The Chinese-made Brilliance BS6 sedan, currently being sold in the European market, splendidly failed a German 40mph frontal crash test. Reuters said:
"In the event of a side crash, the strain on the driver's chest and abdominal area would be so high that a person would have little chance of surviving in a real accident," it said of test results for the Brilliance BS6 model.
If you really want us to ruin your Saturday, check out a video of another car crash test of another Chinese car, the
Chery Amulet We don't know much about the science of crash testing, but don't let that ruin the bone-crumpling visuals of this video. The video seems to be of Russian provenance, and when we looked it up, we found that the
Chery Amulet is indeed sold in Russia and from the looks of it, has been for a couple of years. The
China Daily reports that Chery is going to
enter the US market in late 2007. Geely, another Chinese automaker and rival of Chery, is also set to make its debut in the US market in 2008 or 2009. That article has several quotes from Malcolm Bricklin, the man who brought the Yugo to the US and is now helping these Chinese automakers break into the US market. Bricklin said "he was willing and eager to help Geely succeed in the United States through his 50 years of experience in the auto industry.":
"Anything we can do to help them do a good job is what we want because we don't want Chinese cars to come in and start a bad reputation," Bricklin said. ""Anything that somebody does that says 'Chinese is bad' could hurt us."
Uh, does that mean we can't say something like 'Chinese cars suck' or 'friends don't let friends drive Chinese cars'? But maybe we shouldn't say that, we wouldn't want to hurt anyone.
Reuters ends their article on this similarly optimistic note:
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung paper cited Brillance importer Hans-Ulrich Sachs as saying the company would work to improve passive safety features of the Brilliance BS6, which went on sale in Germany earlier this year.
"If the end-customer wants to trade in his BS6 then we of course are ready for this," he was quoted as saying.
Brilliance said in April it plans to ship its first sedans to the United States as early as this year.
Read the complete post at http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/shanghaiist/~3/127220794/how_to_die_a_br.php
Posted
Jun 22 2007, 09:41 PM
by
Shanghaiist