By this headline, we don’t mean the makers of actual flying saucers, we mean the Chinese made SUV, which has since been given a seemingly sensible name of ‘Paise Je‘, we were told by a Jonway auto (the makers of the Paiseje) that the new name means scenery in Spanish, China Car Times is lacking in the Indo-Euro languages area and is thus unable to comment on the name (but we’re sure CCT readers can).
Back to the story at hand: The Paise Je has been exported to several countries previously, including Egypt, Sweeden, and more recently Germany. Legal threats came to the German importer, China Automobile Deutschland, earlier this year, other people were saying the importer should have been thrown out of the Frankfurt auto show because of their clone cars. Toyota have said they wont be suing Jonway, or China Automobile Deutschland over their tiny SUV, which looks rather much like a second generation RAV 4, probably due to the fact that it is a enormous task to prove that the company did clone the car (even though it is fairly obvious, it needs to be obvious from a legal point of view too) and the fact that any law suit would give the car distributor a massive amount of free publicity.
The Paiseje went on sale in Germany last month for 15,000 Euros, while the RAV4 is more expensive at 25,000Euros. We hear that Jonway Auto are shipping their cars to Europe sans engines and having the distributer refit them Euro 4 standard engines.
You are right Ash, “paisaje” does mean scenery in Spanish (I’m fluent in Spanish but I can’t catch every detail). I’m not sure if “paiseje” is incorrect spelling. If it is, even funnier. It’s all one word though. It’s like having Mon Tero instead of Montero. Ah well, I guess it’s better than the Nissan Moco (means booger in Spanish).
Mundosanto is one of those latino types, he’ll be along to confirm.
Molotov is right Paisaje mean scenery en spanish, there is not such word as “Paiseje” in spanish (not a pretty name by the way), maybe is a mistype. Seems like Toyota is very into the spanish names, same as Prado wich is the spanish for Meadow. I didnt know there was a Nissan Moco, that is a horrible name for a car (booger).
so is mitsubishi….hahaha i still cant get over they named a car pajero!
The best is there’s a lot of British ex-pats that live in Gibraltar with their UK spec cars. So they cross the border into Spain with their Pajeros but it gets even better, their actually grey imports from Japan with “Engrish” on the spare tire cover. It’s great seeing the locals staring and pointing. The best is there’s a knock-off of Cola Cao (chocolate drink mix) called Schovit. I still get a good laugh when I see a can of Spotted Dick.
I think Toyota have bigger problems to worry about at the moment….. came across this on Yahoo.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071017/japan_toyota_recall.html?.v=1
Moco is pretty bad, let’s not even get started on Pajero…
I forgot about that one, you are right, nothing worse than Pajero, Japanese dont nail too good the names in Spanish…