Vietnam’s first car company is ready to launch its car and SUV at the Paris Motor Show, but you’ve probably seen these cars in another form before.
For a company that has “innovation” in its tagline, you’d expect them to come out with a product of their own, except, it looks like VINFast crowdsourced two of their first ever models, a car and SUV, and is prepping both for a Paris Motor Show Debut. As per VinFAST in an official press release they posted up earlier today (Sept. 11,2018) they teased and are readying their SUV 02 and Sedan 02 models for a Paris Motor Show debut.
#Vietnamese car brand unveils first models #VinFast https://t.co/ygkQMRV3GQ pic.twitter.com/D8xlT4usj2
— aBr Magazine (@aBrmag) September 11, 2018
Both these cars have the proper makings of a world class offering. For one, underneath the redesigned bodies, both are rebodied BMWs, a BMW X5 and BMW 5-series sedan respectivelty.
VinFast has acquired intellectual property rights from automaker BMW for car production.
With co-operation agreements with reputable partners in the field of automotive design and production, VinFast continues its commitment to roll out quality, modern, safe and aesthetic models in the Vietnamese market, on a par with world-class car models.
And although the designs were voted on among a couple dozen choices by anyone in Vietnam who wanted to vote on them, the final design touches are done by Italian design house Pininfarina of Ferrari lore.
Just because you’re a design house known for Italian exotics doesn’t mean that you can’t design cars for the rest of the world. The latest Mitsubishi Lancer is a Pininfarina design. As per Vinfast, the design of these two cars was worth $5 Million.
“In conjunction with Pininfarina, we have carefully sculptured each body line to express the natural beauty of Vietnam and the warm-hearted and dynamic characteristics of its people through a modern and world-class design language,” said David Lyon, VinFast’s design director, in a statement.
Now that I know these are rebodied BMWs, that’s all I can see, even though they’re drastically different looking if you compare either side-by-side.
By using previous designs, VINfast skips all the hard work of designing your own car and certifying it for their home market and possibly abroad. At the very least, now they can debut two cars at the prestigious Paris Motor Show as a Vietnam representative, the first time in the country’s history.
Sure, these cars COME from Vietnam, but they’re hardly a product of their country.
