The specter of China hangs over the rest of the car industry, which means it floats above The Morning Dump as well. The country’s government has created a massive customer base and a large number of automakers to feed it. It’s also created a monster, and now Chinese authorities are having to wrestle with what that means.
Right off the bat, having created an industry built on undercutting rivals, Chinese authorities have released guidelines telling its own automakers to stop doing that crap when it goes to other markets. The so-called “China Speed” that’s allowed for quick evolution of models is also putting carmakers ahead of regulators, and the regulators are hoping to curb that behavior as well.
Chinese automakers aren’t alone. Volkswagen is having to contend with the its own ghouls. Specifically, the modular platforming that allowed it to spin off more than a hundred nameplates is now haunting the automaker. In the United States, August sales numbers are starting to roll in, and the ghost of tax incentives past must be confronted.
China To Carmakers: Export Cars, Not Problems
The Chinese government, via the Ministry of Commerce, has sent some guidelines out to automakers hoping to take advantage of global markets. The basic premise is that the outrageous price war waged on its own turf, the sales trickery, and all the other crap that automakers pulled shouldn’t be tried in foreign markets.
Nikkei Asia has the full rundown of guidelines, which include some real gems:
The guidelines state that automakers should “establish pricing strategies based on cost and guided by international market supply and demand,” and “refrain from disrupting market competition in order to gain unfair competitive advantages.”
The document also warns that companies’ promotional activities must comply with local regulations. They must avoid “false advertising, deceiving or misleading consumers, and safeguard the image of Chinese automotive brands.”
One chapter is dedicated to localization. Carmakers should “avoid exporting products that do not meet the needs of the target market and usage environment.” In local operations, enterprises should “recruit employees according to the principles of equal opportunity and fair treatment.”
The ironies embedded in all of this are a little hard for me to reckon with this early in the morning. First of all, I have to acknowledge that I’m not sure my own country has this kind of commitment to market fairness anymore, so any critique I have of Chinese automakers has to be set against that reality.
Having nodded to my own position inside a glass house, the biggest contradiction here is that Chinese automakers act like this because China’s government put a huge amount of focus and money behind spinning up as many carmakers as possible to start producing good cars, consequences be dammed. It’s why so many Chinese carmakers are barely profitable, if profitable at all. To just heap more ironies on the pile, it’s also why Chinese carmakers need export markets.
One way to look at it is that China created all the necessary conditions for carmakers to thrive (money, quick permitting, regulations, buyer incentives) without enough of the conditions necessary for a healthy market (competition). It’s like what happens with deer if there’s no hunting season.
Having been essentially kicked out of the United States and with Europe warily approving Chinese cars, it makes sense that the government doesn’t want carmakers to bring their bad habits abroad and risk losing access to those markets entirely.
[Ed Note: I find the advertising guideline to be rather fascinating. Here’s an entire nation — scores of companies — working together because it clearly believes that all it takes is one misstep from one company to ruin the reputation of all cars from that nation. -DT]
China Speed Is Too Speedy For Regulators
Even with all my critiques of Chinese business practices, the way that the company has been able to conquer the electric car market is still impressive. The rest of the industry is in awe of how fast China moves. The Chinese government? Maybe a little less so these days.
Chinese regulators are pushing hard on safety, launching a yearlong campaign that includes surprise inspections at carmakers to address concerns that quality could deteriorate in the pursuit of speed. Their view is in line with recent comments from executives at Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, Great Wall Motor Co. and Chery Automobile Co., who have warned that the faster development times essentially turn customers into guinea pigs who test durability or safety in real time.
“Cars aren’t fast-moving consumer goods. They touch the safety of millions of families and must endure the test of diverse road conditions, climates, and driving habits worldwide,” Li Xueyong, vice-president at Chery, said in an Aug. 26 social media post. “There are simply some development timelines we cannot afford to shortcut.”
Someone please tell that to Tesla.
Volkswagen’s Own Modular System Is At The Root Of Its Problems
As I mentioned in July, Volkswagen is looking to cut a bunch of its nameplates as it looks to a future that’s a lot more competitive. I didn’t hit the irony of this hard enough, which is that the modular platform expansion is what fueled VW’s growth over the last two decades. Thankfully, S&P Global Mobility is here with a hammer:
In practical terms, the plan will require the company’s engineers and accountants to scrutinize every model’s profitability. That process could prove useful given the size of VW’s portfolio, which currently includes nearly 150 models.
Ironically, this unwieldy lineup stems from the very strategy that fueled VW’s sales and profit growth: platform sharing across brands and segments. The iconic VW Golf, for example, has shared its platform with the Audi A3, the SEAT Leon and the Škoda Octavia since the late 1990s.
This kind of overlap can also occur within a single brand. The VW passenger car brand currently offers three models—the Tiguan, the T-Roc and the Taigo—that compete against each other in the European SUV-C segment. In today’s more challenging market, maintaining multiple models that compete within the same segment is increasingly difficult to justify.
You leave my Škodas alone!
It’s Going To Be A Hard Month For Automakers Who Sold A Lot Of EVs Last Year
With tax credits for EVs expiring last year, there was a rush of sales as both automakers and customers tried to claim the credits while they could. That’s starting to show up in August sales reports. Right now it looks like Hyundai’s monthly sales streak is going to end (it’ll still probably set an annual record), whereas Honda, which didn’t have a lot of EVs to sell, is doing better.
Automotive News has the early data, and hybrids continue to be the bright spot:
Honda continues to get a major boost from hybrids, with the Accord hybrid up 16 percent and CR-V hybrid up 8 percent last month.
The Honda brand’s light-truck sales fell 3.8 percent last month on weaker Pilot volume and the discontinued Prologue EV.
Three Acura models ― Integra, ADX and MDX ― posted double-digit gains of 17 percent or more last month.
Hyundai, too, saw hybrid sales rise.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Speaking of haunting, no one does ethereal quite like Phoebe Bridgers, who has a new album out that I’m digesting. There’s a little Bon Iver in it, for sure. Some Sufjan. I’m not sure I’ve got a favorite song yet, but the video for “I Can’t Wait” has some nice moves and a sweet Toyota truck.
The Big Question
What’s your all-time favorite MQB vehicle?
Top photo: BYD, DepositPhotos.com
“ …it clearly believes that all it takes is one misstep from one company to ruin the reputation of all cars from that nation.”
“Made in China” has been associated with poor quality since I can remember. Racism/nationalism is a thing, a systemic/societal/cultural thing.
I think a lot of people now fully recognize “made in China” but with a reputable company behind is the same as “made anywhere else”. Case in point: Apple products, DJI, Fuyao glass, etc.
The quality issues arise from the “made in China” by generic no-name companies. That is still a big issue for them which other countries like Japan simply never had.
As for the improved safety standards for Chinese cars, you can’t dismantle dozens of domestic auto industries and turn the whole world into customers if you get banned first, I guess.
“Having been essentially kicked out of the United States and with Europe warily approving Chinese cars, it makes sense that the government doesn’t want carmakers to bring their bad habits abroad and risk losing access to those markets entirely.”
It’s good they’re doing this. And this makes me more excited for Chinese cars coming to Canada. We need more EV options. And Chinese cars in Canada is another thing that irritates Trump. And if it irritates Trump, then it’s probably a good thing.
“What’s your all-time favorite MQB vehicle?”
Well first I have to look at all the MQB vehicles…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MQB_platform
And of those, I will go with the Mk6 Polo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Polo_Mk6
But I have to give an honorable mention to the R-Roc R
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_T-Roc#/media/File:2020_Volkswagen_T-Roc_R_TSi_4MOTION_2.0_Rear.jpg
Which I like to call the Transvestite Rocker…
https://c.tenor.com/qx9fVejkwU0AAAAd/tenor.gif
tbq: It’s tough for me to get excited about any MQB. I’ve never been a fan of front-wheel drive, and even the Quattrofied versions of the MQB are (usually?) Haldex systems.
I’m thinking the wagon-flavored Golf, ideally from back when you could get one with the manual gearbox. It doesn’t write any checks it can’t cash. It’s a cromulent car.
My only extensive experience with a MQB car was the RS3 my brother had for awhile and it was fantastic. Sadly driving it some may have recalibrated my own sense of what performance is and made my last couple of sporty hoopties feel even hooptier.
Even though it’s unobtanium in the States I love the idea whatever the hottest version of the Skoda Octavia wagon is, was really hoping at least a rental spec Octavia would be my rental car lottery winner when I went to Norway awhile back.
That first line is perfection.
That’s the China playbook. Encourage a certain sector, drive down costs, take over the market. Then when its over down and dragging down the economy start shutting them down. Solar is probably the best illustration of it. But it happened before with different industries. Cars and other new energy are next. The Chinese government does at least seem to understand they haven’t reached saturation in export markets. Smuggling cars is also harder then solar panels but I think most African as well central Asian countries will take them for a deal. Russia is already getting smuggled cars.
Egolf is my favorite MQB we got in the US. I like the looks of Cupra Terramar but Skoda Octavia is just so decent.
How is selling Chinese solar panels to African countries or cars to Russia in any way smuggling? If the exporting country and the importing country hasn’t restricted it, it’s not smuggling. On the other hand if you establish a company in China to sell Mercedes to Russia to get around the export restrictions, that is smuggling.
The short answer is they get their export and possibly manufacturing certificates revoked products are not able to be legally exported and they are smuggled instead.
In the case of the cars to Russia they were too new or western brands. But the smuggling of cars has already started nonetheless. Fake documents, staw purchases, etc. It’s also smuggling if you get around paying the duty on either end.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3354551/how-illegal-factories-are-undermining-chinas-solar-overcapacity-crackdown
https://united24media.com/latest-news/china-cracks-down-on-unofficial-car-exports-to-russia-500-vehicles-detained-at-customs-15495
OK, so they stopped 500 vehicles from being exported because they were legitimately being smuggled to get around fees, duties, tariffs, etc… What about the 50,000 cars per month they’ve been selling legally by paying the huge “recycling” fee Russia now has on imports.
My point was though there currently are plenty of legal exports. The Chinese government tried to cut supply and exports to raise prices and haven’t been able to recently. Both solar and certain cars that are being smuggled. The Chinese government still wants to export cars to Russia just the cars they want. Chinese brands at as high of price as they can get.
When export and domestic markets are both struggling the Chinese government will attempt to control exports further to raise prices. What going on with solar shows they can’t. The 500 cars is a drop in the bucket but shows it’s already happening. Its likely much bigger in scope and scale then either side wants to admit. There is money to be made and people on both sides are getting desperate.
I knew a guy who dealt with Chinese manufacturers, he said one issue was that they would start changing designs or materials to ‘save money’ and his job was to stop them, he did say they are much better than five years ago but it is still a pain.
They will label anything they want too as will their suppliers. High carbon steel labeled as 304 stainless, 50psi valve labeled as 200psi, 1200mah battery labeled as 3200mah. Plus counterfeit everything. It’s a zero trust society that alot of people feel relatively safe in. But I guess on some levels that how many people described the their feeling in the former soviet union and other eastern bloc countries.
Poor suppliers will do that. I haven’t had an issue with Chinese suppliers but it was a big problem at a previous company with Indian suppliers.
Old timers used to say you can only trust things where the company name and more then country is stamped on it. That’s been happening more with China now. I’ve seen issues from suppliers all over Asia. India and China were going back and forth for a worst with it for a while. I’ve seen it done out or Vietnam and Thailand too. Indian brass was really bad at one point. I’ve seen some metalergy reports almost no copper. Lots of zinc and lead sometimes what is probably carbon steel.
Not quite the same but when I worked at a camera repair shop in the twenty-teens Nikon USA had stopped officially supplying parts and so we turned to other channels (largely ebay) to buy parts directly from Chinese parts makers but over time we found probably half the stuff we received was obviously used, damaged, crap factory seconds, etc rather than the new part that was being advertised and eventually we just started telling people we couldn’t fix Nikon stuff if it needed parts.
I hate to paint with a broad brush but doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy about buying something as expensive as a car.
Golf/Golf Sportwagon. Maybe GTI/R before they started enshitifying the interiors and dropped the manual.
Are these actual guidelines or “guidelines”?
I have a strong sense of the latter, in the same vein of how Google’s “Don’t be evil” guideline has seemingly withered under other motivational impulses.
TBQ: VW Arteon. I still do a double-take whenever I (rarely) see one. Bonus points for the “shooting brake” wagon we didn’t get here.
Oh no!!! Where’s Fritz???
I love how China is jumping feet first into something, 1000% then worry about consequences later. Sometimes it works (rare earths) sometimes it doesn’t (real estate and people’s savings). Cars are kinda meh now given the pushback and they are already hard at work on robots.
Waiting patiently for their own, original bad ideas, not just copying.
TBQ: Probably an RS3, the DAZA Rules. I had a MK7 GTI and while it was pretty great, I don’t think it deserves all of the fawning over that it receives. Reviewers always talk about the interior as being a high point but after years of driving econoboxes it’s really not much better than the competition. Yes, it uses nice materials in places you don’t touch unlike the competition, but some of the ones you do touch were not great. I’ve never gotten cut by a car before that Golf; 2 different shifter surrounds got me. Thought I broke the first one until I learned its a common occurrence, eventually got recalled for the crappy shifter surround. Also, the driving experience was very underwhelming. It is not a rewarding car to drive quickly, and modifying it just makes them faster. Made a metric ton of power though with a downpipe and tooon. So considering they’re great at going fast but a snoozefest the rest of the time I’ll take the one that can be made silly fast.
Didn’t all these incentives cause *more* competition, since there’s way more players? The reason why the market is unhealthy is because there’s too much competition, which is causing the low profitability and incentivizes short-term shortcuts. It should really be described as too little predation, because the incentives (namely the direct subsidies to the automaker and any subsidized loans) have reduced the natural predatory effect of unprofitability.
This is slowly starting to change as China starts slowly easing off the subsidies (NEVs used to be tax free, now they’re at half the normal tax this year and full sales tax in 2028), making regulations stricter (NEVs now need 100km range minimum to qualify for incentives, plus several more safety and quality related regs), and auto sales have dropped steeply as people are concerned about the economic consequences of the US-Israeli war on Iran and the associated high oil and fertilizer/food prices (though ICE sales have taken most of the brunt). China already made it very hard to create new automakers from scratch since at least 2024 if not like 2021.
The whole Volkswagen(and Stellantis) house brands issue reminds me of the British Leyland debacle.
…with Viggo Mortensen as A. “Ref” Gorn in Dodgeball 2: Play Nice!
The Golf Sportwagen TDI with 6-speed manual in Great Falls Green. I’d spec 4motion, too, but that engine, trans, drivetrain combo was never offered, so I’d make do with FWD.
I don’t understand the last segment, why is going to be a hard month for automakers who sold a lot of EVs? The tax credit ended last year so it should have little effect on the market right now; the hangover period from buyers advancing their purchases by a few months to get the credit is mostly over, and people are a bit more interested in EVs now that gas prices are high; used EVs have appreciated recently and that might make new EV leases a little cheaper as a result.
I imagine this is simply comparing year over year for the month of August where 2025 saw a surge as people rushed to claim the rebate. August 2026 will appear down vs 2025 due to the lack of pull-forward purchasing.
Ohhh by “monthly sales streak” they mean year over year, not month over previous month
It just means people looking at graphs have to read the footnote or they’ll missed interpret a metric that lost utility due to an assignable cause variation. Organizations allowing decisions to be made by a formula that uses month over month sales and have no intelligent oversight will make bad decisions.
TBQ: None of them, back when they were becoming cheap(ish) used cars I really wanted a B4 Audi, that’s as close as I ever came. the packaging of the S4 really put me off of buying one for project/tuner car purposes.
The Golf Sportwagen R is the best MQB vehicle. Full stop.
” Golf R Variant ” 😉
The Golf R is indeed a variant of the Sportwagen, because longroofs are above all.
TBQ: Dumb question – what is an MQB vehicle?
I presume I might be able to figure this out with seven seconds of googling or maybe even reading the article thoroughly, but like a typical internet commentarian I can’t be bothered to go through that effort (yeah, I know typing this probably took more time and effort than it would have required to just look this up).
Follow up: after seven seconds of googling I sorta know what an MQB vehicle is.
Follow follow up: after thirty more seconds of googling I have concluded I’m not overly interested in MQB vehicles. I’m sure they are great, though.
Follow follow up up: I’m still not into MQB cars, but after forty five seconds on Wikipedia I have concluded they have some brilliant names.
Terraco. Kodiaq. Tayron. Viloran. T-Roc. Lavida. Bora. Ateca. Karoq. Octavia. Superb. Terramar. Sagitar. Tavendor.
Whoever is naming these things needs a raise.
I’m pretty sure those are Cardassian Galor class starship names.
Also future Kardashian children’s names.
The Obsidian Order is 100x more honorable than whatever the eff the Kardashians are doing now.
That explains why they stopped serving currywurst in the commissary and stated serving tojal with yamok sauce.
…and why the drinks went from root beer to kanar.
Siblings to Trogdor the Burninator
Are you also responsible for sacking the people who sacked the subtitle writers?
A moose once bit my sister…
No realli! She was Karving her initials on the moose with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush given her by Svenge—her brother-in-law— an Oslo dentist and star of many Norwegian movies: “The Hot Hands of an Oslo Dentist”, “Fillings of Passion”, “The Huge Molars of Horst Nordfink”…
Mynd you, moose bites Kan be pretti nasti…
I too had no idea. And after one DuckDuckGo search I don’t seem to have one.
I still don’t know what an MQB car is and can’t say I care all that much.
Chinese government stepping up and reigning in bad actors with surprise inspections and a “do good” mandate should be seen as a very (long-term) positive influence on the market.
If only this kind of thing was more prevalent in other nations.
Though coming from the Chinese government wouldn’t be surprised if this would be used to shutdown companies that are not bending the knee to CCP and then look the other way for companies that are in bed with the CCP. Or this could just make it seem like the want to play fair when entering foreign markets but behind closed doors they are still doing all the same shady shit.
I mean, looking around the world, which major company isn’t in bed with whoever is in power in their own countries?
Haha you are not wrong
I wish I were wrong, then I opened Google Maps and saw Lake whatever the fuck it is called now.
As I stated below cannot piss him off or he will talk nasty about Data centers. Ridiculous how the narrative changed just because he said one thing about them a few days ago. In my area of Indiana they are destroying our electric bills
Don’t forget the private equity moving into your electrical companies.
Increased demand plus private equity = just a little tiny increase that you won’t notice. Won’t notice it at all it is so tiny and minuscule. /s
Yeah NIPSCO for us has already jacked rates up this year and last year and have asked for 3 more increases and oh they wanted to shut down their one coal plant (which yes I want gone but not until a clean sustainable replacement like a Nuke plant is built but there are no plans for a a replacement in any form) that supplies pretty much all their power because of cost to much to upkeep. Makes you wonder where the hell would they even get power then?
They can just buy it from all that excess hydro that Canada happens to have.
Wait, this just in – This plan is now SOL.
Ontario. It’s called Lake Ontario. My globe says so.
The new guidelines about foreign markets are about pretty public facing items such as not heavily undercutting others in pricing and features and not scamming people with misleading specs. For example, in the Chinese market ICE engines have both gross and net horsepower published, and while many developed markets mandate net power, less regulated markets might not have banned gross power in advertisements. Another example would be only quoting the EV range ratings of the best wheel configuration and not retesting and lowering ratings for draggier wheel/tire combos.
Yeah but they’re not really focusing on the important things like renaming bodies of water
I’d rather accidentally sit on one of my nuts than hear anymore shit from that pedo…What a giant douche.
And screw Google and Apple for being weak kneed pussies.
They gotta get some of the gobment money for them data centers that his cultist erhm I mean loyalist will now love when just a week ago they were (and still are) destroying communities.
Where I live there have been a couple of data centers proposed.
Thankful that most of the people here have raised hell and plans have been dropped, for now.
But waiting for the brain dead idiots to renew their call for “progress.”
It never ends with that Turd and his minions.
Yeah my county and city has been pushing back but all the ones around us have been allowing them so we are getting screwed by proxy. And I really don’t think this will change with a different admin as we see big tech just swings with the political wind and there is way to much money in it at this point.
My city of 110,000 people has 16 data centers with another 7 under construction. They aren’t destroying our community. Instead they paid $61 million in property tax last year and that will be close to $600 million in 2030.
Noise: Not a thing. I drive them every day and standing outside in front of one it blends in with the other industrial park noise and the 4 lane highway on the north side of the industrial park
Water: They use closed loop cooling and use 2% of our municipal water.
Electric: Yes, they use a lot of electricity. That has driven up cost some but that cost is shared with 44% of the state. The primary factor driving up our utility bills is a 2021 law that says our state’s utilities have to reduce carbon emission by 80% by 2030.
Nobody cared until earlier this year when the media started talking about AI taking 50% of jobs.
Great, I say we build more data centers in your community and none in mine. I’m happy to live with the consequences.
Send them our way. Happy to have companies with basically no emissions and consuming no local resources paying $1 million an acre in property tax. Just 600 acres will pay about 1/3 for the combined County and City budget.
For Indiana it is the opposite they are saying the state is losing out around 600 million in tax breaks these giant corporations are getting to build these monstrosities
Opponents say the same here but that is just spin. Take the QTS data center.
Opponents spin that as the city is paying QTS $85.5 million in tax incentives. Reality is that this year the city collected $22,496,4000 more in property tax than if the farmer still owned the land.
That temporary tax break is why QTS is here instead of on the other side of town. (Same with all the other large companies that have located here. The data centers get the same Enterprise Zone tax breaks as any other company that builds in the designated zone and makes the minimum investment.)
How many people does an AI data center feed? I’ll bet “the farmer” was a lot more productive than AI, “which can make mistakes”.
Who says these data centers are for AI? Data centers power the entire internet including this site.
How many people the data center feeds would depend on how many people order their groceries and take-out online. Not to mention all the other computer related functions in the logistics channels that bring food from all over the world to the local grocery store.
The farms in question feed noone. They grew grass seed on land in a designated industrial park. Can’t grow much on non-irrigated land when the growing season is also the dry season. Today is the first rain since June.
The “farm” employed less than 1 full time person on that 90 acres while QTS has about 80 cars in the parking lot today. Thousands of construction jobs while they are being built.
Reducing carbon emissions is a good thing.
Still emitting 20% after nine years of working on it should be doable. The dang socialist long-haired hippie liberal pinko commie tree-hugging environmentalists always get blamed when something beneficial needs to get done, but doesn’t come for free.
Reducing carbon emissions is a good thing. Reducing them 80% in 9 years is not possible. The baseline year is 2010. That doesn’t just using renewables for all new generation. That is either shutting down natural gas plants before their useful life (with the cost passed on to the customer) or selling that power out of state and buying renewables on the electricity market. In the latter solution – which is mostly what is happening the actual emissions don’t go down, Oregon customers just pay more to buy that power.
9 years is also impossible when the same people that want an 80% reduction in emissions don’t want the infrastructure that is required. Locally we have a transmission line, on an existing right-of-way, held up for 11 years because it would involve cutting down 375 trees. Same people are fighting grid battery storage at substations and pumped storage in rural areas. Fighting solar farms in the desert and wind farms in the gorge because they would “spoil the view”.
It seems people believe we can magically change the entire electrical generation mix without that having any local impact or cost.
It’s called industrial policy. Every country has one and it’s actually good government. The problem is that not every country’s policy is any good. You can accuse the CPP all you want for top down strategies, but they are no different. Perhaps they are in it for their own power or wealth, sounds pretty similar to the current US administration’s ‘industrial policy’.
“What’s your all-time favorite MQB vehicle?”
Would that be the first gen MQB, 2nd gen MQB, MQB A0, MQB A0 IN, MQB A1, or MQB Evo?
Regardless – I’m going to go with the Audi TT and the SEAT Leon.
The best vehicle on the Golf platform is the Golf. The gulf between the Golf and the almost-Golfs is wide enough to engulf and gulp up every not-Golf.
And the best engine they make is the Golf’s 2.0 turbo. Maybe they should keep making gas Golfs, GTIs, and Golf Rs.
With manuals!
But PQ35, imho, was superior to MQB. Mk7 Golf felt like an abrupt downgrade over the Mk5/6.
I like the ‘change the E to a V and add -ES’ rule for pluralizing golf. Golves, like leaves.
TBQ: I had a Mk5 GTI and loved it. So that one?
Would that be the Golf of America or the Golf of Mexico?
Obviously the Golf of Mexico as nearly every one you’ve seen was made there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_de_M%C3%A9xico
*Golf clap*