This is Chinese number three after the MG ZS and the Aiways U5. I will be driving it for the next few days and of course I hope to be as pleasantly surprised as by its predecessors. I keep my powder dry for a while, but two things stand out in advance. They are two facets of the same phenomenon, the neurotic trend-following streak of Chinese car manufacturers. He presents the growth markets with a killer urge to prove a cigar from his own box.
You can see it first of all in the level of facilities. In China or California – where Seres is officially located, although the car is Chinese – a checklist must circulate for the equipment. The boss of Seres wrote above it in cockatoos: What Everyone In Europe Has And We For An Apple And An Egg So Tasty Also, all-inclusive. It is the strategy that Kia and Hyundai followed before, and it turned out to work. They didn’t skip anything. 10.25 inch touchscreen: check. Panoramic roof: check. Security assistants: check. Keyless go: check. Leather upholstery: check. Wireless charging: check. Dynamic turn signals: check. Everything works and looks exactly as you used to from others. After taking a seat, I automatically grab the buttons for the electrically adjustable driver’s seat. While I have not seen them, I intuitively know: they are there. This is a Chinese, this is what he likes. The intention is to crush everyone with market-conform luxury for 38 grand.
The two business card is the shape. Something strange is going on with that. The Seres 3 does not follow one trend so much as all fashions simultaneously. He is a fascinating example of layered mimicry, mimicking everyone. Plagiarism is the wrong word because it is so difficult to determine who and what the car is copying. You feel it comes from somewhere, but where? The ingredients of his melting pot come from everywhere and nowhere. He may copy copying behavior of others; the dial for the automatic transmission comes from Jaguar, but it is not inconceivable that they have it from Aiways. The black band on the C-pillar seems to be the end of a watch relay that stranded somewhere in China via Opel, Lexus and Hyundai. Those taillights; is it VW, something slightly Tiguanesque? A little, but not quite. That sharp kink in the boot lid; T-Roc? The fake grille with that pattern of blue triangles, don’t we know it from Mercedes? The ten-spoke light-alloy wheels, painted matt gray in line with the market, of course, what do they think of? Mazda?
So that. Out of sheer corniness, I put the Seres in a few busy places to gauge the reactions of passers-by. Zero response. No one has noticed him in the supermarket parking lot. Quite absurd for a brand new model from a brand new brand that no one has seen here yet. The Seres 3 is the masterpiece of absolute anonymity.
How do you get something like that on paper? It would be an interesting assignment for designers in training: Design a car without features. If those students are good, they won’t get it done. Serial plagiarism is an impossible task for personalities. But there is someone in China who can do it. His name is Everyman and he deserves the Nobel Prize for the perfect disappearing trick. In the meantime he has apparently cleared the field for real draftsmen. For your reassurance: The upcoming Seres 5 and 7 look promising in the photos, just like an Aiways U5 already looks fine.
But I don’t get tired of the 3. In China, dozens of those models are probably still driving around, all copied from others and each other, obscuring the origin of their visual language in a process of serial borrowing until you no longer know what you see.
One unique detail cannot be denied to the Seres 3.
He has a lighter. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Someone forgot to explain to the Chinese that we no longer smoke.
And now drive.