If you have a longer memory, does that sound at all familiar? I think mid-late last century, the same argument was put out about Japanese cars: coming over here, putting the boot into local products by being good value but otherwise being extremely dull.
Little more than white goods on wheels. I’m just about old enough to remember the derogatory phrase ‘Jap crap’, which I’d have heard said about Japanese cars when I was a kid in the 1980s.
It took us a long while to appreciate the fact that Japanese products weren’t so boring after all. With only four television channels, print media and no internet, it’s not like there was swift and easy exposure to the people behind the Datsuns and Hondas of the day and the cultures that produced their cars.
And then they made the Datsun Z cars, the Toyota Supra, the Honda NSX and more: cars with as much soul as anything from here.
And from then to now, we’ve gone from being scared of the Japanese and their imports to thinking that they’re a pretty fun bunch. Their cars are cult classics.
I wonder how long it will take us this time. We know that the Chinese can make boring electroboxes, that Geely factories have signs on the wall above urinals that read “Even a small mistake is not allowed in 2024!” and that we don’t much like the politics.
But hang about: here comes a Chinese motorbike with a 2.0-litre horizontally opposed eight-cylinder engine. So, perhaps it turns out they can make machines with soul and a sense of humour after all.
