After a day of sanding the floors of the new house I’ve been building on-and-off for three years or so, my son Will and I headed out to try out a new small Chinese cafe in our neighborhood. It’s in a longish strip mall, but it was easy to find by the cars parked out front.
We’ve covered this before here, but the University of Oregon is particularly popular with Chinese students, and a good number of them come and buy their first new car here with virtually no budget attached. The result can be…amusing, especially watching newly minted 18 year old drivers struggling to park their baby-blue matte-finish Bentley GT, or puttering down the street in a Lamborghini slower than anyone else, looking a bit terrified. At least this cute pink Cayman is parked properly. Sadly, it didn’t have any Hello Kitty stickers.
On the other side of the entry drive were these two, both models particularly popular with this crowd. There’s always a few GT-Rs around, and its a bit sad to hear their muted snarl as they are driven eight blocks at 25 mph from their apartment to…someplace to eat Asian food. Needless to say, the Panamera competes with the Cayenne for being the most popular Porsche model. And ironically, I have never seen a 911 in this crowd.
Curiously, the Audi A7 is another big favorite with Chinese students. It’s kind of like buying cell phones, right? Some like Apple, others favor HTC, or… Well, it does seem like these cars are getting bought like cell phones, because their owners clearly have no real connection to the heritage of these brands, especially the European ones.
The food was fantastic; the best Chinese in town, which of course explains the clientele. Over dinner, I tried to give Will a sense of how things have evolved.
In the early days of the post-war sports car boom, guys (mostly) bought MGs, Triumphs, Jags, Corvairs and Porsches so that they could actually race them on weekends, even if it was just a course set out on the abandoned airport, or a few miles of country road closed for the occasion. And then drove them to work on Monday morning. There was a reason they called them ‘sports cars’.
If the guys who were spending evenings figuring out how to squeeze a couple more horses out of their engines or get around a corner faster could see how the ‘sports car’ has evolved into a very expensive 200 mph fashion accessory in which to putter around campus, they’d spin in their graves.
When I first saw these appearing on campus, I was a bit sickened. But now I find it humorous; it really is a fitting end to the whole arc of the automotive era, at least as we knew it. If these kids think they’re cool, its because they’re utterly unaware of what is cool in these parts. This is not it.
And then I pulled out my phone and showed Will a picture of an exquisitely patinated ’63 Econoline I had just shot earlier that afternoon. This is cool, I said. Given his automotive proclivities (he’s owned two older Benzes), Will looked at it, paused some, and said; hmm, yeah; that’s pretty cool. Give him a few more years.
It’s not mine!
Audi has been selling cars in china for a very..very long time..So I can’t agree that the Chinese would have “no connection” with European brands.
The bigwigs in the communist party had stretched Audi 100’s.
If they have a problem with brands..it’s more likely Japanese ones.
Because Peugeot/Citroen, VW/Audi have been in China for eons.
But that pink Cayman is hilarious. for me anyway..Not been a big Porsche fan.
at least not of their modern stuff. Last Porsche I can remember liking was the 959
And even then..I’d still take an Audi Quattro over that.
Like this
Hongqi Limo
I probably didn’t say that right. I meant to the sports car origins of cars like the Porsche and such. But then that’s pretty much the reality of most folks under a certain age, regardless of where they live.
My main point is that these cars are not being bought because of their performance potential, but because of the status they confer. And that too is hardly a new thing. obviously.
This is (as you well know) the fate of many a “performance” car in greater LA, as well.
When I was attending grad school at the U of Wisconsin in the ’90s, the wave of wealthy Asian students was largely from Hong Kong, in the run-up to the handover to the PRC and the uncertainty that represented. There were plenty who owned BMWs, Mercedes and Accords, but there were a couple of guys who had NSXs and poked around Madison in a similar way–we learned to recognize them by the tuner-logo stickers they had affixed. I’m sure the current environment there now is much like that in Eugene.
Those evidently well-heeled students could be the scions of Korean chaebols; even Korea has Chinese take-out eateries, as well as Western fast-food chains.
Except that they speak Chinese. I know enough to be able to tell.
The U of Oregon has been very active (and successful) in wooing Chinese students, and a good number of the ones that come are from very wealthy families and don’t want to bother with the very competitive university entrance exams in China.
Is it done to the detriment of locals becoming unable to attend, i.e. are there only so many available spots and each foreign student supplants a potential Oregonian? Or is the University actively growing in step? I’m by no means xenophobic however have seen this occur elsewhere (Cal Berkeley, I’m looking at you…) and making it more and more difficult for Americans (or other local residents) to attend and educate themselves.
Like all public universities, the U of O loves non-resident students, because they pay about 2.5 times as much in tuition. And the UO has a very aggressive recruitment effort in other countries, especially in China, as well as in California.
How to gauge the impact is a bit difficult, because yes, on one hand they do take slots that might theoretically have gone to locals, and it has raised the GPA entrance bar for locals (I have no idea how they judge foreign students other than their ability to pay. Some have very poor English skills, and need lots of hand-holding, or looking the other way. A bit like the athletes).
The other argument is that the money they bring in helps to keep the school afloat in times of limited support from the state. True on the face of it, but in reality, the overwhelming majority of the huge growth in the cost of running colleges and universities is in the obscene growth of administrators and their big salaries. It’s a major peeve of mine. Over the past three decades or so, all college/university teaching staff have grow something like 30 some percent; administrators are up well over 200%. It’s the single biggest reason by far for the huge increase in higher ed costs.
So a healthy number of these administrators are devoted to recruiting and hand-holding foreign students, so that their salaries can be paid.
Like medicine, higher education is a giant industrial complex that wants to feed itself (the administrators) ever more and more. These activities should be a common good; instead its a very huge business. Rant over.
Look at the number of international students stuck in ESL and we can figure where the administrations could grab the profits. If they struggle for that long in ESL, reasonable performance couldn’t be expected in some most basic courses, and how dare they raise the GPA bar for local students while admitting them?
Some state universities are doing way too far ( pointing right at Michigan State ) , as they charge in-state students more than some comparable local private universities, and they charge international students more than double the amount.
University of Oregon’s freshman class last fall was about 48% non-resident (including as Paul, indicates, many students actively recruited from other states as well as international students) while Berkeley’s non-resident population for the same class was about 30%.
I think political fallout has been greater in CA because of decades of raised expectations for an essentially free higher education system, created by the Master Plan in 1960 and no longer viable under current taxation and spending structures in place in the state (K-12, the prison system, health care costs are the top three priorities, with higher ed coming in a distant fourth).
In both instances above and in most pubic universities across the US, the prime motivation in non-resident recruitment is replacement of money not coming out of Salem and Sacramento, etc.
However, in terms of quality, a lot of the international students, especially from China, are very competitive with domestic students, with good grades, test scores, and science and math skills. ESL skills are rapidly rising among younger Chinese. And many of these same students are highly sought at both the undergraduate and graduate levels because of their superior STEM skills, an area that needs serious attention in the US.
UK, continental Europe, and Australia are also in major competition to recruit these same international students so it’s a global higher education market, and a complex and dynamic situation.
As for keeping higher ed costs down, it’s a complicated picture. Ballooning state and federal regulation of higher education has been instrumental in increasing administrative costs. And it is a big business and just as in any other big business, there is a fair amount of bloat and waste – agree.
The only other thing I’d like to add is that there are a lot of Chinese students coming to the US with tuition paid by hardworking parents and in many instances two sets of grandparents – all pooling resources to give their kid the opportunity to study here. The Porsche driving kids are not by any means representative of the whole picture.
And yes, I have many decades of experience in the field of higher education.
There’s been a similar big push at the University of Iowa in recent years to recruit Chinese students, and the same types of cars Paul mentioned are now commonly found on the streets around campus in Iowa City.
My son lived in China for a year. He explained to me that black Audis with a certain license plate prefix were driven by certain officials and were basically exempt from traffic laws, so you had to be very careful around them as a pedestrian. In general though, this college town exotic car phenomenon is foreign to me; I live in a smallish town with a huge university, and own a rental in another town with an even bigger university with many Asian students, and don’t notice this. Most students ride bikes, busses or drive older Hondas or Hyundais, with a minority in older SUVs, BMWs or Mercedes that I presume are hand-me-downs.
The phantom of the old Soviet Zil!
They are both black too.
Is that a Mary Cay-man Cosmetics car?
There went my coffee all over the keyboard!
You too, huh?
Without the backup from depth in knowledge, it could be the best way they end up with, plenty of expensive late models driven by those rich students running around. The variety of cars sold new today is not that rich ( but not bad yet, at least better than British Leyland ) and it appears pale facing to the history. Those wealthy students are doing the same as those European playboys did in the ’30s with less creativities and vision though. ( but coach builders offered more varieties on the other hand ) I do hope their class can improve, so nice specialties can be picked up decades later but I don’t see it happening yet.
In a university mostly for engineering, some wealthy students can be appreciated if their ride has a good blend of styling and class, examples include a Mercedes R107 spotted in Grand River Ave in East Lansing ( around Michigan State ) or a nice Mercedes W123 spotted in Ann Arbor ( around University of Michigan. However it doesn’t guarantee connection with wealth though ) I stay in another university and a red Porsche 944 is probably the best candidate for that in campus.
The red Cadillac is pretty exclusive as one of the few leftover heritage from those playboys.
I wonder if it’s a west coast thing, since they’re physically closer to China perhaps the percentage of students coming from there is higher? Or perhaps Oregon has a particularly high status. When I lived in North Carolina I used to work at NC State University, and while we had a quite a high number of international grad students in engineering, the vast majority were from India and of moderate means. Lots of used Toyotas, if they bothered to own a car at all; most did not. The few interesting or expensive cars on campus were primarily owned by professors, with one notable exception (a student who made a lot of money in the Internet Bubble owned a Lamborghini).
Love that Cadillac. In very much the same vein as my favorite Figoni et Falaschi design, their Delahaye 165M:
Graduate students from overseas are generally a different breed or group than international students who are undergrads.
Traditionally in the old days, almost all the students from China were graduate students and were often sponsored by their organizations or work units. So they lived modestly. Even the self-sponsored ones later on also lived ordinarily.
My guess the students who drive fancy cars are from very affluent families who could afford to send them overseas to study, and wanted to avoid the pressure or high stakes entrance examination for university in China, called the “gaokao”.
My guess the students who drive fancy cars are from very affluent families who could afford to send them overseas to study, and wanted to avoid the pressure or high stakes entrance examination for university in China, called the “gaokao”.
You nailed it. The U of O cultivated these families/students early on, and now enjoys a high prestige factor. Not Ivy League, but those are hard to get into. But very high for public universities.
I agree, graduate students are very different. But on the other hand, I can’t get over with how graduate students enrolled in an engineering university majoring automotive drive Corollas all the time, as I don’t want them end up as bean counters in GM ( we get enough ). Quite many of them in Corollas are international students, while other graduate students in the same major drive Datsun Z cars, Honda S2000, ’70s Eldorado, El Camino and Camaro from ’70s to ’90s on a regular basis.
I hear it happening in CA or west coast pretty often, but in Michigan State University, it could be as bad as that. ( lime-green Lamborghini for example ) It happens more often in universities from bigger cities, and it’s far less frequent in smaller towns, and it would be definitely very inappropriate to show up in a late model Maserati among a sea of ’90s-early ’00s W-Body. On the other hand, some student show up in a Valiant there.
I think Mafia video game series have very excellent choices of cars, and the missed Delahaye was picked by similar themed La Noire ( however the graph fell short and the handling was very ill-designed. )
Could be. I know in Tompkins County there are a number of Asians at the three colleges and a number in Ithaca who moved here after the U.S wars in Asia. Outside of that Asians are not terribly common in the Southern Tier.
Probably it’s my age, but these young people miss a lot by starting out at the high end. When I was a young driver in the late Sixties and early Seventies, cheap and cheerful trumped grand and gaudy. For one thing, you weren’t afraid to take the cheap ones apart. Plus there were the little matters of paying for it, insuring it…
Jusging from the semi-matte finish, I bet the pink Cayman isn’t paint, but actually a wrap. Much easier to change out when the owner’s taste moves on to somthing different.
Not that I have a huge amount of Porsche love, but I sure hope you’re right. The Cayman seems (a little) closer in spirit to the original 911 than the current 911 is (let alone the Panamera).
Wow, in the late 80’s I was jealous of the foreign students who drove new Honda Accords, I see that the effect has increased somewhat in the ensuing 30 years.
Very good father/son interaction there guys. Doing some real work, eating great food and talking about cars
” … guys (mostly) bought MGs, Triumphs, Jags, Corvairs and Porsches …” — and apparently Volvos!
The pink one looks factory. All they need to do is out line the various cuts of meat on it….
It would appear that some really are more equal than others in China. That pink Cayman is something.
The only Panamerica I have actually seen in the metal was parked in Greenwood, Indiana outside of a dollar movie theater. It, uh, kinda stood out.
I live near Silicon Valley and see quite a few Panameras, though they were totally eclipsed in popularity by the Tesla Model S when that came out. But despite the ubiquity of Porsches here, the very first Panamera that I saw as in Shenzhen, China. On my most recent trip to Beijing, where the taxis are Hyundais now, I’d say the most visible makes in approximate order are Hyundai, VW, Buick and Audi. Quite a few Porsches, mostly Cayenne. Non-zero numbers of Rolls-Royce, Ferrari and Lamborghini.
A partner at my firm had one. He eventually sold it, claiming it was not a good commuter car.
I have nothing more to say. It’s a four door Porsche. Like putting blackwalls on a Brougham. Sacrilege.
I’ll never get pink cars .
Every few years I get the chance tp pick one up on the cheap needing engine or tranny repairs but they’re _impossible_ to re sell so I always pass .
There’s loads of 17 year old Chinese kids living alone in mansions here around Los Angeles too ~ seems odd to me but if they get Educated them go off to have good lives , why not ? .
In Beverly Hill , Bel Air etc. I see Persian kids driving their Lambo’s Ferrari’s etc. @ 25 MPH is first gear so the ENTIRE WORLD can hear they have a cool car they don’t know how to drive….
It’s just how kids are .
Nice you can share this time and thought s with your Son ~ me too ! .
-Nate
If the flat pink is a wrap (as seems likely), I suppose it’d make the first point easier to deal with.
All that Cayman needs is a roll of toilet paper, wedged ‘tween bumper and tailgate…
Oddly enough, I find that pink Cayman to be a very good looking car; especially compared to the rather anodyne GT-R. Is it Plasti-dipped, by chance?
The exact same demographic you described was common where I attended college at Suffolk University. A lot of students from the UAE as well with the same nonexistent budget and admittedly poor taste in customization. It pains me to see people ruin cars I’ll never be able to afford.
I don’t know how this plays out in China, but a student from Thailand (again from a wealthy family) could purchase an expensive car for use while in the States, then ship it back when they return home as “household goods”. This dodges the exorbitant import duties on the car, which can then be sold for more than the original cost. I’m not sure if this tax loophole still exists, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
If I had to look at that pink car for any length of time, I think I’d need some Pepto-Bismol. Terrible.
I’m just glad these types of people, who are also everywhere in New York, are buying these cars rather than buying vintage ones and ruining them.
Yes, the limited vision has its own advantages.
Perversely, I don’t mind that pink Cayman at all. Prefer the Econoline, though.
Enough distractions! Let’s focus on getting Will Niedermeyer back into a classic.
The old Benzes are mentioned in the past tense (and no need to tell me why), so what shall be next?
I vote for an Imperial. I could make a claim linking the car’s ornamentation / Austrian heraldry / family ancestry, but CCs need no justification. Buy some now!
Either that or a ’71 LTD. 🙂
That GT-R sure looks dirty for having temp tags, but now I know where to look for GT-Rs, wonder how much they cost?
TC3 also recruits a bunch of folks from overseas and these folk assume all of New York is Skyscrapers so they get a shock when they arrive. One of the locals who lived near TC3 (the type who wear camo) asked a table of Chinese students what their invasion plan was and the shit sure hit the fan. A number of guys from the Middle East are not used to how women live in this country so that also made things interesting when there were clashes of cultures. No fancy cars though unless you count sub-80K dollars luxery cars.
Thanks Paul for the dining tip took wife and youngest son the other night. We completely enjoyed the experience. Norm. ps more of the same cars and people but they enjoyed looking at the 64 mercury Montclair