[avira_tk]

I think MG is being romanticised as something that it never was. It lived finally, as part of British Leyland, the train wreck that destroyed Britain's car industry. If anything, SAIC should highlight that the car is nothing like the junk, the brand produced before it was shuttered.

People know about branding, or specifically, riding the coattails of tradition and heritage. They chose the car because they find value in the offering, no one cares about British car brands,few know about them. Most car buyers today didn't have the misfortune of traveling by an ambassador or Morris Minor. MG for them is a brand that offers a modern suv, an in demand body style, with lots of gizmos.

[neoonwheels]

Well, I dont know if its fooling around but then we have JEEP Compass which is based on FCA platform rather than any JEEP per se. Its still sold here (And everywhere) as a JEEP product. So MG certainly is not the only brand doing this.

Now its another debate if its right or wrong. Well to a customer it might be a blatant lie while from company's POV, technically they are right to sell anything under the brand they own. So I have voted for Can't say !!

[Gansan]

Will I buy an inexpensive Chinese electronic item such as mobile phone which I expect to last only a couple or three years and throw away? Knowing it is Chinese?

Yes.

Will I pay premium rates for a Chinese phone or electronic item, knowing it is Chinese?

No.

Will I buy a Chinese designed and engineered vehicle to drive my family around, knowing it is Chinese?

Definitely not. At least not at this point in time.


Will I buy the same vehicle if I am made to believe it is Western European designed and engineered, by a company with a legacy?

Most probably yes.

And therein lies the nub.

Edit: To be fair, there is already a parallel in the two wheeler market. The Jawa. But then we already trust the company that is re-branding it's product as Jawa. It has it's own brand value.

[vsbabu]

I do think it is a bit of a stretch to digest what is given in MG India's site; just like if Tata had decided to name Harrier with some Range Rover kind of name - come to think of it, Tata probably has more valid reasons to do that and they didn't.

Another way to look at it is to see how many customers will be game to replace that awful "Internet Inside" logo with "Baojun 530"

[racer_ash]

Looks like people have started writing off the Hector even before the long term reliability (or non reliability) is known.

Suddenly this thread has gone from healthy debates on MGs brand position to 'Guilty until proven innocent'.

Its like saying that I got cheated by Fair and Lovely because I neither got fair nor lovely like the ads show. If we can take such Marketing gimmicks with a pinch of salt, why not for a 20L car? Whatever happened to due diligence?

Edit: Like one of the BHPians mentioned before, we should have an option of 'Dont care'

[DriveOnceMore]

I voted Yes, they are fooling.

I would have voted otherwise if they had launched any car from MG's own lineup and not the car which is Re-branded version of their Almaz or Boujun 530.
Hector is car designed and engineered by the Chinese team and not the chaps from original MG Motors.

They also know that a 20 Lakh Wuling or Boujun won't sell here hence they Purposefully using MG's cover and indirectly dis-owning their own Chinese roots of this car.


What would have been your reaction if Tata had launched Hexa under Range Rover or Land Rover brand for some 60 lakh asking price?
I'm not trying to defame / underrate Tata here, but just wanted to draw the analogy to make myself clear.

[AMG Power]

MG Sports cars as we know it ceased production in 1980.

How many folks buying a brick on wheels called Hector would link it to sleek 2 seater sports cars that ceased production 39 years ago?

The Maruti Gypsy was referred to as MG 410 and MG 413. So we could start a vote on whether Maruti was also fooling people with the MG tag.

[Vishfull]

Not sure if it is a fake news. It says one guy has put his brand new Hector for sale in olx for 23 lakh, which he had bought for 20. Says a lot about the craze for it.

[narayans80]

Originally Posted by Mi10

Dacia Duster as a Renault Duster ? No problems with that ?

I was about to bring up the same example. Infact in Renault's case, they have had more success with their Dacia rebadges: Duster, Logan (sold via Mahindra-Renault and still sold as Mahindra Verito) and Lodgy than they did with their own Fluence, Koleos and Captur respectively.
--
There are lot of regional biases like Swedish with Volvo (Man Called Ove has a scene depicting exactly that, where the protagonist beams at a Volvo and scoffs at a BMW).

One contemporary example in automotive I would like quote on working against biases is HKMC (Hyundai Kia) in US. Back in the early 2000s (at least that's when I've had first hand account from) Korean brand seems a derogatory term. By the time I returned in 2006, there were quite a good number of Hyundai and Kia cars on American roads, total contrast to the perception it was having a few years before that. Today you'd more likely spot their cars in US than a Suzuki.

Originally Posted by Jeroen

I always thought this MG branding curious to say the least. Because as a brand, MG stands for just about everything that was wrong with the British Automotive Industry at that time. At least that is very much the view in large parts of the Western world.

Not many even know. For this market, MG/SAIC is a completely new brand trying to earn a name.
--
Another point is the manufacturer does not handle all markets alike. VW has a totally different experience in Europe vs India. A former colleague in Italy had a lousy experience with Toyota and vowed never to buy one again, and that person wasn't alone. This is contrast to the experience/perception in India.

[payeng]

My 2 Cents:

Best thing that a new parent company can do for its newly acquired company is "Give Money and Do Not Interfere"

Even Volvo has Geely (China) and JLR has Tata(India) as its parent companies. But to the credit of these parent companies, there doesn't seem to have any Chinese or Indian influence in Volvo and JLR respectively.

On the other hand Benelli seem to have more of Chinese Influence in its current products. Another good (or horrible) example is UM Motorcycles.. the great motorcyle brand from USA.


Coming to the Hector, well its clearly a Chinese developed product with the MG Badge. The Tata Harrier with its JLR underpinnings actually is more British (under the skin) than the MG Hector.

Another thing is PERCEPTION, Any guess why Royal Enfield shifted its Development HQ to the UK???

[digitalnirvana]

Originally Posted by shobhit.shri

By the way, the Aditya Birla group sells its clothing under Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen, and Peter England brands. Such branding and its perceived need by the manufacturers tell more about the consumer than the company, IMHO.

Aye I agree with the last line.

But you're missing an important distinction. Those brands are built by them. Not appropriated from someone else. The brands are named "phoren" to make them premium sounding.

There are broadly 3 classes of badge engineering/logo use :

1. Make a premium brand on your own : Toyota with Lexus, Honda with Acura, Aditya Birla with all of those you mentioned. I think that's perfectly ok

2. Badge engineering under a license, where you a) either sell the original brand's manufactured products, or b) manufacture them yourself under some sort of licensing agreement : Toyota Glanza is case a, Eicher Royal Enfield is case b, Renault Dacia Duster is case b, Tata MG Rover City Rover is case a. I again think this is ok because both brands are collaborating

3. Buying a brand and *associating that brand with completely new and unrelated future products* : Lenovo Thinkpad, Google Motorola Android range, MG SAIC in India, in fact even Mahindra Jawa. I am uncomfortable with this and believe it is brand appropriation and not badge engineering

If Aditya Birla suddenly started selling it's own range of products as Gucci (even if it held the license for Gucci in India) that would be misselling in my eyes.

[Holyghost]

I strongly feel it is the Chinese connection that is offending a lot of people here. We have a lot of examples of brand engineering in the recent past. Chevrolet launched the re-branded Daewoo as Optra. Then they launched the Cruze which is again a Daewoo model and I am still driving one. No one had an issue at that time and it was all praises for these vehicles. These vehicles were the enthusiasts choice and rarely anyone created a fuzz about cheating, lying or the ethics as we see in the case of MG.

The recent example is the Jawa.
https://www.jawamotorcycles.com/
Take a look at this website, Do they mention about Mahindra legacy or the legacy about Jawa brand.

Now when a Chinese company does it, we have threads like this and this https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...inese-car.html (Is it unpatriotic to buy a Chinese car?).
I am pretty sure if this was not a Chinese company, no one would have an issue.

[OSH]

Originally Posted by superbad

MG brand is owned by SAIC, it can use it whatever way it wants.

The way MG has done it, you find it ethical, many including me don't. There is no need to keep on repeating this point. This is the very reason why this thread was created.

Wow, how do you use a brand without referring to its history? What was SAIC supposed to refer to MG as, Maruti Garages?

No one has said that a brand's history should be kept aside while marketing, but atleast when you are referring to the history of a brand, don't you think that the product should atleast have some connection with that history ?

Do you also get offended when Dettol says that they kill 99.9% germs but you find it has not cleaned your hands sometimes from the dirt?

Your earlier example failed and so just for the sake of it, you try and cover up with an even more vague example of dettol ? Seriously ?

Here's one stupid example from my side then. If you get a pug home and name him german shepherd, does he become a german shepherd ?

And if you think all cars in that legacy are designed & manufactured by MG themselves, may you get well soon.

I'm not even going to try and explain my point again. You are just getting everything you can in the discussion and drifting away from the question of this poll.

Fact check - the chipset is designed & built by TSMC (Taiwanese), camera sensor by Sony, modem by Intel & Qualcomm (American), RAM by Samsung & so on & so forth....
Apple only designs the iOS & gives specifications to the other manufacturers.

You were the one who first said that Apple is selling us a stickered chinese phone made by Foxconn. Now with your above reply, it proves the point which another BHPian and I were trying to make and that was, Apple still plays a role in the making of the iphone. It does not matter if the vendors are of any origin as long as Apple is a part of the final product. You have answered your own question.

I have made my points clear and will not keep repeating them by replying to any further posts. I have much better things to do in life than sit and explain the same thing again and again.

[motorworks]

Just a scenario, now that Tata owns JLR, would the British folks have taken it lightly if Tata were to have taken the Hexa to the UK and then tried to sell it as a Land Rover? I know it sounds stretched and a little stupid, but the point is, wouldnt the British folks have been upset? Agreed MG has remotely no heritage as the Land Rover, but the above scenario is the same as the MG / SAIC one right? You make a car that is something and try to pass it off as something else.
And its just not SAIC, I think Renault did it with Kaptur / Captur and a lot of us were critical about that as well.
And my point is not that SAIC has fooled people, they have used a brand they own, nothing illegal about that. But there are folks like us who feel its not right.

[::CMS::]

I feel its the company and the paid reviewers who made this whole mess to make people think its an MG car when there is no role of MG in manufacturing this car rather a name. Many are still thinking its an MG car

BTW, any idea what people chant when they enter the WULING ALMAS, "Hello WULING"...?