Chinese Police Get In Hot Water With Mercedes ML Police Car

[William Maley]

Chinese Police Get In Hot Water With Mercedes ML Police Car

William Maley - Editor/Reporter - CheersandGears.com

July 10, 2011

In the your not fooling anyone file, a police department in Fangchenggang (part of Guangxi Province)bought a new Mercedes Benz ML350 SUV to be used a police car. The police department spent about 900,000 yuan ($139,000 USD)to get it into their fleet. To fool the citizens of Fangchenggang, the department decided to rebadge the ML350 into a Honda CR-V which only costs about 200,000 yuan ($30,000 or so). The plan was foolproof or so they thought.

The citizens of Fengchenggang were not impressed with the rebadge job and ridiculed the police department about the purchase. However, the police denied they rebadged the vehicle.

Site: Car News China

[Satty]

Going to try this trick on my wife.

[balthazar]

mercedes design is so homogenized, I really doubt I would've notice had I walked right past it.

[Satty]

Up front it does look like it could be a Pilot. Too big to pass off as a CR-V.

[Intrepidation]

The square-sh badge on the round spot on the grill where a round badge used to be is totally a professional job. NO ONE WOULD BE THE WISER.

[CanadianBacon94]

Should have badged it as a RX35 no one would have been the wiser

[Justin Bimmer]

it is honda!

[ocnblu]

How did Chris Doane miss this? One can clearly see the next ML in the background in the top photo above, complete with 3-pointed star and "ML305" on the tailgate! (I'm sure it's supposed to read "ML350", they prolly scrambled the numbers to disguise it).

[ZL-1]

[Turbojett]

Big Brother says it is a Honda! Anyone who says otherwise will be shot at dawn for recklessly thinking for themselves.

[OhioTom76]

Did they really think people are that stupid? Come on, even the freaking Pope goes riding around in his pimped out bullet proof Mercedes and doesn't try to hide it.

[rosa]

How could they deny something so evident, cheating their people out of what belonged to them. The people had a right to lash out and shouldn't have given up on the matter until they got justice.