Over the past several years, rumors of a pending "invasion" of the US consumer market by cheaply priced (and cheaply made) Chinese cars have surfaced from time to time
First, it was Chery Automotive, a company sued by General Motors for having a name too close to Chevy, the nickname for GM's iconic Chevrolet brand. A company set up by Malcolm Bricklin who brought the ill-famed Yugo to our shores in the 1980s was planning to bring these same Chery cars stateside as recently as 2006, but that venture has failed and Mr. Bricklin is in a legal wrangle with his Chinese partners
Next, it was Brilliance Auto who talked about shipping their cars to the US only to be publicly embarrassed when their flagship Brilliance BS6 (I kid you not, that is the name of this model) failed an important European crash test. Results of that test were posted to YouTube and and can still be found there today. Yes, that is the car's windshield that worked its way loose and went flying...get out of the way
Lastly, just about every other manufacturer of Chinese cars has also promised to import their cars to the US including several with unpronounceable and clearly unforgettable names. Great Wall Motor (GWM) is one of the easier names to remember, but their cars were kicked out of Italy recently after a judge ruled that one of its models was a replica of the Fiat Panda, a charge that GWM denies
This year's auto show in Detroit (North American International Auto Show or NAIAS) featured a handful of models from select Chinese companies, but none have promised what Brilliance Auto plans to do in 2009: put their cars on display and start selling them the same year in the US
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