Everyone keeps saying “sooner or later, China will get their act together and dominate the market,” which is probably true, and every U.S. importer wants to believe they’ve found the only good Chinese manufacturer, but here’s a clue about what we’re dealing with there for now.
5 thoughts on “Chinese automobile logo rip-offs”
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Some are bad rip offs. But I think the one that’s similar to the Oldsmobile is better than the olds and is probably not unduly influenced. It’s a ‘1’! But how many ways can you put your logo or company initials in a square or an oval? And the chrome motif is kinda universal and lends to them looking similar.
I like the first one ( Changan ) becuase it’s more a rip off of the star trek logo than the Toyota logo.
yeah, the more I look at them, there’s a lot of homogeny in car logos to begin with, but some of those are just lame. Japan built their reputation on imitation, but then quickly realized that innovation and quality were necessary to make a real impact. China hasn’t sent out that memo yet.
China has a rich graphic tradition that seems to sneak its way into their theoretically-western-looking logos:
http://2strokebuzz.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=3893
http://2strokebuzz.com/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=3995
It’d be neat to see them take pride in their chinese-ness rather than pose as western, with the ever-present poorly-spaced Times New Roman, there’s nothing wrong with a stylized chinese character, even if I don’t know what it means.
Production quality and engineering aside, the look and design of the chinese scooters is extra-lame. Some importers rebrand them, which is probably wise, but don’t do any better. Even Genuine’s re-branding, which is among the best in the industry, gets a little cheesy/obvious (I’m thinking the orange stripes on the Blur or the fake Vespa logo for the Buddy). The Khuranas were on the right track branding their Adly Lambrettas, but used cheap-looking decals and insignias.
Badge engineering is the only thing some of these scooters have going for them, so it’s a shame that most companies can’t even get *that* right.
It isn’t just the Chinese ripping off logos… Mahindra Motors’ (http://www.mahindra.com) logo is rather obviously influenced by the Oldsmobile emblem as well, though now that Oldsmobile is history it’s kind of a moot point…
Don’t forget CFMoto, the epitome of China innovation, whose logo is the bastardization of the BMW and Mercedes-Benz logos
http://kenandtheartofmotorcyclemaintenance.com/blog/33/cfmoto-an-epitome-of-china-innovation/