tekd

They probably didn't use something like you described because other cars already have similar names. Then again the other reason is probably just that GM was lazy and cheap, since getting a really good name thought up like that and tested for marketing is actually a pretty pricey undertaking in China.

Are you serious? It's just being phoneticized so people in China can pronounce Camaro, get the damned stick out your butt. Every single car sold their has a Chinese name, because people there speak Chinese. Nobody sells cars here with their names written in Japanese or Korean, give me a break.

They always phoneticize things for the Chinese market, so this isn't really new just for the Camaro or anything...all the cars sold in China also have names in Chinese characters.
The really good phoneticizations manage to have appropriate and positive meanings behind them as well as sounding similar. For example, Coca-Cola managed to translate itself to Ke Kou Ke Le, which roughly translates as "delicious happiness" (this isn't an exact translation, the actual words are more about your mouth and happiness but that's basically the gist of it is that if you drink coca-cola you'll be happy). The Toyota Camry also has a fairly good translation into Kai Mei Li, which roughly translates into "beautifully triumphant."
So the goal is usually not only to phoneticize it but to get a really positive vibe out of it.

People downgrade but this is nonsense. The Genesis sedan has not sold in large amounts at all, nobody's downgrading to it from a MB or Lexus or BMW. And introducing a 2007 model in 2011 for $65K with a Hyundai badge? You seriously think that's gonna convince luxury buyers to go for it?

@lens2film
You're right that you pay more interest if you borrowed money (and lose interest from savings accounts if you paid cash-though that's like nothing right now) but if you're really calculating financial impact you have to take into account resale value as well and to be honest a $65K Hyundai is going to have a much worse resale value percentage than a Lexus LS. Even if the LS costs more it's likely that you'll arrive at similar costs over a 3 year period.

Choosing low end vendors? What the hell are you talking about, Toyota uses top notch suppliers and tends to pay more for the same type of parts. Not to mention that some of the best parts companies are Toyota affiliates (i.e. Aisin).

Hybrids actually do fairly well in aggressive driving styles since they have regenerative brakes and you get a big boost in acceleration from the electric motors. The mileage isn't great when driven aggressively but compared to the drop a regular car gets they actually do a lot better.

Err..yeah, except no Chinese shoe brands sell here. It's our own companies that go and produce abroad. Have you ever seen anybody in the U.S. wear Li Nian sneakers? Probably not but they're China's #1 domestic sneaker brand, but they don't sell in the U.S. The things you're thinking of that are made in China are sneakers like Nike where they have Chinese plants. Why would a Chinese manufacturing plant build a plant in the U.S.?! They're not a shoe brand, they're literally a manufacturing plant.
You'd be asking the shoe companies to build plants here, so the people you should be bitching at are our own shoe companies, not the Chinese factories.

Thing is, I'll bet that you're a hypocrite. What sneakers do you own? Unless you own $100+ New Balance sneakers chances are that you chose to buy a pair of sneakers that were made in China. And now you're blaming the shoe company for moving production to China when *YOU* are the one who voted with your wallet about where to produce shoes. The schizophrenic whining is unbelievable-you can't simultaneously buy sneakers made in China while whining about them making sneakers in China. The same way that you can't try to save your bankrupt auto company by selling 10 million cars a year in China and then whine about how they want you to produce cars there. Which is why GM isn't whining-they're the first to do it with the BaoJun brand and they think they can sell 6 million units a year there. The plan with China has *always* been to have some IP transfer, because when they opened up their market they were 40 years behind everyone else because of communism, and the last time western companies had gone into China they had raided it for all it was worth and left it penniless. It's not a surprise that they want this since they've basically stated their intentions from the very beginning.

And personally my sneakers are made in China and I bought them over the made in the U.S. New Balance sneakers. Thing is, I'm not going and ranting about how nobody makes sneakers in the U.S. because I know those jobs go to underpaid immigrants anyway. Just like most of our crappy production jobs. Remember American Apparel and their "made in the USA" T-shirts? Yeah, made in the USA by illegal immigrants: http://laist.com/2009/10/01/not_an_immigration_raid_american_ap.php

If you prefer to have your stuff made by underpaid immigrants in crappy U.S. factories instead of underpaid workers in crappy Chinese factories you can feel free to vote with your wallet for more sneaker factories in the U.S. I on the other hand think we should quit whining and really try to compete by hitting the highest tech sectors and pushing those ahead in R&D so we'll always have a nice 2 decade or better lead. Or...we can sit here, whine, make protectionist rules, and then someday realize that all we accomplished was our own doom.

They're doing more than one thing at a time. Thing is that you can't just massively subsidize R&D like you're suggesting since they're a member of the WTO, people would accuse you of dumping when you tried to export your cars since the cars would be heavily subsidized.
And anyways, I don't really see how everyone jumped to this absurd conclusion that they're trying to get IP unfairly. It just says 30% of additional production has to be domestic-that's pretty damned low if you think about it, just look at how much foreign makes produce here in the U.S. for all their new expansion plans, it's almost always higher than that. Is it because the U.S. is out to get other people's IP? This is a pretty absurd conclusion to jump to, and even dumber is the fact that they already have joint venture plants with all the automakers in China, so how would this help get more IP exactly? Building more units doesn't give you more IP and already all the small cars are built in China.
The only thing this would change is that it'd force all the major brands to pay attention to the low end of the market. Enough of this sensationalist "THE CHINESE ARE STEALING EVERYTHING" nonsense.

That's not what their rule says anyways, it says if you want to add production capacity 30% has to be domestic. So it's more like if a Chinese car company was selling cars here and they wanted to increase their sales by 100% you'd ask that 30% of that be built in the U.S.
Even though we don't have any "hard" rules about this in reality our tax regulations already do the same thing-that's why most extra capacity for the foreign makes comes in the form of U.S. plants. Few foreign car companies ever increase U.S. sales by increasing the number of cars they import-they usually build more plants here to increase output because the way the taxes are set up basically make them do so.
Even if you don't explicitly write it as requiring x percent to be built here the reality is that we do the exact same thing. Everyone does the exact same thing, the Chinese just spelled it out more clearly. It's pure hypocrisy to sit here and pretend like VW, Audi, BMW, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Mazda, Honda, all expand in the U.S. out of the kindness of their hearts lol.