“Good artists copy, great artists steal.” – Pablo Picasso

A very popular quote isn’t it? I’m sure many of you might have heard it over the years. Well, the Chinese took it way too seriously from the very first time they heard it, it seems. Remember the times when we all used to go ga-ga over the duplicate Chinese make iPhones and iPads and Blackberrys when they first came out. Don’t deny it, everyone of us wanted our hands on one of them. They seemed too good to be true specially considering the price they came for. Well apparently the Chinese industries didn’t stop at just making replica mobile phones. It seems that now they’ve come up with exact replicas of globally popular cars.

 Geely GE:

Shown above is the picture of a Geely GE, a Chinese make car which might look awfully familiar. Well, the reason behind that might be that it looks almost the same as a Rolls Royce Phantom. Now on average a Rolls Royce Phantom would cost you somewhere about £305,000 which would be sure to burn a big hole in your pocket and well technically speaking its way out of the common man’s budget. Now coming to the Geely Ge, the car costs just £30,000.

So technically the car costs a tenth of the price of an actual Rolls Royce Phantom. But if you look closely then, you can see the grill looks exactly the same as that of an actual Rolls Royce, popularly known as the Grecian Temple Grille. Even the trademark hood ornament of the Rolls which portrays the sculpture of a flying lady, known as the Spirit of Ecstasy has almost immaculately been copied by Geely. And if you put in a little extra you can get your hands on the Starlight Interior Roof Lining, a refrigerator, a cigar box and an air purifier along with the air conditioner, all of which are classic Rolls Royce features.

One key feature of the Geely GE is its single Throne type design they’ve developed with only one centralized seat in the rear with the Starlight Roof over it. It certainly looks like a key feature in the car but personally I’m not sure if its gonna work out. See if I’m rich and I have a car and I’m on a date with this beautiful woman, then what’s the plan? Should I make her sit in the front or should I? Like it seems totally absurd.  But well I donno how the Chinese do it and I’m not gonna debate on this anymore. Funny, innit?

Now coming to engine specs, the Phantom boasts a Mammoth 6.5 litre V12, which in layman terms denotes that it has a displacement of 6.75 litres and can produce a mind boggling 453 horsepower at 5350 rpm which makes the car hit not to sixty in under 6 seconds despite it having a curb weight of 5800 pounds. Now those are impressive figures for a car that’s so heavy. Like if you’re Armenian mafia you can kill a person and take off in one of these in style and still be fast enough to outrun the cops. Impressive figures if you come to think of it. Flat out, it can do up to a 150 miles per hour, that too with the car’s speed being artificially restricted at that.

Now turning our eyes at the Geely GE, the car has a 2.4 litre petrol engine which Geely says will have the output same as that of a V8 engine. It can do up to a 100 miles per hour, well that’s what they say. I still though am a bit skeptical about these figures.

Well so now that it’s established that the car is quite almost similar to the Rolls Royce some of you might be having this question, “What do the people at Rolls Royce have to say about this?”

According to sources, a spokesperson of Rolls Royce has said and I quote, “Rolls-Royce is currently keeping its options open and is in consultation with its legal advisers”.

Now this might come as a shock to you but Geely is not the only company to have done this. Here’s a list of cars and the names of their Chinese copies or more subtly said, cars that look awfully familiar to them.

List of Global Copycats (Cars):

CHINESE MANUFACTURED	GLOBALLY POPULAR PRODUCTION CARS
SHUANGHUAN CEO	BMW X5 FIRST EDITION
LIFAN 320	THE MINI COOPER
SHUANGHUAN NOBLE	SMARTFORTWO
BAIC X424	JEEP CHEROKEE
GREAT WALL KULLA	RENAULT TWIZY
JAC A6	AUDI A6
BYD S7	LEXUS RX
CHERY RIICH M1	TOYOTA YARIS
ZOTYE T600	VOLKSWAGEN TOUAREG
BRILLIANCE V5	BMW X1
LANDWIND X7	RANGE ROVER EVOQUE

And these are just some of them. There are a lot more of these Chinese imitations that one can find if they look deeper. Coming to think of it, these companies have actually managed to copy almost all of the leading Automobile giants’ biggest production cars. If you actually have had a look on the table you can even see that one of the companies, JAC actually even managed to copy the model number of the Audi A6. This just feels outrageous. The saddest part is that, companies like Rolls Royce, Audi, BMW, Volkswagen and others come up with these ideas and models and technologies with months, maybe years of hard work with the help of their vast workforce and then someone comes along and just copies their work. Last year itself the country produced around 19 million cars which sums up to almost 22.7 percent of Global car production for the last year. And these are some of the imitations that we can see among all these cars that they’ve produced.

Conclusion:

Now, if you’d ask me if I’d buy them or not, then I really don’t think I might be fit to answer this question. See you can get your dream car for maybe very cheap but would it be worth it? Will you get the same feel that you would have got in a Rolls Royce or an Audi that you might be looking for in a Geely or a JAC. Now I’m not demeaning these companies but there’s just something about these cars that can’t match the big boys over there in Europe. If I had to make a decision I’d just relate it back to your old Chinese iPhone. Yes, it might have looked good, yes it might have got you a temporary sense of happiness but no it couldn’t get you the pride or the shining smile on your face that you got when you got your first real iPhone maybe. And it might have been good for a month your Chinese cellphone but after a month you really got to saw why the price actually seemed too good to be true. Someone’s camera lens broke or someone’s display got all berserk. I’m not saying your car might break apart like a phone because to be honest it’s a car so its gotta be better but then it just can’t get you the feel of what it might feel to own the real thing. You might be happy if you’re willing to make a  couple of compromises maybe but you won’t be beaming like you would if you got your hands on lets say, the Phantom.

I guess I’d like to end with that. You can always post your comments and views below. Thanks for reading.