Fiat Fights Back in the Chinese Clone War

[Joey D]

Someone finally put their foot down in this whole Chinese copying other manufactures clone war. Frankly I'm glad that someone is trying to prevent the Chinese from doing this. I am glad that China is starting to make their own cars, but they really need to come up with their own designs.

The Clone Wars: Chinese copy banned from Europe
Fiat's Panda is the best selling minicar in Europe, and has been for four years. When China's Great Wall Motor -- Chrysler's Chinese partner -- decided to make a minicar called the GWPeri, it borrowed from the best. That is, if by "borrowed" you mean created a car that differs only from the Panda in it's headlamps and bumper details.

Fiat didn't just do a double-take when it saw the GWPeri, it sued Great Wall Motor both in Italy and in China to prevent the car from being sold in Europe and China. A court in Turin recently decided that "the [GWPeri] does not look like a different car but is a Panda with a different front end." Furthermore, if a Peri ever shows up in Europe, GW will have to pay Fiat €15,000, with every GWPeri after that incurring a €50,000 fee.

Great Wall has already said it is going to contest the European verdict. The Chinese ruling hasn't come down yet, where the GWPeri went on sale earlier this year.

 

[Pupik]

 

[homeforsummer]

Good for Fiat. About time someone stood up and showed these crappy Chinese companies the meaning of the word "plagiarism". Apart from anything they always do shockingly badly in crash tests.

 

[HACKr]

 

[homeforsummer]

What? I fixed that vid for you briefly but I've got rid because it's a load of tosh.

 

[YSSMAN]

There was a piece on the Discovery channel a little while back with Ted Koppel on the booming Chinese car industry. He made note of the fact that they're reverse-engineering/copying cars in front of one of the executives, and he seemed to be a bit upset. But when he has the audacity to essentially say "we'll do what we need to do to become number one," that puts a bit of fear in everyone.

 

[High-Test]

Finally.

Next up: Geely, Chery, and Dongfeng...

 

[Giancarlo]

Hooray! Another company will be able to maximize profits by taking advantage of horrid environmental standards.

 

[dylansan]

Just looked up some more rip offs and all I can say is holy crap. Did GTA's car modelers all move to china?

 

[Tornado]

The funny part is that is like a carbon copy of both a Fiat Panda and a Mitsubishi Outlander.

Great Wall has already said it is going to contest the European verdict.

Yeah. Good luck with that.