Fake In China: More On The Faux F150, And Its Chevy Precursor

Bertel Schmitt
by Bertel Schmitt

Tycho, my Dutch friend in Beijing, scored the big one with his fake F150 story. After we wrote about it, everybody from Motor Trend to Pickupinfo.ru wrote about it as well, taking the Carnewschina.com server on a shakedown tour. Tycho does what a good journo needs to do: Feed the beast. He found even better pictures of the pseudo Ford. And he found imagery of its older brother. Which is a Chevy copypaste.

JAC’s Ford-clone JAC 4R3 pickup truck is not available yet, and will be shown at the Beijing auto show end of April. JAC is headquartered in the village of Jingxin in Hebei Province. Villagers there are fiercely loyal to their largest employer, and when uncamouflaged preproduction models of the JAC 4R3 showed up — pictures of the truck appeared minutes later on the Internet.

Tycho has a whole collection, courtesy of the fiercely loyal villagers

On further digging, Tycho unearthed that the truck’s older brother also looks like a Detroit lovechild. According to a new report in Carnewschina, “the JAC 43R is based on another existing JAC pickup truck, the JAC Ruiling. The Ruiling, meaning ‘Lucky Bell’, is a copy of the 2003 Chevrolet Silverado, with a Ford-style oval on the grille.”

Some commenters think it looks more like a 2005 Chevy Colorado. Opinions?

Bertel Schmitt
Bertel Schmitt

Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.

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  • NulloModo NulloModo on Feb 03, 2012

    The Chevy knockoff is sort of a Chevy/Isuzu hybrid with regards to the grill. The F-150 knockoff has the tailgate from a Nissan Titan for some reason.

    • Burnout Burnout on Feb 04, 2012

      Yep...F150/SportTrac/Nissan all melded into one...it's horrible-looking...

  • CJinSD CJinSD on Feb 04, 2012

    This does smack of poetic justice when one remembers Ford making Ferrari change the name of an F1 car.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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