I’m all for being excited about a particular car or kind of car. I want to see and hear from people absolutely smitten with whatever their favorite car is. I want to hear them gush and excitedly point out features and make gleeful videos of them in and around such cars. I want all of that vicarious automotive excitement, grind it up into a powder, and I’ll do the fattest rail of it, through a rolled up $100 bill, off a mirror. But when it takes on weird nationalistic tones or makes baseless claims of dominance over half a world’s car manufacturers, it’s less fun.
Maybe that’s why I feel the urge to let the metaphorical air out of the tires of this pro-Chinese car online influencer and how he portrays the way the Li Auto L9 deals with tires with the air let out.
Specifically, it has to do with a tweet from someone named Yaw who likes to tweet about how great Chinese cars are, and, on its own, that’s fine! Compared to some of the other crap this guy tweets, being pro-cars built in China stuff is great. Chinese companies are making some pretty fantastic cars right now! And I get that they have been subjected to a lot of stigmas about quality, which may explain a certain level of defensiveness. But there’s something about claiming “the game is over for Western car manufacturers” that just makes these sorts of things eye-rolling:
Bro the game is over for Western car manufacturers. ???? pic.twitter.com/wFvjN5oVdW
— yaw. (@yabbanx) April 24, 2026
But, more importantly, the feature highlighted in this tweet as what will end the game for Western car manufacturers: the ability to change a tire without a jack, thanks to articulated wheels. Well, that’s old news. Like, over-70-years-old-level old news, because the first mass-produced car with the ability to do this was introduced in 1955 – the legendary Citroën DS.
It’s literally the exact same party trick being shown in that video of the Li Auto L9, lifting up its injured limb to allow a jackstand to be placed underneath, which then allows the wheel to be replaced without resorting to using a jack to lift and support the car, like how some sort of filthy animal would. The Citroën DS can do this very same thing. Look:
That’s what the 2026 Li Auto did, only Citroën has been doing this, with its hydropneumatic suspension system, since the mid ’50s.
Want to see Jay Leno demonstrate this, too? Sure you do:
Look at that! That’s cool as hell! Sure, it’s still cool when the Li Auto does it, but gotta give credit where it’s due, and our pals at Citroën cracked this nut long ago. Plus, the DS’s hydropneumatic suspension was not only capable of changing the ride height and making jacks obsolete, but it could help the car drive in a controllable manner even when its tires have been shot out.
That’s why the DS is credited with saving former French President Charles De Gaulle from an assassination attempt: his Citroën presidential car was riddled with bullets and had at least three of its tires shot out, but still managed to speed away and ferry him to safety:
The clever suspension of the DS could – and, it’s worth noting, self-leveling suspension of the DS did all these things without any electronic computing devices whatsoever – allow the car to drive on three wheels if necessary.
Don’t just take my word for it – here’s a segment from an episode of CHiPs that features this fascinating ability of the DS!
That’s not some special effect – CHiPs was far too cheap to do anything like that, since they blew all their budget smashing cars into each other – the DS could really drive just fine and level even with a rear wheel missing.
In fact, since we’re already showing videos of DSes doing bonkers things, let’s just go all out and watch a lot of DSes in movie crashes and stunts and whatever:
I suppose we’ve gotten off track a good bit, but I think my point still stands: it’s great to champion the cars you love, and you should! But as soon as you’re posting videos of car features about which you have done zero historical research and proclaiming the end of half the world’s car industry, maybe take a moment and put down the phone and go for a nice drive, instead.
Top graphic images: X; Citroën; Netflix
Too bad they aren’t still making cars like this! Has The Bishop ever taken a crack at making a modern French car Americans would buy? Aka a DS crossover? I feel like the for could be made to work…
Also, why does the Li car have hub caps over the alloy wheels?
Aerodynamics. Though there should be options with much more open spokes available.
Western companies are perfectly capable of innovating, they’d just rather do anything else. Mostly just various forms of reward-hacking. Probably why all their output is the same now.
Oh, he’ll rue the day!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFuwQLeiwMM
You know when fluoridation first began? Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Commie works.
I’ve Cracked It! POE ! Send The Recall code!
What do you mean recall it? You mean, like a defective Pinto?
like an old man trying to return soup at a deli.
Those Commies almost wiped out polio and the measles but thankfully us Freedumbs fought back just in time.
Jasonia; an island of sanity.
He knows more arcane auto history of cars you’ve never heard of than any other YouTube TwitterXing Yahoo.
Well, he does make up some bizarre coin size of cars stuff, but that’s just what fertile imaginations do.
It’s a problem with the young who don’t know what they don’t know. Bring us French cars! I wish I had my Renault.
this idiot needs to at least do a quick google search and maybe spend a minute before embarrasing himself
the word influencer isderivative from influenza
it is a disease
Why are the dumbest and most ignorant always the loudest?
they are loudest because they are dumbest and most ignorant
I’m fine with them being loud. It’s when they start winning elections that I have a problem.
Anyone who starts their missive off with Bro has already lost all credibility with me.
About the topshot: there is very little in this world more obnoxious than 98% of Tim Robinson characters, but it’s oh-so-satisfying in this context to outdo the OP. Aaahhh.
Sensing a real anti-Chinese EV theme between this and TMD today. Are they overblown? Probably. Do I want to be the one to make the choice of what vehicles that conform to local laws I can buy? Absolutely.
Let the Chinese have the low-end electric market and Detroit can keep spitting out land barges protected by the chicken tax. Poor people can finally get a win.
Poor people who bought Yugos and early Hyundai/KIA products were not winning in any way. You get what you pay for.
Perhaps Torch can research an article comparing the reliability of Yugo’s vs cheap, modern Chinese EV’s.
It’s chicken and egg – until they sell them here we will have no idea how they do in American conditions. And frankly, I see no need to cede still more of our balance of trade to the Chinese by letting them sell them here. If we must – do what they did to the rest of the world, make then do joint-ventures with American carmakers and build the damned things here in the US (with full sharing of IP). Fair is fair.
My iPhone works great.
The Chinese didn’t design your iPhone, nor are they in charge of quality control of it – Apple, a VERY American company, does both of those things.
The Chinese will build to any standard you are willing to pay for, but in my direct experience, left to their own devices will cut any corner to save a yuan. I don’t trust them on their own as far as I can throw them.
And as I said, given how they came to BE a car producing country, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Make them here, with US partners, if they want into this market, just like foreign companies had to do there. You can’t simultaneously whine about there being not enough good paying jobs while exporting them all overseas, even if that does make consumer goods cheaper.
no anti-Chinese EV sentiment here! They are doing a lot of interesting work and I think they have a place. I’m anti stupid hyperbole and not knowing car history.
In fact Jason Torchinsky was probably the first American Journo to buy and own and review positively a Chinese EV
This is a particularly dubious achievement since it’s not going to have a spare in it for you to change anyway.
The whole “influencer” thing just makes me more convinced that Chinese cars are hot garbage.
Influencer should not be a thing, but we live in the worst timeline.
I suspect the cheaper, lower end cars are hot garbage by our standards and wouldn’t sell well over here. However, the higher end cars look to be pretty decent and are priced accordingly.
Five years ago maybe. The quality is coming on in leaps and bounds and in the UK at least there’s no stigma in purchasing them now – you see them everywhere.
Leapmotors and bounds, in fact. 😉
Influencers reflect poorly on whatever they promote. If you have something you want hyped without potential for serious criticism, you show it to an influencer.
Exactly.