From a petrolhead’s point of view, clones are plain insulting. Even replicas get more respect, which makes sense since a replica is, oftentimes, more of an homage created by an individual, whereas a clone is nothing but a cheap ripoff made by a real car manufacturer, who totally ignores intellectual property laws, and sold in volumes.
This don’t seem to trouble the Chinese, who are (in)famous for copying anything, from Swiss luxury watches to actual cars without any repercussions; well, most of them anyways.
Thus, we end up with cars such as the Shuanghuan SCEO, a 14-year old SUV which BMW claims is nothing but a blatant copy of its first-gen X5 E53 model. And you don’t need to be that much of a car anorak to see that this is, indeed, the case.
You’d be better off without the logos
The only thing the SCEO had going for it was the fact that it was designed with a different front end than the X5, although the front fascia, and especially the headlights, were “sourced” from a third-generation Toyota Land Cruiser Prado – without license, of course.
Anyway, the thing is this one owner’s choice to drop multiple BMW badges and lettering on the car, to go with that custom-made faux-kidney grille. There’s no way this SUV would pass for a real X5, as apart from the Land Cruiser front end, the proportions are off and the details are very poorly executed.
The surprising thing is that, as is evident from its license plates, this car doesn’t reside in China but in Romania, although where it really belongs is Reddit’s main thread for bad car mods; which is precisely where we found it.
