Chinese manufacturing is hitting amazing heights today. Just 15 years ago, if you bought a Chinese motorcycle, there was a high chance that it was a pile of crap. Today, Chinese motorcycles can be quite desirable – and as an Autopian reader, you already know the great strides the Chinese automotive industry has made. Now China is leaning heavily into the RV industry, which is resulting in some really cute and dirt-cheap campers becoming available. There’s a chance you’ve seen the same Chinese camper that caught my eye, the Aiymen TT-C1. This fiberglass camper claims to have vintage looks and the kind of modularity that you get with Lego bricks, all while costing just $8,000. But here’s a twist: from what I’ve been seeing, it is not as it appears to be.
One of the weird benefits of having a Chinese-market phone (a Vivo X200 Pro that I imported just for its cameras, thanks for asking) is that I have access to Chinese social media. A heartwarming thing I’ve found is that Chinese social media is just like American social media, where people do stupid things for clicks. My X200 also affords me a glimpse at car culture in China, and that’s great too, but it has also exposed me to something less awesome.
The $8,100 Aiymen TT-C1 is a beautiful piece of work, made of fiberglass and featuring a fully modular floorplan. Autoevolution wrote about this trailer earlier today, with good vibes. But here’s the problem: The promotional video for the trailer and the imagery appear to be taken from another manufacturer. And it only gets worse from there.
Aiymen Technology’s Claims
You can buy the TT-C1 from Aiymen Technology Co., Ltd.’s listing on Made-In-China.com, and if you look no deeper than the surface, it seems legitimate. The listing page gives you prices in U.S. dollars, and the images claim that the trailer is FCC, CE, and U.S. DOT certified.
Clearly, this trailer is being marketed to Americans, and with a price as low as $8,100, who cares if it’s hit by tariffs, because even if you had to cover a 100-percent tariff, it would still be cheaper than similar offerings for sale in America. This camper is even cheaper than a brand-new Scamp! Here’s what it supposedly actually looks like:
I’ve done some digging on Aiymen Technology Co., Ltd., and I couldn’t figure out when the business opened, but I did discover it’s only been on Alibaba for a year. The company’s Conformité Européenne (CE) is valid from 11/14/2024. I could not locate the manufacturer’s apparent registration with NHTSA, as it claims to have. The company’s about page currently reads:
Aimens is a leading RV manufacturer in China, employing over 300 people and covering an area of 20,000 square meters, with an annual turnover of 50 million yuan. Our products are exported to Australia, North America, and various other regions. With advanced research and development capabilities, our factory is equipped with cutting-edge technology, such as Tumpf laser cutting machines, OTC welding robots, and AMASA CNC punching and bending machines, ensuring the highest product quality.
All Aimens products comply with industry standards and hold various certifications, including VIN, WMI (World Manufacturer Identifier), CE, ISO, COC, and others. These certifications guarantee our products meet international safety regulations and quality standards. We welcome you to visit our factory anytime to see for yourself the quality we uphold. For more information or to customize your camping trailer, please feel free to contact us. Aimens is excited to provide you with outstanding products and services for an unforgettable camping adventure.
To further illustrate how much this company wants you to think that it’s a player in North America, it says that the North American market makes up 40 percent of its production. My problem is that it’s hard to believe anything that this company says seriously, given how it markets its products.
Right, so here’s the Aiymen TT-C1. Aiymen says that this camper is made out of two fiberglass halves that are bonded together, not unlike the classic American fiberglass camper. The trailer measures 16.9 feet long with a 10.2-foot-long box and a weight of 1,874 pounds. Other features include a 100 Ah battery, a galvanized steel frame, a torsion beam axle, acrylic windows, and electric brakes.
The biggest feature, of course, is the modularity. Images provided by Aiymen show an interior full of cubes that you can move around or remove entirely from the trailer, giving you a modular interior with a Lego-like ease of use.
But wait a second, something is off about this camper. Take a look at the hero shot of this camper. This is from Aiymen’s site:
If it looks familiar but you can’t put your finger on it, don’t worry, I got it. The photo here is for the Happier Camper HC1 Studio, a camper built in Los Angeles, California, not China. Here’s the topshot that I made for my Happier Camper article back in 2022:
At first, I thought that maybe some lazy intern making the for-sale listing just took whatever photos they could find, but I cannot even give Aiymen that benefit of the doubt. I found the company’s actual website, and it’s somehow so much worse. Not only does the Happier Camper show up all over the site as a product of Aiymen, but Aiymen might have borrowed the images of other RVs, too.
Here’s the Aiymen ‘HC-C5 Hybrid Caravan‘ above. What do you think this camper really is? What you’re looking at here is a Brüder EXP-8, which is from Australia. The Aiymen ‘HC-C4 Hybrid Caravan‘ is also another Brüder design.
Things get weird when you go to Aiymen’s catalog of teardrop campers. Here’s the Aiymen TT-A2:
Now this camper does not seem to borrow another manufacturer’s images. But its design is the spitting image of the nuCamp Tab 320 Lite, which is built in Ohio:
The boldest one is the Aiymen ‘TT-B1 Teardrop Trailer‘ below. This one blows my mind because it’s a super unique design. This is actually the Mink Camper Mink-S, which is designed in Iceland and built in Latvia.
In this case, Aiymen is not borrowing Mink Campers’ images, but appears to have obtained the camper’s design somehow. This is also the case for the Hebei On The Road Comma-E, which is also a near-exact clone of the Mink Camper. Amazingly, these things do exist. You can even rent a Hebei On The Road Comma-E on Outdoorsy.
So what are we looking at here? It appears there are two things going on, and neither of them is promising. In the case of the HC-C5 Hybrid Caravan and the TT-C1, Aiymen has seemingly borrowed the images from Brüder and Happier Camper, respectively.
The wild part is that the TT-C1 appears to be a real camper. It doesn’t look nearly as good as a Happier Camper, but it looks like it might exist in some way or form. Why didn’t Aiymen just use its own images for this camper? It makes you think that you can’t trust anything that you see on Aiymen’s website. The company could make perfectly okay campers, but it’s almost impossible to tell.
Even worse is Aiymen’s promotional video for the TT-C1, which is just a video of a Happier Camper (Screenshot in case the video gets taken down):
The other deal going on here is that it looks like Aiymen is selling clones of campers from more famous brands. As I said earlier, the Happier Camper is built in California, the Mink Camper is built in Latvia, and nuCamp’s trailers are built in Ohio. No doubt, these companies almost certainly use parts from China, but these trailers aren’t built there.
I have reached out to Happier Camper to see if the company is aware of what’s going on here. A Happier Camper representative told me:
“We have become aware of a number of outfits based in China infringing on our IP, especially image rights. We issue take downs and another pops up. It helps a lot to spread the word so thanks again.”
Normally, I can find myself getting excited about affordable Chinese products, but this time, I just cannot. There’s no way of knowing that if you placed an order for one of these campers, you’d get anything even remotely similar to what you see in the images. Even if the campers here are 100 percent legitimate, if the company is willing to cut corners on imagery, how am I supposed to trust that the company also isn’t cutting corners on quality? Here’s what the TT-C1 allegedly looks like for real again:
Some of you might be wondering why I even bothered to write this post. I wrote this because I know some of our readers are like me and probably occasionally scroll through Chinese marketplaces. It can be tempting to blow $8,100 on the TT-C1 because, again, even with tariffs and the cost of shipping, this thing will be cheap! However, there are so many red flags here that I would recommend staying away.
This is not to say that you should swear off Chinese products. I’m very happy with my Vivo X200 Pro and my CFMoto Papio SS. China does build some great products! However, as you’ve seen here, not every buy is going to be like that. So be careful.
The good news is that there are real versions of all of the campers that I’ve featured here. Yes, all of them are significantly more expensive than the ones Aiymen is slinging. There’s no doubt that a real Happier Camper is crazy expensive. However, at the very least, in spending tons of money on these campers, you know exactly what’s going to be parked in your driveway.
Top graphic image: Happier Camper
I have a long history of work with Chinese companies and have seen many sides of the coin. Currently I have a very important (to me) client there that I can stand by and say they are very honourable, create great IP of their own and do amazing quality work. They are family run and very similar to the family entrepreneurial businesses we are used to here. I am sure they have no CCP connections (I hope). What I am trying to say is we need to be careful not to paint everyone with the same brush. Even in a totalitarian society individuals who can flourish need to be supported. It’s not their fault.
Now, you mention the first model includes a 100Ah battery. Any indication if that can be serviced with a chainsaw?
Any battery can be serviced with a chainsaw if you’re sufficiently motivated. 😉
Fake it ’til you make it!
Or in this case, fake it and don’t make it.
Great article well written and fully informativ
It’s very common that the listing is actually a middleman and not the actual factory. A lot of the sourcing sites have a independently verified program and they will put a little image with a video of a walk though and some documents normally from tuv. But nowadays it’s hard to tell if that means anything. They have been doctoring their product images for decades. Still a lot better then it used to be. And their are some expats in China that travel around and will figure out if who you are dealing with is actually who they say. They figured out it was a easy way to get travel money and see new areas. Though I think they are less of them they used to be. Most I think were there at least originally to teach English. You get the same thing in the US with people selling conex and building those tube steal metal buildings and car ports. You might try 50 middle men or brokers that have absolutely no idea about anything before you actually get someone that puts their hands on it.
In this case, the stolen images aren’t just on the listing sites, but on the manufacturer’s website. That’s what makes this so much worse! If it was just a goofy Alibaba listing it would be whatever, but this is deeper than that, sadly.
That been increasing common happening with a lot of industries and they are playing wack a mole too. Ive heard speculation some specialty cad programs are compromised at some level in a similar fashion that allowed the Chinese to get f-35 plans. There have been some documented cases of 3d scanning of items in the US and Europe to send to China. You expect the small things to be reverse engineered and copied but the big stuff that doesn’t leave it’s domestic market isn’t immune anymore either.
You don’t need to compromise cad programs when companies will send you the design files for the parts and ask you to make them.
You can pretty much assume any designs you send to china for manufacturing are going to be copied. The only way I’ve seen to reliably prevent the chinese manufacturer you hire to make your product from making a competing version is to have different companies make the parts and then have another company (preferably not in china) assemble them
Not solely a chinese problem but most common there because of the amount of manufacturing done there
Yes supply chain leaks are definitely a problem in China. But most manufacturers will just send the cad of the part to be manufactured in question not the whole design. If it’s more of an odm situation then yeah often times there is an engineering team in China working with the Western team with the whole design.
A brother of a good friend of mine moved to China many years ago to teach English, in an area not known for tourists. He stood out to the locals, being 6’4″ and a redhead! He then worked for a company making wind power products, then set up a factory of his own making solar panels, with special emphasis on rigorous quality control, and gained an advantage over other factories that simply produced quantity (customers had to accept that a fair % of the cheap product they were buying would be unloaded from the shipping container, tested, then go straight in a rubbish skip).
Eventually his success brought him to the attention of the government, and somebody essentially turned up to ‘inspect’, then made it clear he needed to pack up and leave so they could take over the business, or he might find himself investigated for ‘corruption’ and finding a new career in a prison sweatshop.
I know people that had similar experiences in China. Some that have local partners seem to escape things ending like that. Chinese people in general seem not afraid to fail and will just go on to other things or if they are in with the local branch of the party get handed something a foreigner built. I’ve heard of similar things happening in Vietnam as well.
The day that Chinese vehicles make a true foothold in the United States is the day the American automobile companies become a modern day British Leyland. It will be unfortunate but when Americans begin to see how truly good some Chinese vehicles are (Buick) it will be unfortunately the death knell for our manufacturers.
By the time that day comes, all the “American” cars will be built in Mexico anyway, so good riddance.
Tariffs
Exactly how, for instance, does Stellantis (US) not look like British Leyland already?
A Chinese-built Buick is a lot different than a Trumpchi or 4-door Beetle clone or whatever weird knockoff cars they are making.
The amount of cheerleading for the CCP on here is staggering.
Ostriches get blasted by reality just like other birds. Once they get in its over.
I’m not chearing for them. Personally I’d like to see more things made in America and try to do so when possible. That being said, it’s hard to support companies that put out a sub par product because they have the market volume to do so.
So you would rather support a searingly evil Communist regime that enslaves and murders people, got it!
We’re already, via taxes, supporting a searingly evil fascist regime that throws people in concentration camps and wants to build a vacation paradise on Gaza as soon as those pesky Palestinians are killed off so…
China is not the only bad guy out there, and we buy shit from bad guys all the time. I don’t disagree that the country’s government is evil, but so is ours so if we’re going to boycott companies because their owners were born in a country that has an evil government we should stop buying American for consistency.
Ahhh, the anti-semite section of Autopian being heard from! Thanks for repeating Hammas lies.
I was talking about Trump, genius.
“The Riviera of the Middle East. This could be so magnificent.” – Trump
But while we’re on the subject, anti-Israeli government is not the same thing as anti-Jew, and you either know that and are intentionally trying to stir up shit, or you’re stupid. Which is it?
Uh huh. Keep spinning.
That’s not even remotely what I said. I literally said I try to support domestically manufactured products.
Yeah, we should get on with deprecating Chinese cars, just like we did with the Japanese and the Korean ones not so long ago. Those companies just tend to go away if they see enough people kvetching on the internet.
The Japanese and S Koreans are not murdering and enslaving people to make those cars. The Chinese Communists are.
At this point, I think we have plenty of things happening here to worry about (deportation of people into places where they’re treated worse than cattle, without due process, separation of families with small children, military personnel deployed in cities to push the homeless out, an administration that willingly ignores court orders and the constitution…). No need to look elsewhere, I think.
ROFLMFAO, nice try. The communists killed around 100 MILLION people in the 20th century. If you dont know that, read a book. Wow, just wow.
Nowhere in this article or comments do I see anyone cheering for the CCP. Not all Chinese citizens or companies love or support the CCP. Just like not all Americans are MAGA republicans.
ALL of the companies in China are at the very minimum supervised and/or controlled by the CCP. Wanting more Chinese products in the US means more power to the CCP, period.
Mercedes, this reminds me… Could you publish more Chinese motorbike articles? Your Papio SS review introduced me to CFMoto and when I went browsing for bikes recently, dealerships tended to have swathes of them, in sports, dual sports, scooters… All of them with seemingly excellent build quality, and great looks. I wonder if we are not sleeping on some future classics
At least one of the screenshots on their web site seems to be taken from a video at https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1E7T1kYhAL/ so they are even stealing from other Chinese companies.
Chinese business model: Steal IP. Make copies as cheaply as possible. Slowly increase quality to bare minimum to keep selling. Rinse, repeat.
Close. The rate of quality improvement should worry other manufacturers. The Chinese manufacturers have shown themselves to be perfectly capable of building crap (cheaply) or nicer stuff (a lot more expensive). It’s all dependent upon the price point and what you’re willing to pay. Sounds like capitalism, doesn’t it?
Improving from absolute crap to just acceptable is easy.
One of my wife’s uncles works for a Canadian hardware store chain. One year he gave me a Robertson screwdriver copy made in China that they were selling for $1 CAD. I could twist the tip off the screwdriver trying to put a #8 wood screw into pine. The next year he gave me another one. Exactly the same visually but this time I could drive multiple screws in with no issue. Sales price in Canada was still $1, but they couldn’t sell them as customers seemed to believe that a $1 screwdriver couldn’t be any good. He raised the sales price to $3, and they sold out quickly.
So yes, China can improve their quality rapidly, but in my experience, you have to baby-sit their quality and manufacturing constantly. They will agree to make anything, but you must provide the standards and explain the proper manufacturing process and controls.
Robertson screwdriver? What are you a vandal? *
*look up why they don’t sell them in the US…
I’m not in the U.S. and I am well aware of the history of the Robertson screwdriver and the difference between it and the square drive imitations.
There was a time when you couldn’t source Robertson screwdrivers in the US. Something to do with a patent issue. This led to an adoption of the screw for use in public fixtures like bathroom stalls, playground equipment etc., because it was hard for trouble making vandals to get the screwdrivers and disassemble them. I worked for a Canadian manufacturer of some of these fixtures back in the early 80’s and we defacto used Robertson screws because our customers requested this. However, we had to ship screwdrivers with all our products so the customers could do final assembly or service the products.
BTW – Robertson screws, while great for automated assembly tasks, are more prone to having the heads shear off due to the amount of material missing in the big square hole. Nethings Porfect.
Henry Ford used the Robertson screw in Model T production in Canada and wanted to license the patent to make his own in the U.S. but Robertson refused to license the screw to any U.S. manufacturers which led to them not being used much there. The Robertson is square drive but has a taper so the screw ends up staying on the drive bit instead of falling off like a square drive without the taper. All the patents have longs since expired, but much of what you see named as Robertson is not truly so but just square drive.
https://www.robertsonscrew.com/history/
The big “3” have the most to lose. 6.2 liter anyone?
Yeah remember all that cheap great cancer causing drywall they sent in after Katrina? Oh and don’t forget the I think the toxic tooth paste that had asbestos in it. But people can’t help but go for a deal
I still want to try out one of those exploding watermelons.
90% as good for 50% of the price has always been the formula. Especially when people discover those coveted name brands come off the same lines.
The first example here, the TT-C1, is actually different from the Happy Camper. Look at the wheel flares. The HC curves back into an immediate quarter circle, while the TT-C1 rises vertically first, then has a smaller radius arc backwards. So even if they happen to be the fiberglas part supplier for HC, they are using a similar but different mold.
Some of these could very well be Chinese builds from parts that they are originally producing for foreign companies. But as you say, the build quiality could be anywhere. For example, on the TT-A2 v. the nuCamp, the black moldings and/or gaskets at the edges of the nuCamp are clearly wider than those on the TT-A2. The nuCamp looks possibly like a solid strip with a few flutes plus a rubber gasket poking out alongside, and the TT-A@ like a single solid piece.
That’s what’s crazy about the TT-C1. It’s a completely different camper, so there’s no reason for Aiymen to steal Happier Camper’s images. Yet, here we are.
Agreed. One possibility is bad marketing and web maintenance, if they originally were going to straight up copy the camper and steal the pics, but later made their own unique mold, but never took photos to replace the stolen ones.
Well let us know how sweet it is when you get one otherwise I’ll trust Mr Haney before I trust Mainland China.
What, are you a lawyer? /s
Ha, no. I suppose I’m adding a questioning of the company’s web abilities to the already-questioned quality and intentions.
I think Jason should buy one and tow it with his Changli. Across the country. For clicks.
Sort of the automotive version of the blind leading the lame.
No I’m thinking this is a job for an intern, they are replaceable Jason is not.
Well, I don’t even trust most American sites, so . ..
Old adage from older guy:: if it seems to good to be true, it probably isn’t (true)
This is why I appreciate Mercedes’ articles. She is protecting and empowering us with knowledge.
I have a friend who likes to buy shit direct from China. For cheap shit she can save a lot of money, however said cheap shit 99% of the time isn’t worth buying, and the manufacturers (or likely more than not Chinese dropshippers) sell her CC data on the regular.
Frankly whatever country you live in you should do you best to buy shit from manufacturers in your country so you support your local economy and you have some recourse if they end up scamming you.
That being said that doesn’t mean that local manufacturers are great, but even if you’re buying marked up Chinese shit from a local company you have some recourse, even major Western businesses have basically no recourse against patent and IP infringement, and if they try to elevate it to the WTO China will seize their in country assets and use their factories to churn out their shit.
Sometimes there is no other option. Literally no other country makes some things. Or if they do it’s not available for buying just a few. Like small brushless motors for example.
If there was only some way to go to the seller and check out the product before buying it and if there was a problem you could go to them in person and solve the issue. Damn I’m just some dreamer boomer
Well, considering Red Flags are just reissued Audi 100s and Lincoln Town Cars….
And the few Hongqi-specific parts on the Town Car aged horribly, the headlights turned completely opaque in like the first 9 months
Their current models, are, of course, no longer platform shared with Western automakers and are much better better built, they’re selling over 400,000 a year domestically now
I buy all my red flags from China. Nobody else makes them anymore.
All China crap I see online are gigantic red flags
Communism has some big red flags.
“ if the company is willing to cut corners on imagery, how am I supposed to trust that the company also isn’t cutting corners on quality?”
Hasn’t it already been well established that ALL RV manufacturers are more than willing to cut corners on quality? I’m not trying to defend deceptive advertising or blatant IP theft, but this doesn’t seem like the strongest argument to be made. Particularly considering most RV’s have about the same build quality as if they were assembled by chimpanzees using random RV parts (to borrow a Dave Demuro line)?
I have no idea why you would buy a new RV at the moment, from any manufacturer. RV buyers have shown that they are willing to spend $50 grand + on the biggest steaming piles of crap ever assembled, and companies have responded to that incentive.
Sometimes it’s the consumers themselves who are the problem.
You’re 100% correct on this one. As much as I like to blame the manufacturers, it’s hard to blame them for building crap when there is a seemingly endless line of people lining-up to buy said overpriced crap. They’re just selling what people have proven to be willing to buy…
Btw, that was supposed to be Doug Demuro, it was late and I missed the predictive text error…
Except on the other side of the world and if you go there you may never be heard from again. I think you are comparing M80s to Atomic Bombs here
Add in that almost all of the RVs in the USA are made by a handful of manufacturings selling the same product under different brands and different price points.
(Same with lawn tractors – back when I was in that business every major mower in the USA was made by John Deere, MTD, or Husqvarna. Dozens of brands – 3 manufacturers)
Years ago, I was actually pretty close to buying a camper. Fortunately for me, I have enough friends who had new RV’s and saw first-hand just how terrible their build quality was and just couldn’t justify spending that much on something so objectively bad…
This is one of the things that many Chinese companies continue to do in all markets that earns them their reputation for poor quality and deceptive business. I am all for international trade and I’m for companies being “inspired” by other products and trying to do something similar but cheaper, but it crosses a line when it moves into straight up IP theft and advertising fraud.
R&D is expensive buying from scum just results in no one investing in improving because they don’t get their money back.
I’ve often heard that Chinese factories can build to any quality level, from stuff that won’t last a day in the real world to clones that are virtually indistinguishable from the original. Depends what the buyer wants to pay for.
I’ve also heard that in China, “R&D” stands for “ripoff and duplicate”.
I’ll not be ordering a road-going vehicle from Alibaba anytime soon.
Yes. There are all levels of manufacturing capability in China, including better capability than anywhere else in the world. It comes down to price as you say, and willingness to supervise as any corner that can be cut will.
Lots of manufacturing is started with ripoff and duplicate. Yamaha famously got its start when an organ was imported and taken apart to study and copy. Nikon (as Nikko) was copying zeiss optics. These companies definitely stand on their own now.
I think the question will be if Chinese hustle culture will continue to mask the high skill and capability by always trying to get away with cutting corners to “win” the exchange.
100% correct. They can and do build to any standard. What are you willing to pay?
Whatever maximizes value.
If the price is 100% just buy the original. If buying a Chinese copy one should expect to pay much less for quality as good as or slightly less than the original.
There is even a place for very, very cheap junk if that junk does the job well enough or is only needed for proof of concept.
Why do you expect to pay less for a Chinese brand that is the same quality as a different brand?
Then there are the historic brands outsourcing the complete manufacturing process to a Chinese firm and then selling that product under their own name and distribution channel. In the powersports sector BMW, KTM, Polaris, and Yamaha are doing this.
Should you buy a KTM 790 or a CF Moto Ibex 800. Both made on the same assembly line in China by CF Moto
Note his screen name.
“Should you buy a KTM 790 or a CF Moto Ibex 800. Both made on the same assembly line in China by CF Moto”
I dunno, the KTM costs $9499 and the CF Moto $10,799 so all else equal go with the KTM I guess:
https://www.cycleworld.com/ktm/790-duke/
https://www.cfmotousa.com/inventory/unit/ibex-800-t
If however the there was a third option that cost less but had the same quality I’d say go for that instead.
You are comparing the standard Duke the the ADV Ibex.
The KTM 790 Adventure is $10,999. While the Ibex 800 is almost the same price it also comes with luggage racks, crash bars and driving lights that would add another $1000 – 1500 to the KTM. The CF Moto also has a quickshifter that doesn’t come with a subscription (KTM charges to use some of the electric aids on the bike)
Then be more specific in your criteria. If it wasn’t obvious in my answer I’ll say it, I had no idea either of these products existed until you asked the question. The Duke was the first thing that came up under a Google of KTM 790.
What’s your point again?
Yes, I guess I shouldn’t expect people on an auto site to know the range of motorcycle models. (There are three 790 KTM models)
The question is this – If you have two products coming off the same Chinese line are you going to buy the “name brand” on with a brand name like BMW or KTM or buy the Chinese brand one that cost less or comes with a bunch more standard equipment?
Buy the cheaper one and slap whatever badge I want on it.
Yep, you can get good quality parts if you look. I bought new cylinder heads for my air-cooled Beetle that came from China, and also came highly recommended by other owners. They looked identical to the original ones in every way. They even weighed the same. I don’t drive the car a ton, but several thousand miles and no issues so far. They did cost less than other options, but not significantly. You still have to pay for quality.
An aside, it was pretty cool to walk into a local German auto parts store and walk out with a set of pistons, cylinders, and heads that they just had in stock.
Last piece of auto parts I bought I could snap the water pump bracket in half with my bare hands.
It depends on how much Information they can steal from the rightful owner. I love how people have problems with the thieves stealing from artists on the web for a $25 useless chachki but stealing a multi million dollar design is to be applauded
Harbor Freight Predator engines are a good example of this. All my experience with them on go karts and OPE is excellent. Somehow HF or their consultants have transplanted robust production systems into a Chinese engine mfgr.
they don’t necessarily have anything to do with improving manufacturing. All you really need is really stringent quality control. If you refuse to accept crappy products the Chinese manufacturer will eventually send you good ones (or quit). Hilariously the ones you fail will probably just be sold against your products for a cheaper price
The really insidious thing I’ve seen is you may be working with one manufacturer for years and then as soon as they figure out you get lax on QC they start cutting back on quality
Can I tow the Comma-E with my Kia Cee-Apostrophe-D?
Here is a video on how to hook them up.
I think this is probably more accurate.
From the first image I figured it was a Temu Happier Camper and would either be the size of a Changli or made out of cardboard.
Hey, they’d figure a way to get a significant amount of lead contamination in there too…
From copies and fakies and long-distance thievies, good Lord deliver us!
Aiymen!
Seriously, though, Chinese products are best avoided as much as possible. Some of it is quite intriguing, but there are many better alternatives for when we decide to part with our hard-earned money.
That depends on whether you’re actually paying for greater quality or just paying more for a brand that’s taking the same cheap thing you could have bought slapping its own label on and marking it up.
No because if it is crap sold at Walmart I can return if it is crap sold on Temu you’re screwed
Which is why you go to Temu last.
Aiymen has borrowed? No Aiymen has stolen.
I’ve seen my share of crappy campers in China (caulking strips flapping in the wind on the highway, mysterious puddles in parking lots), and these campers have the same vibe as the infamous LSEVs: imitate foreign designs at the lowest price possible. At least the Changli looks original!
Fiberglass (and carbon fibre) moulding is incredibly cheap here; a three piece body panel CNC wood mould for something like a Caterham would set you back about one grand. Wouldn’t be that unfeasible to have an intern sketch out an imitation in CAD, then send it off and have your bargain basement moulds within a week. So pricing seems reasonable, wouldn’t want to own one long term though!
“So pricing seems reasonable, wouldn’t want to own one long term though!”
But what if you want to be the Hoovies Garage of the RV industry and buy Terrible RVs to make videos with to get the clicks?
They have to be really trying to get worse quality than the stuff being shat out of Elkhart.
I think copying a design from Indiana and *somehow* building it out of cheaper materials would reach that goal.
Instead of wood framing they’d use toilet paper rolls. lol
No recycled chop sticks
I love that roughly half your comments in here don’t engage with the post you’re replying to in any meaningful way, and the rest are just plain whining. But then, finally, all the way down here at the end, is just straight up racism. At least it was the last one.