BMW and Microsoft Partner to Form new Car Company?
China’s HuaTai Group has purchased billboard space inside the Beijing Airport advertising their new line of SUVs in preparation for the upcoming Beijing Auto Show next week. So the first thing that visitors to Beijing will be seeing is the clean, crisp, smooth lines of these slick vehicles.
The second thing visitors will look for is the HuaTai logo. When I saw it, I took a double take. HuaTai has ‘been inspired’ by Microsoft’s logo and BMW’s logo, combine the two together and produce a new logo which to my western eye’s looks to be an absolute knock-off of two of the most famous trademarks in existence.
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Is that a rebranded Hyundai Terracan?
I thought these were getting Roewe 1.8T engines in them at some point.
OMG sad sad indeed. they are following BYD footstep (though BYD got a red logo now)
Don’t they think Chinese market is already packed enough
and not to mention this disgrace is right in the Beijing Airport, Nice !
Corporations typically create a “legend” describing the story and meaning behind their logos. I’d love to hear this one!
Here it is. ‘We thought that the best way to describe our clone of the /license built Hyundai Terracan was to highlight our logo. It represents the best of the software world with it’s constant updates and ctrl / alt / delete reboots with the driving excellence of a BMW. It is of course total rubbish and we expect you to see through all this guff immediatly.’
I agree with Mememe…not a good ad for China at the gateway to China for a lot of people!
OK, I think the 5 most important words you need to remember is SIMILAR TO, BUT NOT EXACT. Yes, it’s obvious where the inspiration came from – but Huatai at least reversed the blue/white color combinations, elongated the flag (the Microsoft one is more square and has shading/dimensionality within it) and enclosed it in a oval as opposed to a circle from BMW. You must admit this is LESS plagaristic than say……..BYD’s F1 and F3 as well as the Chery QQ. BYD and Chery virtually COPIED the original cars (Aygo/Corrolla/Spark)- even down to interchanging parts with the Spark/QQ. I’m NOT supporting Huatai, mind you – but I just want to refresh all our memories that it’s not COMPLETELY plagaristic, at least compared to the cars I mentioned. There is NO way it will ever end up in court – not a strong enough legal case.
Jon, you are trying really hard.
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If you don’t think it looks the same, take a look at it when it is spinning on a wheel.
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Happened to me. I was on the road beside a car and saw the logo on the wheel at speed, a BMW. Looked up, and it was a BYD! :p
Ive seen a few BYD F3 owners remove the perfectly oval, as in, the exact shape as Toyotas, and stick the Corrolla badging on. Only the wheels give it away!
I have totally seen this; completely rebadged.
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The funniest was an F3 that became a Corolla and then about six months later became a complete F3 again. Did the guys friends laugh at him, first for his car, and then for his rebadging?
But why blue and white ? running out of colour ?
Well they rip off much more than just the logos of two major companies. Come on! The last thing the Chinese auto industry needs is a company to go put up an add for a cheap knock off with a knock off logo as well.
exactly and right in the frikking capital airport, where is the authority ?
Sadly..probably in money.
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But hey, Hyundai’s H is just as “inspired” from Honda as this and look where they are now. So I suppose this is the least of their concerns…s
I thought the vehicle looked more like a Mahindra Scorpio suv.
and that one in turn hardly looks any different from a Hyundai Terracan
especially the grille.
Uh………the ads happen to be in the airport because people are going to the BEIJING CAR SHOW. After the car show is done, I seriously doubt the ads will remain there.
Haha..this kinda reminds me of that hoax e-mail from GM’s Manager that floated around a few years back…
If Microsoft Built Cars
At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated “if GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”
In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors made the following contribution to the debate:
“If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you’d have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of the car windows, shut it off, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this, restart and drive on.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you’d have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you’d accept this too.
5. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
6. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bout a “Car 95″ or a “Car NT”. But then you’d have to buy more seats.
7. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive – but it would only run on five percent of the roads.
8. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.
9. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single “General Car Fault” warning light.
10. People would get excited about the “new” features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for many years.
11. We’d all have to switch to Microsoft petrol and lubricants but the packaging would be superb.
12. New seats would force everyone to have the same size arse.
13. The airbag system would say “Are you sure?” before going off.
14. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
15. They wouldn’t build their own engines, but form a cartel with their engine suppliers. The latest engine would have 1 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it.
16. There would be an “Engium Pro” with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.
17. Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which would only be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft Cassettes.Unless of course, you buy the upgrade to use existing stuff.
18. Microsoft would do so well, because even though they don’t own anyroads, all of the road manufacturers would give away Microsoft cars free,including IBM.
19. If you still ran old versions of car (ie. CarDOS 6.22/CarWIN 3.11),then you would be called old fashioned, but you would be able to drive muchfaster, and on more roads!
20. If you couldn’t afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrowyour friends, and then copy it.
21. Whenever you bought a car, you would have to reorganize the ignitionfor a few days before it worked.
22. You would need to buy an upgrade to run cars on a motorway next to each other.
23. Every time Microsoft introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
24. Microsoft would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Automobile Association Road maps (now a Microsoft subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50% or more.
25. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.
http://www.snopes.com/humor/jokes/autos.asp
Yes, and this is nothing different than the joke if Microsoft were an airline. What does the joke have to do with the car?
Not much, just thought it was funny – to the mod, please delete if you feel its inappropriate.
I think when this kind of comments temporarily appear it is absolutely ok. And you´re right Bob, it is funny!
even it hasn´t anything to do with the car. Anyway, thanks for the laugh.