{"id":43,"date":"2004-06-28T09:46:44","date_gmt":"2004-06-28T13:46:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scaredpoet.com\/wordpress\/?p=43"},"modified":"2004-06-28T09:51:25","modified_gmt":"2004-06-28T13:51:25","slug":"china-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/?p=43","title":{"rendered":"China-Car!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/yugo.jpg\" alt=\"Yugo\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Remember the Yugo?  If course ya do!  It was Yugoslavia&#8217;s answer to quality vehicles that actually lasted a while.  Unfortunately, the yugo wasn&#8217;t exactly the best in terms of quality, and it&#8217;s hard to find any still in existence on the road today.  But it made a splash when it first entered the US Market in 1985, as the cheapest car sold in the US (at a base price of $3990&#8230; adjusted for inflation, the car would cost $6633.59 today).<\/p>\n<p>And cheap it was!  Insurance companies were reluctant to write policies, saying the cars weren&#8217;t crashworthy.  Owners complained of faulty brakes, electrical systems, engines that would prematurely die, and defective shifters (automatic transmission?  what&#8217;s that?).<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/amerika02.jpg\" alt=\"Yugo Amerika\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, all the patriotism in the world couldn&#8217;t save the Yugo, and the American arm of the company went bankrupt in 1989.  The company lingered on life support until 1991, when the last Yugo was imported.<\/p>\n<p>Why the history lesson?  Well, it appears that<a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2004\/06\/27\/pf\/autos\/chinese_cars.reut\/index.htm?cnn=yes\"> some idiot wants to start importing cars from Chinese automakers into the us<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The plan is to have the dealers sell as many as 60,000 Chinese-built cars and trucks at prices starting below $10,000, by the end of the year, Shelburg&#8217;s business associates told Reuters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And what would a China Motors car look like?<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/images\/haoqing1800.jpg\" alt=\"China Motors\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Something like that.  While it looks more up to date, it kinda bears a resemblance to a certain Yugoslavian import from the &#8217;80s, don&#8217;t you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First there was the Yugo.  Now, there is China Motor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaredpoet.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}