We’ve seen plenty of strangely personalized vehicles at the Shanghai auto show this year, but we’re not passing judgement on taste here. We’re just foreigners in a foreign land after all. But there was one car that had so much aftermarket adendum attached to it that it looked like something out of a lowrider show, not than something you’d find on the major international show circuit.
That car was this FRV Cross, which Chinese automaker Brilliance chose to exhibit at the Shanghai show. Though launched a few years ago and readily available on the open market, this personalized version of the car shocked many of us with its chrome accents around the wheelarches, two-toned paint, chrome trimmed taillamps, Dayton-like wire wheels and chrome-look plastic trim in the interior, but it was its ‘pleather’ seating that reminded me of a 1980s-era taxi cab from my native NYC.
Is this type of kitch really what Chinese customers want?
Eric Gallina
