Geely Stealy – Why the Geely GE is a massive step back

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When I was a child my dad returned home from a trip to China with a fake Rolex which he gave me as a birthday present. I was amazed at how close it looked to his real Rolex. Naively I asked if the Chinese can copy a Rolex, why don’t they copy the Rolls Royce? My father assured me that it would be much more difficult to steal the design for a Rolls Royce and actually manufacture the car. He was wrong.

At the Auto Shanghai 2009 Geely launched the Geely Excellence, or GE for short. Geely directly stole the design of the Rolls Royce Phantom down to Emily, the Flying Lady hood ornament. Everything about the car is an example of the shoddy Chinese copy-wrong mentality, and is truely an ebarrasment to all Chinese automakers. Even the name of the car: GE, is a direct violation of international trademark law since GE is a famous trademark owned by General Electric.

On the outside it is obvious that car is made of fiberglass. To the average person the shiny polish and metalic paint job make the car look very slick, but to the professional the car is nothing more than an example of lack of craftsmanship. When you look closely you will notice waves and defects in the surface that most car makers would be embarrased to display, even in a concept car.

The inside of the car is truly laughable. The maroon red shag carpeting
looks like it came straight out of a 1960′s set for an Austin Powers’ movie. Geely replaced the two bucket seats from the Phantom with a single thrown for a ‘VIP’. I can just see Dr. Evil riding in the back with Mini-Me riding shotgun in the front. Gone are the days of ferrying your guest around while sitting next to each other in the lap of luxury. I guess Geely’s idea is to put the wife in the trunk!

It will be interesting to see how Rolls Royce reacts. GM made the mistake of not taking Chery to task when Chery stole the designs for the QQ. Will Rolls Royce follow suit? I talked with a representative from Rolls Royce. They used words like “Shameful” and “Embarrassing (to China)” to describe the car. They said their executives went over to Geely when they heard about the car just to say hello, but in true Stealy fashion no executives from Geely dared come out to stand up and talk with them. Perhaps such an embarrassing example of stolen design will finally force Chinese courts to recognize trade dress and put an end to China’s counterfeight culture.

The truly embarassing thing is that Li ShuFu, the CEO of Geely would give the ‘Okay’ to display this vehicle. Geely has great engineers and makes good quality cars which should not be blemished by this new ‘Stealy’ icon. This car will do nothing but embarass Geely in the international market and strengthen the international stereotype that the only thing Chinese know how to do is copy, which is not true, putting aside Geely.