Enough of these Chinese copycats

THERE’S a saying that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’. With these carbon copies of well-known cars by Chinese manufacturers, I honestly think that they’re taking the biscuit here.

One example is this Jiangling Landwind. As you can see on the picture sourced from CarNewsChina.com; on what a shameless pirate copy it is of the highly successful Range Rover Evoque. A cheap and nasty knock off. Rather like those fake football shirts sold in market stalls in Greece, Turkey or Bulgaria.

It’s understandable on why the established cars manufacturers are annoyed with what the Chinese have done. They spend a lot of time, money and effort designing, developing, engineering and building their cars. Only to find out that their cars have been shamelessly ripped off. It's blatantly plagerism with the replica knock-offs they've made as their 'own', and sold to the general public.

The likes of Ford, BMW and Toyota have filed lawsuits against these Chinese firms infringing copyright. From stealing their designs, or to another extent their ideas. Some have won these court cases, and some sadly haven't.

There's nothing wrong with manufacturers making cars inspired from successful or even classic cars. For example, there's the Mazda MX-5. We can all see it was inspired from the likes of the MGB and the Triumph Spitfire.

The concepts and ideas behind the MX-5 wasn't an original one. But it's their own sports car which they designed and developed themselves. Not a carbon copy of a British classic - that's the difference. Making a photocopy of someone else's work is something else.

At the end of the day, no one likes a copycat.