[2011G6E]

I'm on a four wheel drive forum too, and this sort of discussion pops up now and then with four wheel drive accessories.
An example was a snorkel. Back when we had a 100 series Landcruiser, I wanted a snorkel for it. At the time most snorkels here in Australia were a minimum of about $400, up to maybe $600 plus fitting. Then some mob called Soong 4x4 (or close to that) started advertising out of Hong Kong. They had snorkels with full fitting kit for between one and two hundred dollars.
This makes sense...it's a damn piece of moulded plastic and some fittings. Someone on the forum noticed that the part number quoted on the Chinese website was the same as one of the big brand snorkels here in Australia...which was made in China too incidentally but selling here for hundreds of dollars more. The old "customers order out the front door, copy out the side door for us" deal again probably.

Now the price of snorkels has dropped dramatically in just the last few years, down to about a "normal" price of $199 for a kit.


People who angrily claim they would never buy Chinese rubbish had better not have too close a look at where most of their parts and accessories are made, even the "big brand dinki-di Aussie" ones...