Shanghai Maple Hisoon Sports

The irony of Chinese automakers being called out for copying existing designs is that, well, in some areas I'm not sure there was much of a choice but to assemble cars from a grab bag of parts.

Without getting too far into that government's influence on its domestic auto industry—or how foreign brands have long taken advantage of China's production capacity, exporting the best and leaving scraps behind—can we agree that late-model Chinese cars are some of the world's strangest, most endangered metal?

Shanghai Maple Guorun Automobile Co., Ltd. (SMA) was eventually a Geely sub-brand that produced the Hisoon Sports from 2005-2009, but the car didn't originally debut in 2005.

From 1999 to about 2008, SMA operated largely of its own accord, including by grafting what look like Honda Accord headlights onto versions of this very car. Geely acquired SMA that year, and phased it out in 2010.

The Hisoon Sports? It survived until the bitter end. Judging by the surviving fleet of Hisoon cars, this is a critically endangered hunk of crap.

Yeah, I said it.

Squint and look closely: that's a knockoff Citroën ZX hatchback body shell. And sixth-generation Honda Civic taillights. Headlights? I'm not sure where they're from. Inside, same story. The parts bin evolved into a whole car.

In fact, this car's history is so confusing that I'm keeping things intentionally broad. Not only was the initial design severely limited by where its components were sourced from, individual styling elements, from bumper to bumper, changed depending on year, body style, and options.