A lie in the mouth, fills in the gaps in marketing

Yesterday, I made a pass through XinYi by New York New York and found a cluster of people carefully avoiding stepping around a display for a luxury SUV. Armed in my very casual shorts and camera in altruistic 'I'm a poor tourist leave me alone' style, I approached this "Luxgen" luxury vehicle. Yes, the closer I approach the more obvious that Luxgen is the actual brand name. In true car sales fashion, before I get within 1 meter of this vehicle a bit of fairy dust sprinkles through the air and a salesman is at my shoulder whispering subliminal messages.

For some reason with me, dressing the tourist either incites salesperson lusts at some 'multimillionaire appearing as a pauper' fantasy, or incites the 'escapee from the leper colony' fantasy. I have been approached by some of the largest financial institutions for gold investment, cd's and a multitude of other large scale investments, while in this same guise I am unable to get some low end store salespersons to talk with me. Its a fickle thing, and rarely works the way I want it.

So, rather than fight the current I ask the salesperson about the car. According to him this is "entirely a Taiwanese achievement" and the design for the motor, chassis and everything else for that matter is Taiwanese engineering. After a slight pause, the brief addition that the transmission was Japanese was dropped in there. Take note that in Taiwan people assume that if its Japanese, it may as well be gold plated and come with a recommendation from God (or Buhda, or Allah). In fact some companies in Taiwan love to print their packaging in Japanese so it appears their product is Japanese. So back to reality, I find it either a huge challenge for Taiwan engineering or an outright lie. Considering that there have been other Taiwan companies to produce automobiles I quietly give the benefit of the doubt and ask to look under the hood. I was astonished to find, below the attempt to hide the motor in plastic, a fair sized motor mounted in traditional front wheel drive manner. I was handed the DM (marketing brochure) and realized a correlation immediately between market styles, the "L" logo, and marketing position that this was a Lexus knock-off (or attempt at side by side competition). I did not notice any obviously unique IP on the vehicle (not surprising), and was disappointed to see they used printed Chinese characters rather than international symbols for functions in the vehicle. A side view rear facing camera did address the gap in traditional side view mirrors. Unfortunately short of being rude and climbing under the vehicle, and the fact I wasn't here for this at all, I decided to move on.

A few minutes on the computer later easily revealed that the claim to all-Taiwanese engineering was in fact a lie. However, the company itself sparked my interest, as I do know them under another name. I have made a few phone calls and will compile a quasi-news article after I complete some interviews on this issue.

The bottom line is something that I frequently find in Taiwan. A person, in an attempt to sell you something, has no compunctions about lying outright. Marketing materials in Taiwan don't frequently contain outright lies but typically avoid glaring weaknesses and make bold and nearly impossible to substantiate claims like 'we are the best at xxx'. Taiwanese rarely try to address issues but prefer to eel around them completely, and when confronted with facts or evidence contrary to their lies typically use reflection as their first response (i.e. trying to discredit you, or claiming that you are lying and do not know what you are talking about). I will save topics about face and sales for another time, but showing a Taiwanese the truth will never succeed if you confront them with lying. Ultimately there is little to no legal remedy to lies from the mouth. In many western countries, we find these kinds of lies also. The problem here is that people have little incentive to tell you the facts, as there is no repercussion to their actions. This is not a case of 'buyer beware' as much as 'buyer bring your earplugs'.