The Vacuum Cleaner Brand Behind The Bootleg Bugatti Sedan Also Wants To Sell You A Rolls-Royce-Ish SUV

There’s always something amusing about cars that look like other cars. The original Toyota Celica’s scaled-down impression of a Mustang, and the Opel GT’s mini-me Corvette styling to name a few. In a similar vein, this Chinese electric SUV promises to be the ultimate way of flexing a millionaire image on a hundred-thousandaire budget, because it looks an awful lot like a mid-six-figure SUV from an esteemed British marque at a glance.

This creation comes from the minds of Dreame Technology, the same company that revealed renderings of a sedan that looked suspiciously like a Bugatti just earlier this month. It’s primarily experienced in home appliances like vacuum cleaners and hair dryers, but has some serious ambitions about branching out into cars.

We’ve seen Chinese cars that look eerily like Western ones before, like the squint-and-it’s-an-X5 Shuanghuang SCEO and the Range Rover Evoque-aping Landwind X7, but examples have seriously dwindled over the years. These days, you’re more likely to see Chinese cars perhaps copy a few popular elements previously seen on other cars, but not simply look like other cars. Take the wildly successful Xiaomi SU7, for example. Sure, its headlights have a shade of McLaren 720S about them, but the car itself is distinctive enough that it stands on its own. If anything, it’s more handsome than a lot of electric sedans rolling out of Europe.

However, Dreame’s second vehicle looks seriously close to a Rolls-Royce Cullinan, which feels like a problem. The strong shoulder line, three-window treatment with bright trim thickening on the trailing edge of the greenhouse, the roofline, even the door mirrors are close enough in spirit to what we’ve seen from Rolls-Royce that someone at Goodwood is probably feeling some type of way about it. Add in strong rectangular headlights up front and a prominent chrome grille with vertical fluting, and yeah, heavy inspiration would be putting it lightly.

Mind you, there is one big way in which Dreame’s new SUV seems to improve on the formula, and I’m not talking about electric power by way of a 100 kWh battery pack and quad-motor all-wheel-drive. That’s cool, but the fact that this thing has no B-pillar is even cooler. Open up the coach doors and it’s like a posh Honda Element, which should make ingress and egress a breeze. It should certainly help if you want to hop out of the reclining, ottoman-equipped individual rear seats in a flash, and a full-length console is also a neat touch.

Beyond the almost clone-like styling, Dreame might have a bigger problem on its hands with this SUV. It plans on building it in Germany, the home of Rolls-Royce’s owners. If the legal team at BMW Group decide that Dreame’s SUV looks a bit too Cullinan for their liking, that could definitely spark the sort of litigation that could grind things to a halt. Likely rightly so, because if you’ve built and impressive thing and patented it, you probably wouldn’t be happy if a dupe appeared.

Regardless, it’s going to be interesting watching Dreame’s automotive ambitions shake out. There are a lot of ways to launch a car brand, but it seems like a few key decisions here might result in some drama that may be avoidable with more unique styling. While the concept of a more mass-market car that looks like an expensive Rolls-Royce is amusing, I can’t help but get a feeling that the fun might not last.

Top graphic image: Dreame

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