This is the re-start of Chinese automotive designs that challenge European designs
We have seen over the years, many Chinese auto manufacturers taking existing popular car designs from Europe and just making simple tweaks to sell in China alone. Business has been good and lawsuits have been filed where lawyers have made healthy profits from billings and nothing has really changed.
Now these Chinese auto manufacturers want to take their cars global and this is when they need to be more careful with their copycat designs, as outside of China, the laws of copycat designs are not in their favor.
Here is why they are now working with their in-house designers (many are Europeans and Americans) and they look at what vehicle designs are trending very well globally and take a few steps to ‘perfect’ them and add their ‘oriental’ influence into them.
This has just been shared online. Chinese automaker Changan Auto has just unveiled the first images of its new UNI-K, a handsome, Sports Crossover that will launch soon in China to replace the previous Changan UNI-V.
This UNI-K sports crossover comes with an exterior appearance inspired by the Vision-V Concept that the Changan already unveiled at the Beijing Motor Show last year. However, there is no doubt that a somewhat similar looking Sports Crossover developed by Porsche has also been taken into account for its exterior design.
Size wise, this UNI-K measures 4.87 meters long, 1.95 meters wide and 1.70 meters high, in addition to the fact that its platform allows it to offer a wheelbase of 2,890 millimeters. This means it is only five millimeters less than the sensational looking Porsche Cayenne Coupé which is 4.93 meters long.
From the side profile we can see that the silhouette of this UNI-K is quite similar to that of a Cayenne Coupé, especially towards the rear. Look closer and you will see design elements such as the retractable door handles, four tailpipes, slim Full LED headlights and the sloping curved rear end.
Changan Auto has not revealed images of the interior of this UNI-K and we are quite sure it will be touch-screen filled with LED mood lighting that will attract a lot of buyer attention when it is launched.
This sports crossover will probably have a 2-liter turbocharged engine, or maybe even supercharged, accompanied by an eight-speed automatic transmission from Aisin with a four-wheel drive system. Power delivery should be ahead of the base Cayenne Coupe and its pricing will probably be 35-40 percent of what Porsche will be charging for their Cayenne Coupe.
