Benz May Sue Chinese Copycat

This is the hottest topic on the Daqi forum today.

In short, Mercedes-Bens is considering legal action against the Chinese automaker Shuanghuan because the "Little Noble", a new microcar by Shuanghuan, bears more than just coincidental resemblance to SmartForTwo. Judge for yourself from the pix below:

Shuanghuan's Little Noble

Mercedes-Benz' SmartForTwo

The Little Noble will be priced around 7,000 Euros if it goes to market in Germany, and this new low price is probably gonna shake up the market quite a bit.

Incidentally, Little Noble is not the only copycat Shuanghuan has, apparently it's "CEO" looks a lot like BMW's X5.

Shuanghuan's CEO

BMW's X5

Shuanghuan seems very comfortable with all these accusations, afterall, it went from a little nobody to a big name overnight due to another copycat related legal suit with Honda. Moreover, that culprit copycat car became a huge seller, totaling 200,000,000 RMB in sales dollars. Any publicity is good publicity, it seems Shuanghuan is getting another push from Mercedes this time. One German distributor who is considering selling Little Noble said that all this criticism is helping a great deal by putting it into the same class with Mercedes and BMW.

Shuanghuan's "own self-designed" Logo

Haha! This reminds me of another picture I came across the other day: Fuwa (mascots for the Beijing Olympics) and Keroro Platoon.

(www.chine-nouvelle.com/pekin2008/keroro.html)

Coincidence, coincidence!

Source:

http://auto.daqi.com/ztnew_index/250467/12/index.html

More:

http://www.egmcartech.com/2007/08/21/mercedes-may-sue-over-chinese-smart-copycat/

http://www.chinacartimes.com/2007/08/22/mercedes-might-sue-to-stop-shuanghuans-little-noble/