Chinese car cloners become ever more blatant

We all saw and sympathised with Land Rover last month over the blatant copying of the Evoque SUV by Chinese car maker Landwind. In spite of the almost identical styling of the Chinese SUV, Land Rover's complaints were met with a po-faced 'nothing to see here' from Chinese authorities.

Well, as Porsche gears up to compete in the Le Mans 24hrs this weekend, it may also want to be scrambling its copyright lawyers for a Beijing ding-dong, as the somewhat grainy photo above shows not a new Macan SUV but something called a Zotye T700.

The front end looks rather reminiscent of the last facelifted version of the Mk1 Cayenne, but around the sides and back, there’s little doubting the, ahem, inspiration for the Zhejiang-based car maker’s styling team. They’ve got previous form in this area too – a previous T600 model had distinct overtones of Volkswagen’s Tiguan.

Reports in the Chinese media, unearthed by the Carscoops website, suggest that Zotye plans to launch the car with 1.5 and 2.0-litre turbo engines later this year.