I’m not sure if you were aware, but yesterday was Vietnam’s Unification Day, and to honor this event, they held one of those big military parades that some countries seem to get so into. Along with all of the usual impeccably-dressed and groomed soldiers and military hardware, there were also a pair of convertible parade cars that, at least initially, defied easy identification. Let’s take a look at these cars, because they’re interesting.
It’s not just me who thinks so! An Autopian named Clive actually reached out and sent us a picture of the car, because he wanted to know what the hell it was, too. And that’s his right, as an Autopian: to know what the weird cars of the world are, as best we can determine. Parade cars are an interesting subset of cars, too; we’ve covered these in detail before, at least those from China, along with the subcategory of open-topped inspection cars ( 敞篷检阅车 (Changpéng jianyuè chē)), which actually seems to be the category these Vietnamese Unification Day cars seem to belong to.
Here’s what they look like:
If you’d like to see these things in action, the official parade video below is cued up to their appearance:
Weird, right? They’re pretty bulky, with an interesting color scheme consisting of a deep green, almost a British Racing Green, with white or cream-colored trim around the wheel arches and lower body trim areas, including the added-on running boards. The grille is a pretty opulent mass of chrome, and then, of course, there’s the huge gold Vietnamese crest-and-star deal up there.
But what is this thing? Honestly, it’s kind of obvious, in hindsight. It’s a VinFast! A native brand of Vietnam, so that makes sense.
Specifically, I think this is a very modified VinFast VF9. You can see the line of the chrome grille in the plastic of the VF9’s bumper under its smaller grille, the hood and lights and lower front bumper all look the same, but I think pretty much every other body panel looks modified in some way, often pretty significantly.
It looks like the read decklid has some sort of ribbed texture on it, and I do like that raw-beef-red interior. The overall color scheme does sort of remind me of Oompa-Loompas, which is kind of unfortunate and I suspect among the last things the designers were hoping would come to mind.
I’m pretty sure this is the first VinFast convertible, so that’s pretty notable, right? Sure it is!
Someone glued the grille from a Mercedes on the front of it.
I see they got a set of white wall tires… to cruise the miracle mile Billy Joel sang about…
They’re trading their Cadillac for a VinFast-ast-ast-ast-ast!
You oughta know by now.
You can pay Uncle Sam (Donald?) with the overtime
Even the Vietnamese rulers like a cheap monthly lease payment. I wonder if they gave themselves an EV tax credit too.
They tried to turn the vinfast into a BMW. They already lean heavy into bmw for the noises and stocks and some other little things. You throw that grill on there and you have the strangest 7 series parade car looking thing possible. The vf9 is favored by richer people in the bigger cities in Vietnam so they probably already had some as executive staff cars and sent them in for the motopool guys to modify.
The green looks like 4B0 — the standard Russian/USSR army green through the cold war. Most inspection cars used by military officials (as opposed to the limo-derivatives used as parade review cars by civilian leaders) seem to follow this paint scheme in countries with Soviet-pattern militaries.
Where’s the QJC 88 machine gun mount?
Raw Beef Red should be an official color. For Jeep, maybe? Dodge/Ram? Seems to suit the Stellantis offerings best. I also would love the incongruity of it on a Maserati.
Maserati has always offered a red interior in modern times – tho not all red like these – a bit of trim is still black. Bentley does offer an all-red interior with the exception of the dash-top.
I have not seen an all bright red interior (including carpets, door panels, dashboards, etc) since about 1979 – as it was about 1980 when manufacturers switched to a medium/darker red.
It’s Marinara in Maserati speak.
Stellantis, or at least CDJR (dunno about overseas operations) always has distinctive color names that hearken back to the late ’60s-esrly ’70s palette. So Raw Meat Red certainly fits, along with Pink Slime and Gang-Green.
VinFast Murano CrossCabriolet
I don’t think this qualifies as a convertible. It doesn’t look like there’s a top, so it can’t really convert. Roadster maybe, I don’t remember the proper term for a completely topless car.
Titillating
genuine snort
“Roadster”
“Parade Car”
or
“Saws-all Victim”
I’d bet there’s a retractable soft top under the ribbed cover/tonneau, or a hardtop in a garage someplace.
I doubt it. I don’t see any reason for them to bother with a soft top. There might be a hardtop hiding somewhere, but again I just don’t think it would make sense to put in the effort.
A roadster is a car without a roof and two seats. Does this actually have rear seats?
Fair. I don’t know if there are seats there or just that standing area that I guess could qualify as a massive parcel shelf? I’m sticking with Roadster.
landaulet would work if it does in fact have a removable top that can be put back on
John Lithgow looking at his new alien body in the mirror for the first time
” I’m gorgeous!”
The white outlining on the wheels and fenders is typical of communist parade vehicles, look at a Russian May Day parade.
Stylewise these are similar to the Chinese “inspection cars” so these are probably domestic use only and made in small batches
I don’t think I’m seeing what you’re seeing.
All I see are old open Zils with whitewall tires and Aurus without any white at all. Chinese inspection cars are old Red Flags and custom Audis – No whitewalls there except for the ones from the 50’s and 60s.
The Vietnamese have gone next level with their white trim
the white outline overdose is more on military vehicles, APCs, missile launchers etc so I think that’s Russian while the open top limo is Chinese
You know what.
This looks better than the normal VF9.
There is something oddly appealing about it.
There’s less of it to look at?
It would be interesting to find out how these came to be. Did an official task someone with coming up with a new parade car, specifically for this celebration, or for all parades? Is this Vietnam specific, or is VinFast producing these? Did a coach shop build them? Hmmmm…
Probably not much different commissioning and special build processes from the Bentley State Limousine, Jaguars and Range Rovers produced for Queen Elizabeth II, the various Mercedes-Benz cars for European royalty or the various custom Lincolns and Cadillacs produced for the US Presidency over the years up to The Beast.