Cars We Drive! - Page 205

GM was the worse that I can think of. They probably make a handful of cars and re-badge most of them a dozen times.

 

~Kurt

I see you've never been to Korea then (I'm here right now) - the streets are constantly gridlocked and just a sea of grey, white, and black Korean cars - all of which are horrifically designed. You've seen some of the Korean car designs in America, but not all of them - the domestic market has a bunch of wacky looking MPVs and utility vehicles that all look shitty.

this is a common, average car in Korea. There's no way you can defend this:



Why does Toyota often outsource their engine development on the little sport compacts they make? Yamaha used to make the engines for those...

The new M6 - this thing is a real German hot rod. Not sure if I'm in love with it, but it's hard to deny that it's probably one of the better looking BMW's released in the past 10 years. It kind of brings back some memories and excitement from the 1990's hot-rod BMWs, maybe even the 1980's.

http://jalopnik.com/5884347/2012-bmw-m6-coupe-press-photos/gallery/6

I think Toyota outsource the engine because of Subaru's experience with the boxer engine. They need a small engine that can produce decent enough power (w/ a possible turbo option in the future?) and since they have Subaru to tap on, it's probably the best and most cost effective on their end than starting from scratch.


I must say, I am not a big fan of the current 6-series but just like the 5-series, the M version just looks so much better and I actually like it.

Well, Toyota outsourced the engines to Yamaha for the MR2, the various Celicas, I'm not sure what else, but probably more - Toyota is huge though, surely they could do that stuff in-house?

Maybe Toyota also owns a stake of Yamaha like they do with Subaru?

isn't that the case with a lot of Japanese companies? weren't there only like 5 major companies that encompassed several industries (think mitsubishi making cars and tvs etc.). That's all I remember from my comparative politics class haha please, correct me if I'm wrong

That car looks like a Lacetti melted together with something else, sort of like the VW brazil models.





I think the outsource is a question of $$$, Toyota build eco boxes and focus their R&D on that and then buy in their faster engines.
It's not an uncommon practice, the mini has a Peugeot diesel engine and the old Rolls Royce cars had Citroen suspension etc.




If the M6 GC will look anything like that, the M5 will have a up hill battle on it's hands.




I think that pretty spot on, it's the same in Korea Samsung builds ships, Hyundai has a bank, the biggest in south east Asia, if I remember correctly etc.

There are more than 5 companies in Japan guys, lol. It's true though, the zaibatsu make a ton of stuff, just sprawling companies taking up your money to eat, breathe, sleep.

That Daewoo is from the older Daewoos that were designed by Italdesign (?I think) - they were actually some of the better looking cars in Korea, because Hyundais a generation or two ago were fugly. They still litter the streets here because there are no age/condition restrictions on cars like Japan. Korean streets are an eyesore with all the heinously designed cars. The new Hyundais look a bit better than the old ones, but I still find them kinda obscene looking with lots of convoluted lines and try-hard styling - Korean cars all have fake Audi LED lightstrips or glowing halo rings, chrome-lined headlights with tons of veins and shit, huge character lines in the back - it's like all the nice cars in the world got together and had ugly kids.

Funny thing about the badge engineering thing you guys were talking about - the Koreans took it one step further and used to buy old tooling for superseded foreign cars, and brought it all to Korea to remake these cars, as R+D was too expensive for the Koreans, and also because they could turn out a better package that way and make and sell domestically without having to sell with an import tax. Some examples:

-Daewoo Arcadia. Daewoo bought all the tooling from Honda once Legend production was over in the mid 90's, and made a US-spec Acura Legend and slapped Daewoo badges on it.
-KIA Elan - KIA bought the tooling for the Lotus Elan in the mid-90's, dumped the Mazda 4cyl, and put in their own crappy 4cyl. Cool car though, genuine import sports car looks in a country where this kind of car was only a dream at the time. Was insanely cool when it was sold here.
-Ssangyong Chairman - a stretched version of a W124 260E (? maybe a 300E) - tooling bought from MB in the 90's - they rebodied in their own body, but it looks like a Mercedes anyway, that was the point - it was supposed to be kind of a domestically made W140 Benz competitor. Good idea, but they still make this car after years and years, and it's still the same 1984 E-class under the skin. =\ Ssangyong also bought from Mercedes some diesel engine tooling that they put into a body on frame SUV.

-Hyundais have all been old Mitsubishi technology for years, many still are, but that's changing a little I guess. In fact, the Genesis 2.0T coupe has a modified version of that Mitsubishi 4G63 engine they've made forever. This is also the reason why Hyundais used to be horrible - they were old Mitsubishis which themselves were terrible cars.

Basically, I think up until recently, no Korean cars were entirely domestically made from scratch, they were based on old outdated cars from overseas. Many were crappy. Some were actually good though, the Daewoo'd Honda Legend and the KIA Elan were good products, IMO. The Ssangyong E-class was kinda cool at the time considering it was only like $30K and a real Mercedes was like, $100K - but they restyled that car twice to look less like a Mercedes in each restyle. =\

Ssangyoung cars are fugly as shit, they sell them in europe as well.


Did any of you see the top gear episode, about china last week?

Talk about re branding cars.

Saw it and immediately thought about it when this subject came up. I was going to bring it up but it's in China not Japan. This was funny as hell though. First two episode of the season has been real good so far.

On it's way to being blacked out.
All black grill, reflector and painted the silver rod on the bottom grill black.

Before:


After

it's kind of cool, but not a fan

At first I saw this and thought that it was a continuation of the Chinese re-branding of cars, and I thought to myself, "wow, that second car is a total knockoff of the first car."