Influencers Hyping Chinese Cars Are Bragging About A Feature French Cars Have Had Since The 1950s

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