Traditionally, I always get my blog posts off with "my best" car from the preceding year. For the year ending 2010, it's going to be a whole lot tougher. On my way home sometime around Christmas, i was listening to Cool Fm. Freeze was on the show and he was talking about the Govt's decision to reverse the age limit of used cars being imported to Nigeria. The new rule now says you can import cars under 15years into the country. Being a radio, TV or print media personality, ethics demands that care be taken when airing your views. Freeze was of the opinion that it was better to drive a used car( tokunbo) from a reputable brand as against being made to drive what he called a 'car that had a name from an under wear company, had its engine from Mitsubishi and the interior was hoisted from a Toyota). The car he described above happens to be Chinese.
Freeze aside, lets look at the bigger picture. Range Rover, prior to it being taken over by Tata had its Engines being supplied by BMW, today Range Rover's engines come from Jaguar. The Audi R8 (used by Iron Man in the sequel) has its engine supplied by its sister company Lamborghini. The Rolls Royce phantom has transmission being supplied by its German owners(BMW). A Car is made up of several components, and its not un-common to have parts being supplied by different companies from varying continents. A 100+ years ago when Carl Benz and Gotlieb Daimler started working on the Internal Combustion Engine, little did they know that someday their cars would become the De-facto standard in Luxury cars. Thanks to Technology, the Chinese that Our Intelligent and Highly educated Freeze chose to run down have so very well employed the technique that car building nations employ, "Start from building something"!!!!!
About a decade ago when the Chinese tried to make an incursion into the European market, they failed woefully. The Brilliance car being tested got 0 Stars on its Euro Ncap crash tests, today i can confidently tell you, they now have 3stars on a brilliance model. GM, Toyota, BMW and every major Car manufacturer now has a production plant in China. What did China do, they started building something!!!!!
The Chinese technique works. They simply employed the principles which other car building nations employed.
Now to GEJ, who reversed the Ban, i shake my head. That is not the path for a country that ever hopes to build cars to take. OK, that's even pushing the envelope, its not a step for a country that hopes to ever assemble cars to take. With the Global meltdown a few years back, it was the perfect time to get the likes of Chrysler, GM and all Car Manufacturers that struggled globally to come to Nigeria to build and sell their low cost cars which they could even export to the US and other parts of the world. Please.. please do not tell me the lack of power would have made them fail. The reason no one at the centre thought of such is most likely greed and its that same greed that is driving the need to reverse the ban. The huge duties going to Neighboring countries is definitely a tempting factor, as these cars will now come through Nigerian ports where there'l be more duties for our customs men to collect.
The truth is this, you cannot hope to become a force among the committee of Nations if we keep doing things in half measure and it doesn't look like its going to change anytime soon!!!!!!!!!!!!