That Smarts: Chinese Little Car Looks Familiar

SHIJIAZHUANGSHI, China — From Shuanghuan, the company that built the first Chinese Honda CR-V look-alike — and prompted a lawsuit — comes the new City Mini, which looks amazingly similar to DaimlerChrysler's Smart.

The same company currently offers a shockingly BMW X5-like SUV called the SCEO. The City Mini, then code-named S6, had been pulled at the last minute from the Beijing Auto Show late last year, presumably so as not to attract the attention of DaimlerChrysler. Now the company says the little car will go on sale in China in mid-January.

Although the City Mini's external appearance is extremely close to the Smart, there's a very important difference. What looked like the black hue of the two-tone paint on a Smart is, in fact, a very important aspect of the model. It is the Tridion safety cell, a highly rigid structure that provides serious crash protection. Shuanghuan failed to catch the importance of that and simply offers two-tone paint on the City Mini.

The City Mini is also slightly larger than the original European city car, at 118.5 inches long versus the Smart's 98.4 inches. Both have 0.8-liter engines, but the Chinese powertrain lacks the sophistication of the Smart version.

Last fall, there were many news reports on the appearance of a Chinese Smart clone. That was from another company that, faced with the insistence of DaimlerChrysler, quickly stopped production. Shuanghuan, on the other hand, is a seasoned clone producer, and observers would be more reluctant to bet on the outcome of a legal battle.

© Source: article on insideline