Taken For a Ride

For quite a while now, probably since the demise of Reliant, it has been widely accepted that the largest British-owned car-maker was LTI who make the black cabs that grace our city streets. How irritating for them, you may think, that the Chinese manufacturer, Geely, who are very big in the rip-off of popular European cars market have produced this...



Although it's not quite as blatant as some of their earlier work...
Geely Mercedes anyone? Geely Roller?
How about a Geely Skoda, then?


The sad news here, though, is it isn't simply just a copy. This story from Autocar explains that Geely have actually bought out the parent company of LTI and shipped production to China leading to further job losses in Coventry and another nail in the coffin of the once-gigantic British car industry. I don't understand how this story seems to have slipped under the radar of so much of the motoring media, maybe it's something to do with the election but I'd have thought the Tory press would have picked up on it at least - if for no other reason than to print pictures of Geely fakes.


Like I did.

Looking at the pictures on the Autocar site, the Geely Taxi seems to be quite a bit smaller than the LTI cars making them more manoeurverable, manourverable, maneurverable, handy in town but with the capacity to take only four passengers rather than the usual five which, I imagine, would actually make them less popular with taxi-drivers and late-night parties of drunks wanting to get home.

OK, that's the end of the article, someone call me a cab.

"You Sir, are a cab."

Thank you and goodnight.