Chery Cars Philippines (Iseway Motors)

[SNAKE V6]

I don't know..they sure produce nice lookin' cars in the expense of hard thought designs from other companies..If I view it that way, I'd hate them.

Will I buy them? Probably...ganda nung X5 copy...an affordable X5..I'd love them.

So this is a love 'em or hate 'em thing.

Crash test...Is it safer than a tricycle? or a motorbike? or a scooter? They're probably not at par with there counterparts, but I'm sure as hell they're safer than what most of our comprades ride in a daily basis.

This is the Philippines, we don't freakin' care about safety. Construction workers seldom wear hard hats, or reflectorized jackets or hard toe shoes. Tricyles and scooters roam the street like they're on a highway to hell and no one's catching them for recklessness. We cross the streets like we're on a suicide mission. We're buying freakin' junks from industrialized countries. Converting what was supposed to be on the right to the left just so we could ride a decently priced SUV. Cause damn, we can't afford the real thing. We ride jeepneys belching out black smoke....and we don't care..we simply just don't care. As long as it's cheap and it works w'll buy it.

So I say, bring this thing to the Philippines. Let us be the judge.

[VtEC]

I still dont buy the idea of having chinese automobiles here.China has made life miserable for the manufacturing company in the Philippines (specially for the harness group).in the first place, they are more on quantity and not quality.ooops OT na ata he he he.Sorry po!

[mazdamazda]

Crash test...Is it safer than a tricycle? or a motorbike? or a scooter? They're probably not at par with there counterparts, but I'm sure as hell they're safer than what most of our comprades ride in a daily basis.

Comparing them to the safety of a trike or MC is not fair.

This is the Philippines, we don't freakin' care about safety. Construction workers seldom wear hard hats, or reflectorized jackets or hard toe shoes. Tricyles and scooters roam the street like they're on a highway to hell and no one's catching them for recklessness. We cross the streets like we're on a suicide mission. We're buying freakin' junks from industrialized countries. Converting what was supposed to be on the right to the left just so we could ride a decently priced SUV. Cause damn, we can't afford the real thing. We ride jeepneys belching out black smoke....and we don't care..we simply just don't care. As long as it's cheap and it works w'll buy it.

So I say, bring this thing to the Philippines. Let us be the judge.

We?

Errr... you might be speaking for yourself in that case. If you haven't noticed, Tsikot.com as a whole has been hell-bent on promoting road safety for the past 7 years.

[proxies]

cguro naman po safe sha kung hindi man sha kasing safe ng other cars hindi naman po cguro worse ung pagkakaiba nia.. dba po may parang safety testing po ang mga cars before they can establish a company (not sure though) pero for a low budget person like me instead of buying 2nd hands cars shempre sa chery na ko... hehehe

[smooth]

Comparing them to the safety of a trike or MC is not fair.

you're right however, some people might view it that way. consider for example if the vehicle will cost 250K. if some financing company will allow you to purchase it for 20% dp (eg 50K) then it has essentially gotten really close to the price of a motorcyle (eg at 55-65K). in which case, the argument of safety between this brand new chinese car vs a trike or MC becomes a very real point of discussion. add to that the added advantage of being able to carry more passengers, all-weather mobility (hard to ride an MC with your infant son when its raining), and the perceived status symbol of being able to own a brand new car, then chery might actually have a good formula right here.

you are right na lugi talaga ang MC sa comparison na ganito. reliability and quality na lang ang ultimately magiging labanan dito. if chery reliability and quality reaches acceptable levels for their target market, they will have a winner, and even more bad news for the MC industry. in the end, only time will tell. like i said, it would be really interesting to re-read this thread 6 months to a year after the launching of chery cars. and kudos to the people bringing this car in. quite a gamble on their part if you ask me. maaaring ang nipis siguro ng margin nila.

[yebo]

what if this cherry turns out to be a lemon?

i say before importing it here let the chinese test it on their roads first, and let everyone know about the results, honestly. everything is made in china now, from steel to cel phones. low tech, high tech, no tech, it's made in china. so if these cherries are safe, reliable and of good quality then heck lets import it. but if reports from china say otherwise, whoah man i don't want to become a crash test dummy and pay for it, too! and why should i be the guy to pay for testing out their cars in the first place. prove to me they are what i expect in a car then i'll buy them. i do not prove it for them, no?

the word in my mind now is "wait". remember how long we all had to wait until "hyundai" became related with the word "quality"? hyundai's vehicles had technological assistance and even tech transfer from its partner mitsubishi. this legit company with legit products took 20 odd years for them to be accepted by the car buyers. and this cherry thing is what, a bootleg copy? i'd wait more than 20 years for this possible lemon.

[niky]

we haven't met personally but through your posts i can glean that you're a reasonable man. i only say this because i am going to disagree with you (and i hope you won't take this personally). first, there are many members of our society who will value price above all else. ukay-ukay's prosper. we're a "tingi" economy. cellphone load go for as low as 3 pesos. people will fight and kill for a 1 peso change. "prinsipyo na pinaglalaban dito," ika nga nila.

what am i trying to say? if you haven't ridden on a single motorcycle with 4 other smelly passengers, then you haven't completely understood what its like to be in their social stratum on a visceral level. simply put, you're not their target market.

is the chery any less inferior than the owner-type jeep assembled by mang mando, the neighborhood handyman? don't forget, we're a nation who wouldn't mind driving an owner-type jeep, while smoking a burning cigarette, with the gas tank right under his a$$. i'm not espousing that we should embrace recklessness and forget safety, rather we should work with what we have. if the chery is what the country needs, then lets fix it to the point that we can achieve safety that is acceptable to most people. there must be room for compromise somewhere there.

quite frankly, if the price is right, i myself wouldn't mind jumping on the chery bandwagon. and if it breaks down after a year or two, with the way the chinese work, i'm hoping there will be more than enough spare parts to go around. that, or dump the sorry thing and get another one, especially if the price is right. i believe this is how the japanese started. a good game plan which was subsequently followed by the koreans. and now here come the chinese. could this be the next big three in the automobile world? i remember my grandparents used to laugh at anything made in japan back then. look where toyota is now.

No problem with disagreeing... it's a man's right to argue on the internet... hehehe... Currently, I am above the social strata that rides five up on motorcycles, but I used to ride two-up on a scooter, seven-up ( ) in tricycles, and I've often walked to save on my "Jeepney" money. And I admit to having an appalling fascination to micro-owner-types.

Yes, I acknowledge that our country is addicted to "bang-for-your-buck". Which is why I pointed out "false economy". Been there, done that. Save a lot by going for the lowest bidder (150 peso radio-walkman, anyone?)... and then find out after a month or two that the product is crap, broken, unrepairable, and that you have to buy a new one, again, and again, and again...

Yes, the QQ promises to bring the price of motoring closer to what many can afford, but safety and quality are very real issues. Like Mazdamazda has said, we at tsikot are supposed to promote road safety. Maybe a Chery QQ is safer than an owner-type or a scooter, but is that actually a selling point? What if it's not as safe as a Norkis Legacy? Though secondhand and surplus based, the Legacy does meet some form of safety standard.

Like Orly says, if it comes in for 300k, forget about it. But if they can get the price down to 250k, it might work. But who knows? Buyers in the Philippines are discerning. They know quality when they see it, and if they don't see it, it's hello, surplus Japanese. Which is what keeps Norkis volumes very low... because there are other alternatives at the same price which seem more attractive.

Often, surplus buying is false economy, too. You save a lot up front, but you still have to put up with repairs, high fuel consumption, etcetera... whatever. But then, as you said, that's our mentality... whatever's the cheapest, if price is all that matters... even if you could get a surplus vehicle in better condition for just a little more money, most people look at the price only.

Thus, the need for quality. If you can produce something that's cheap, but doesn't make you feel like you're being shortchanged, people will buy it. Thus, the QQ needs to project a few things to achieve market penetration:

- an image of reliability (impossible, as of yet, due to our mindset regarding chinese goods)
- an image of safety (honestly, even just three stars from Euro NCAP would help)
- an image of value-for-money. If there's a better Japanese/Korean/American/Whatever car for the same money, even if it's a size level down, then it'll fail. Note the Nexus SUV... but this probably won't affect the Chery QQ.
- reassurance for the buyer: good warranty, service support, etcetera... it's something Mazda's previous incarnation failed to do, which the new one rectified... and something that still hinders Kia's market penetration.

So far, I haven't seen many Chinese vehicles

But I think yebo put it best:

Let's wait and see. If it's a bad car, it'll deserve all our bashing. If it's a decent car, then maybe it's okay.

------

But: RE: Copyright? A cheater is still a cheater, nyah nyah nyah!

I'm not going to defend American trade practices here, as I have a pretty low opinion of America's handling of business and commerce, anyway. (trade protectionism, banana republics, etcetera), but Intellectual Property Rights are a big issue. It's China's blatant disregard of such that makes them a powerful economy... and yes, it gives us a lot of cheap Chinese goods... but, if none of you have noticed, this industrial might coupled with a blatant disregard for IPR has made Chinese goods so overwhelmingly competitive, it's stifled certain local industries, who don't have the volume or development budgets to match the Chinese juggernauts, who don't have to worry about either issue.

(Uhmmm... VW, Buick, etcetera, don't count... these are "legit" operations...)

As stated before, Japanese companies started by reverse engineering technologies, but using that reverse engineering to develop their own products. Korean companies licensed technology, then went on to develop their own... using things learned from that borrowed technology... and successfully, I might add. India has its own homegrown industry, which can produce very cheap cars developed locally. So why should we excuse Chinese companies stealing technology wholesale? Copyright infringements at the turn of the century were very hard to prove, what with the distance, communication lag, and the fact that a lot of people were often working on the same thing at the same time (there are dozens of "inventors" for the automobile, mind you). But nowadays, Copyright infringement is a big issue in business, one which costs billions of dollars in lost revenues.

While they may get away with it in China, I wonder how it will fare in the Philippines, which does recognize IPR, to an extent?

Considering the Chevy Spark is currently one of the few Chevy products that actually moves off the shelves, I think GM might raise quite a fuss about it. While cases like this usually don't get resolved for a long while, GM has a lot of money, which often greases the wheels of justice... :hihihi:

[BlueBimmer]

hindi kaya if GM goes after Chery her in PI then chinese govt. might go down hard on Chevy in china?

[Steeljack]

we laugh or taunt the Chinese copycats right now...

the Korean cars were also derided before as low quality copies of Jap and US cars

look at them now - Kia and Hyundai...

5 years from now, the Chinese cars will finally get the formula right and with their pricing, the American, Japanese, Korean carmakers will have reason to quake in their boots...

as to the indigenous Filipino car industry, where are we right now?

not even a single copycat of the old Toyota Starlet

[alwayz_yummy]

enough bashing, lets wait and see it first..tsaka na ako magcocoment pros speculation lang tayo nate at naOOT pa...

basta pag magtetest kayo, sama ako,ha mas maganda kung ask natin magprovide ng test-unit sila for our tsikot reviewers(uyy sama ako pwede?)

un-biased naman magreview at magbash tayo dito,e...unlike sa web mags and most motoring journals....