China is acquiring technology at a prodigious rate. They are also not stupid people, cranking out more engineers than the rest of the world combined every year. What they don’t acquire, they WILL invent for themselves. There is a stubborn determination to the people there, keeping their society together far longer than any other civilzation on Earth. Within society, while they do comply with “laws” they function based upon relationships, and family is the rock. Eventually, with the ever increasing acquisition of freedoms, the Communist government will disappear. Last year alone, the gov’t battled some 8,000 uprisings, including whole villages of people, according to the World Freedom Congress which has some people on the ground over there. Not a job I would want.

We just had a nice article about the China produced Chrysler mini-van. It has a slightly different look, and some on the forum praised it as being stylishly better than we have available here. Quality wise, well, making an assumption, it should be as good as the USA units. So, why now do we pan the possibly of a smart car being built there? I could be wrong, however, given the continuous losses upwards of billions of dollars on the Smart project, perhaps DCX is seeking a means to make money with it, providing that it SELLS. The Hornet appears to be a much more stylish vehicle, and certainly judging by the reactions here, highly desireable, whereas it does seem that the Smart has become “damaged goods.” One of the issues, of course, is that the Chrysler Group is NOT an American company. It’s fortunes, and it’s futures are based upon an outfit that seeks global domination, without too much regard to the specific interests of the USA. Everyone seems to have a soft spot for Dieter Zuetsch, but in reality, when the push comes to a shove, he will do what is necessary to insure the survival of Daimler, even if it means a Chinese built Smart, Hornet, or acquisition of VW to build other
Chrysler badged vehicles. That should have become very clear when DCX resorted to using vehicle names of highly visible and well respected Chrysler Corporation such as “Charger” on a 4 door platform. Further taking it out to the Super Bee which is loaded up at 38 grand, when in fact the original was an inexpensive 2 door sedan car built for high performance.

Quality being the theme, shall we not forget that Chrysler wasn’t so hot, and that issue still hasn’t been resolved in a lot of people’s minds yet. Certainly they appear to be better, right on a par with the stuff being offered by Ford and GM but the final tally isn’t in yet. Peugoet is not on the recognition scale here. The most famous one that I can think of was the beat up convertible that Peter Falk used to drive in his TV series “COLUMBO.” Probably a decent automobile, but who knows how they would be received here. Chrysler didn’t have such a good time with Simca or Rootes either. Mitsubishie was their best partnership, and that angle should have never been let go. MMC builds good cars/trucks/vans with reliable engines, and all the running gear. That is what should have been played up, scandels, like gov’t officials, come and go.

My big concern is the quality issue with VW. I do think the possibility of CG doing a vehicle themselves lies somewhere between ’slim’ and ‘what are you, nuts?’. The most I think we’d see is a tweaked rebadge; lightly so. It’d be most interesting to see them court other partners though.