If my old Mustang represents the past of American motoring, perhaps it's time to look to the future: enter Geely.
What's Geely? What it is not is more important. It is not some hi-tech niche market company trying to sell electric cars that look a lot like a Lotus Elise. (That would be somebody else.) It's not innovative, nor cutting edge, and certainly not top-of-mind. Scratch all that off your list.
What is is, is Chinese. Geely makes very boring sedans that look a helluva lot like somebody entered the dimensions of the Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Ford Focus, Mazda 3, and a bunch of other cars and spit them out for the Chinese middle class to gobble up. Which, it seems, they are. They build the same type of cars that most of the world, including us, buy by the boatload while we dream at night of owning a Porsche.
So why do I say this is our automotive future?
Twenty years ago, a Korean company called Hyundai started selling cars in the USA. They were gawd-awful. Just mentioning that somebody was driving a Hyundai was cause for giggles and the rolling of eyes.
And then we had Daihatsu, and Kia. Innocent people were buying small Fords, only to find out they were really Korean. Daihatsu disappeared after a couple of years. I had a dealer tell me they were glad to give up the franchise, because they couldn't make any money in the service department on them. They didn't break, unlike their other brand, Dodge...
Kia went bankrupt, and Hyundai bought them up. Today, they sell well. And guess what? People don't roll their eyes when somebody buys a Hyundai, because they have a killer warranty and last a long time.
The cognoscienti will tell you that Ford uses Hyundai as a quality standard to measure their car interiors against.
My, have times changed.
Korea is a small country. Geely's is going to dominate the world soon. And we owe China billions and billions and billions of dollars. Think we'll keep them out of our market? Not likely. (Crap, I'll bet WalMart will sell them.) Look for a Geely in your neighbor's garage in the next few years.
Oh, they'll have to change a few things. Like, perhaps, product names? People would split their pants laughing if you said you just bought a new Geely KINGKONG.
Oh, and did I mention Geely just purchased Volvo? That gives them an instant dealership network in North America and Europe....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment