The first Chinese car to be sold in Europe has scored zero — the worst-ever score — in safety tests.
The JiangLing Landwind was displayed at the Frankfurt Motor Show last week and is expected to arrive in British showrooms within months. It is already on sale in Holland, Germany and Belgium and has been billed as the vanguard of a new invasion of Chinese vehicles.
The two-ton 4x4 scored zero stars in crash tests last week by the ADAC, the German automobile club, which carries out tests for Euro NCAP. “It had a catastrophic result,” said a spokesman for the ADAC. “In our 20-year history no car has performed as badly.”
As dumb as the average American consumer is, they still recognize absolute crap when it crumples like an accordian when they kick the tires.[/quote]
Especially since it’s coming from China. You know the media will be all over this. If it was the newest SUV line from an established brand, maybe we might not hear much, but I can’t imagine this not being the kind of story we’ll hear harped on in the media.
mcdonalds, mcmansions, geo trackers, rent-a-center. i don’t think it is unreasonable to say that many people will do stupid things if they are inexpensive and immediately gratifying, despite the potential long term consequences.
flightplan has made $70 million so far. have you read rywill’s description of the plot? i can’t think of a more damning indictment of the american consumer.
also, i’m not talking about middle-class people that are trying to be frugal. but i could certainly see this being popular with poorer people who want to “roll” like that.
As dumb as the average American consumer is, they still recognize absolute crap when it crumples like an accordian when they kick the tires.
Wow b^3, that’s pretty harsh on the whole American population at large. I doubt it’ll sell at all.[/quote]
Well not if it’s called the JiangLing Fucking Landwind, it won’t. But if they can market it as cheaply as it’s apparently built, I could see them popping up here.
WTF is a “McMansion?” And Mickey D’s has awesome fries and breakfast. And who’s buying Geo Trackers? And, the stuff Rent-A-Center rents doesn’t blow up in your face.
flightplan has made $70 million so far. have you read rywill’s description of the plot? i can’t think of a more damning indictment of the american consumer.
Yeah. that’s terrible. WTF is flightplan?
also, i’m not talking about middle-class people that are trying to be frugal. but i could certainly see this being popular with poorer people who want to “roll” like that.
You said “hotcakes.” Hotcake-level numbers got to come from the Middle Class, yo.
hah, i am so not having an argument with you. that never ends well.
You said “hotcakes.” Hotcake-level numbers got to come from the Middle Class, yo.
that’s a good point. hotcakes is something of a overstatement. i probably should have said something like “people don’t care. if it costs $10K less than the competition, it will sell in quantities well beyond those commensurate with it’s rating as rolling death trap.”
Back in the mid-1990’s, when home prices were just beginning to climb and 8 percent interest rates seemed like a get-'em-while-you-can phenomenon - back, back, way back when the average two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan had not yet reached $1.5 million and investors were not yet speculating in unbuilt condos near Miami and no one had yet envisioned how popular interest-only mortgages would be - a business executive named Bob Toll was already thinking seriously about how big a home-building company like his could get. At the time, Toll Brothers was infamous for what Toll refers to as “the estate home” but what critics have, much to his dismay, tagged “the McMansion.” Toll’s company, which he started with his younger brother, Bruce, in 1967 and took public in 1986, had spent the better part of the 1980’s and early 1990’s building thousands of these houses, princely abodes configured in a market-tested pattern of meandering streets and cul-de-sacs with names (the Glen at Hurley Ridge) meant to evoke afternoon teas and fox hunts. Once the boom was under way, however, Toll Brothers began to try new things. It broadened its product line by building more condominium units and retirement communities. More significant, it scouted property far from its traditional base in the Northeast. By the late 1990’s, Toll Brothers possessed land in 18 states. The company purchased expensive urban sites in Jersey City and Manhattan; it even bought the hulking Maxwell House factory on the Hoboken waterfront, across the Hudson River from Midtown Manhattan, in partnership with another firm, in order to demolish the industrial shell and transform the site into a gigantic condominium complex. According to Bob Toll, he came to see his company as one that could build any kind of luxury home, in any style, in any place where there was opportunity. And to him, that opportunity to sell luxury properties to Americans seemed immense.
Back in the mid-1990’s, when home prices were just beginning to climb and 8 percent interest rates seemed like a get-'em-while-you-can phenomenon - back, back, way back when the average two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan had not yet reached $1.5 million and investors were not yet speculating in unbuilt condos near Miami and no one had yet envisioned how popular interest-only mortgages would be - a business executive named Bob Toll was already thinking seriously about how big a home-building company like his could get. At the time, Toll Brothers was infamous for what Toll refers to as “the estate home” but what critics have, much to his dismay, tagged “the McMansion.” Toll’s company, which he started with his younger brother, Bruce, in 1967 and took public in 1986, had spent the better part of the 1980’s and early 1990’s building thousands of these houses, princely abodes configured in a market-tested pattern of meandering streets and cul-de-sacs with names (the Glen at Hurley Ridge) meant to evoke afternoon teas and fox hunts. Once the boom was under way, however, Toll Brothers began to try new things. It broadened its product line by building more condominium units and retirement communities. More significant, it scouted property far from its traditional base in the Northeast. By the late 1990’s, Toll Brothers possessed land in 18 states. The company purchased expensive urban sites in Jersey City and Manhattan; it even bought the hulking Maxwell House factory on the Hoboken waterfront, across the Hudson River from Midtown Manhattan, in partnership with another firm, in order to demolish the industrial shell and transform the site into a gigantic condominium complex. According to Bob Toll, he came to see his company as one that could build any kind of luxury home, in any style, in any place where there was opportunity. And to him, that opportunity to sell luxury properties to Americans seemed immense.
[/quote]
Ah, thanks J. Toll Brothers; yeah, them and their competitors are going buck wild here in Vegas. Their homes fucking suck, I looked at them. They take a 2,000 sq.ft. home and just make every room bigger - except the guest bedrooms, they just add another 10x10 and make a downstairs one a den/office as the overall house size increases, adding a seperate formal dining room and upstairs loft as well. Boring, characterless, cheesy, and the strongest argument for beecubed’s opinion on his list.
Toll Brothers take rape and pillage into the modern world. They raise up massive developments in communties that can’t afford to support the new residents. Counties are pressed with huge investments in sewer, police, fire, education and whatnot. TB is never required to deal with the consequences. The zoning laws that permit this are fairly easy to obtain, sprinkle a little money and wait for desired result.
Its with great joy that I watch their flimsy housing suffer through winter. The wind picks the sheeting off, the insulation follows and the roofing does no better.
And to him, that opportunity to sell luxury properties to Americans seemed immense.
i think that “luxury” is a pretty poor way to describe the houses i’m thinking of. i’ve been in 3500 sq ft homes where the walls jiggle if you slam a door too hard.
