Everything has an immitation…even cars…!? smart car!
Yeah, cellphones, media players and logo’d clothing items are all well and good, but if you really want to stand out in China’s competitive market of highly commercial disregard for intellectual property, you’ve gotta think big. That’s why we’re so impressed by CMEC, who not only managed to rip off an entire car, but are also sneaking their electric version of the Smart Car into one of Smart’s own favored markets — Great Britain. While externally the “City Smart” from CMEC is virtually identical to the Fortwo model that inspired it, CMEC modded up the interior a bit to avoid legal woes: “When we designed the car we were aware that we might be opening ourselves up to legal action,” sez Jerry Chen, sales manager for CMEC. “That’s why we’ve imitated the outside but concentrated on making the interior look different.” Um, right. Their electric motor is also quite a departure from the real Smart cars, and while its 34MPH top-speed won’t have it venturing far from congested city streets, it’s hard to complain about the 4,200 euro ($5,270 US) pricetag. Well, other than the incredibly shady legality of the whole affair. DaimlerChrysler, parent company of Smart, is currently doing its darnedest to keep the City Smart out of the rest of Europe, while they prep their own Fortwo successor that most certainly will cost more than $5k, but is also more likely to involve certain niceties like original design and at least a teensy bit of pep.
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Thats how good their technology is. so high tech that they can immitate anything they want. it might not have the same quality but, they have their own way of testing quality. up to their standards maybe. I went to China personally a few years back and saw a lot of immitation stuffs. cars, i will mention in particular because this articles is about a cloned smart car.
I saw, a rav4 cloned, another, the front is a BMW x5, but the back part looks exactly like the 2002 honda crv. what a fusion! I will try to search for my photos of those cars.
