China's first appearance at the Paris Motor Show left industry insiders and journalists unimpressed at the quality of the vehicles, but most observers recognized that the five car models exhibited by Chinese auto makers Landwind and Great Wall are the vanguard of a wave of Chinese-made automobiles in the near future, AFP reported. "It's not very impressive, the quality, is it?" said a French distributor who declined to be named. "But there's no reason to believe they won't improve, and fast." The consensus was that the Chinese were hawking low-grade vehicles at low price, but that they were making surprising progress in a very short time and could quickly narrow the gap with Western and Japanese cars. "I think we can look at the success of the Japanese brands and the Korean brands in Europe, and especially in France, and we can see the same pattern going to be applied for Chinese ones too," said Elisabeth Young, head of Asie Auto which imports Landwind cars.
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