- Title: CHINA: Chinese pair build replica Lamborghini Diablo
- Date: 23rd August 2014
- Summary: BEIJING, CHINA (AUGUST 21, 2014) (REUTERS) REPLICA LAMBORGHINI DIABLO REVERSING REPLICA LAMBORGHINI MAKER WANG YU REVERSING CAR EXHAUST PIPES CAR PARKED IN GARAGE WANG OPENING DOOR WANG WALKING AROUND CAR LAMBORGHINI LOGO ON FRONT OF CAR WANG AND COLLEAGUE LI LINTAO WORKING VARIOUS OF WANG USING CIRCULAR SAW TO CUT PART VARIOUS OF WANG AND LI WORKING ON FRAME OF ANOTHER
- Embargoed: 7th September 2014 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: China
- Country: China
- Topics: Quirky,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
- Reuters ID: LVAQ65SD9JT6XYIXNZP72SQB8MB
- Story Text: Two Chinese men replicate their dream car, a Lamborghini Diablo, to gain experience needed to to produce their own supercars.
Chinese engineers Wang Yu and Li Lintao dreamed of owning a Lamborghini Diablo, one of the world's most expensive cars and out of production for more than a decade...so they built their own.
They started building their first in their suburban Beijing studio in 2010 with mostly the same ordered parts used in the original Lamborghini.
It cost the pair around 1,400,000 yuan ($228,000), which Wang says is around one tenth of what a real Diablo sells for now in China, where only a handful of collectors own them and they can't be imported.
Thirty-two-year-old Wang said they built the car as a sign of respect for the original, and also to gain experience.
"When I was small, the person I admired most was Enzo Ferrari. I found out that the car was named after the person, and I had this idea, this dream, of becoming the Enzo Ferrari of the Chinese sports car world, or of my own brand, of being someone like that," he said.
Wang studied mechanical engineering in England, Li studied it in Canada, and they started to work together after they both returned to Beijing.
After replicating several sports cars, they are now working on a copy of a T-Rex three-wheeled racer.
The pair say they had wanted to assemble cars for sale but that business cannot take off as long as China does not give licenses to self-assembled vehicles, a regulation they believe is unlikely to change soon.
"The biggest problem is the current system of car manufacturers and government policy, and rules that restrict our production capabilities and restrict the imagination of talented professionals working in the automotive industry. Moreover, there's no good platform or resources to express their potential," Li said.
Chinese companies have earned a reputation for copying international brand products, but Chinese electronics are swiftly catching up and often cost a fraction of their foreign counterparts.
Having mastered the Lamborghini, Wang wants to start designing and manufacturing his own sports cars under his own brand within a couple of years.
"Chinese can also make supercars. We want to produce cars by Chinese people, for Chinese people, and meet our own people's demand for something personalised at lower costs which people can accept, cars that people can actually afford to drive," he said.
Jack Ma, founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, showed his approval by buying Wang and Li's second Lamborghini replica, which he exhibited at the 2012 Beijing International Auto Show before installing it in the company's headquarters.
Fitted with a V8 engine instead of the V12 used in the original, Wang says his car can reach a top speed of around 310 kilometres per hour, a little short of the original's top speed.
But it still whizzed past the other cars in a test spin in Beijing on Thursday (August 21).
China is now the world's biggest auto market and home to over 350 billionaires, second only to the United States, according to the Hurun Global Rich List.
If Wang and Li do become the Enzo Ferraris of China, they are unlikely to be short of customers. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None