said many times before it has just gotten way out of hand. It is a fine machine though and working fine after the replacement engine due to step missed in the manufacturing process (by mistake or design).