Great Wall Motors. Any good?

[Mitcon]

Wow, ok lol

Yes there are lots of VW's sold in China, heck theres so many people there lots of most brands we know sold. See the thing is alot of you folks are talking about brands over there or cars in general. I was only talking about Utes and SUV/CUV's if you limit your choices to these the largest selling independant is GWM with it's Utes and the Hover (X240 to us here).

Also to those saying about saftey ratings as being poor and equal to that of 5-10 year old car and then in the same line then further equating that to being equal with a 15-20 year old vehicle. Really I'm not sure if your for or against the GWM vehicles but I think you need to re-do your research.

Remeber, again we are not compairing passanger vehicles here. You folks are using current ratings for passanger vehicles against a commercial vehicle. Do your home work and 85% of current 4x4 commerical pick-ups or vans are 3 star rated by ANCAP and most only just make it into that 3 star group. Some like the Ford Couriers right up till the last model only got 2 stars.

Then the Ranger/BT50 just squeezed in a 3 star rating and look at things like Mitsubishi and Nissan's commerical Vans...1 star.

If you compare the V240 Ute with vehicles of the same nature, like the Courier, RA Rodeo, Isuzu D-Max, Nissan Navara etc etc they are all only just a 3 star rating. And I think you will find that if ANCAP did a retesting of a current Australian stock V240 it too would be a 3 star (they have been retested to this standard, just not by ANCAP and they were approached I'm told to re-test but declined).

This is why I say people are putting them down without fair reason and it's fear mongering. People aren't comparing apples with apples, they are using ratings etc to their advantage to make these vehicles look worse than they are. Sure 2 or 3 star ratings aren't very good but they are what 95% of current commerical vehicles rate at and if you take into the fact that a great deal of commerical vehicles on the road today are older and wouldn;t even get a rating they would come up so bad.

The other factor people use is just by saying "it's made in China" so it's crap, where do immature people get this stigma from? China produces some of the highest quality items of avail in the world, yes they can and do produce rubbish too but thats only because some tight wad greedy Aussie importer has asked them to provide them with the cheapest thing they can.

China will cater to any market, pure and simple. And just because something is Aussie made doesn't mean it's quality, what a joke. This may have been the case many, many years ago when we took pride in things but that was the same all over the world. In this day and age it's the time of consumerisim and mass marketing, higher wages and bottom dollars.

There is man, many examples of shonky aussie made junk you can find anywhere. In-fact with alot of todays trends, mindsets and attitudes I often feel embarressed to say I'm a Aussie. While alot of us think we live in a top country with top quality engenering, design and manufacturing processes the world at large does not see us that way.

Don't get me wrong as I love being a Aussie and I support Aussie buiness and design where I can afford to and where it deserves it with even more preference to supporting small local business. But today we live in a global market, if you want to survive in it you need to get with the times and we all need to change our mindsets and attitudes.

And again, I bet you wont find a Aussie designed and built car that isn't full of a great deal of Chinese made components. Or for that matter any quality brand product made up of many moving and electronic components. Even high end companies like merc, BMW, Audi and some fo the more expensive European cars are made in China.

Really guys, you don;t have to buy them if you don;t like them. Thats easy and we're all different with different needs but if your going to bash a product do it for valid reasons based on facts and on a equal playing field. Compare them to most vehicles that are of the same kind from the last 5 years right upto current offerings, they don;t come up that bad.

If you want to take and sad facts from that the reality is that almost all commerical vehicles are of a poor safety rating and even a great deal of the passenger list isn;t as good as it should be. All of the companies pumping out automotives these days should be stepping up their game.