the people’s car

no, I’m not talking about volkswagen.

chinese automaker geely has unveiled plans to sell a sports coupe called the “beauty leopard” in europe for the equivalent of $7000. leopard? maybe. beauty? mmm… not so much.

(images stolen from jalopnik)

there’s something about the car that just doesn’t seem right. at first glance, the styling seems both quasi-80′s-futuristic and old-school tiburon-ish. the wheels appear to be off-center somehow, as if someone pasted them in (badly) using photoshop (or maybe it’s just bad worksmanship). the beauty leopard could’ve been listed in beaterz as someone’s modded chevy cavalier, and I wouldn’t have noticed.

on the plus side, look at all the girls that come with your new car! that’s hot. they could be your new friends, your girlfriends, or even your seamstresses – if that’s what floats your boat (human trafficking is so IN for 2007).

and as for the company itself, I know what you’re thinking. who in their right mind would name a car manufacturer after an infamously bad movie? well, the good news is, geely (pronounced JEE-LEE) was started in 1997, well before the advent of bennifer and similar combined celebrity couple names. the bad news is, they chose a stupid name all on their own, and now they’re stuck with it.

in fact, if the manufacturer ever makes it to these shores, I’d suggest a new vehicle lineup consisting of the “turkey time” and the “gobble, gobble“. that might get them some attention if the wal-mart pricing doesn’t.

so is this the start of a new era? as many others have pointed out, it took the japanese automakers 15-20 years to get to where they currently stand in the U.S. market, both in terms of sales and quality. the koreans cut that in half. does this mean that the ever-cheaper labor and rock-bottom pricing of china’s automakers will allow them to become competitive in even less time?