Quote:
Originally Posted by clee1982
Can someone tell me where does this large grill, illuminated grill Chinese thing come from?
I haven't spend that much time in mainland China in the last few years, but used to be quite a bit, don't ever remember that being a thing if i didn't hear this Chinese theory I would have guessed it's Cali car culture influenced (illumination)...
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First off, I think a lot of people tend to just blame Chinese people for a lot of things. However, living in Southern California in an area with a lot of rich Chinese immigrants (very recent immigrants), I can attest to the fact that they like to modify their cars in a way that would be considered "ricey" or gaudy. If you see a base model X5 (or even a with the tri-color grille slats, M Performance decal on the rockers, or some fake M badging, there's a >80% chance it's a recent Chinese immigrant.
I personally don't have a problem with these, though I will chuckle to myself sometimes. It's their car, they can do what they want. I like a clean stock+ look, but to each their own. It makes things a bit more interesting.
I've also seen some of those Mercedes with illuminated tri-star badges and they look absolutely terrible. I can't believe they are an OEM option as they are lit unevenly and are very very cheap looking. Seems like BMW is just following suit here. I will say the BMW method of backlighting the grille might look much better than simply lighting up the badge like in the MB. However, I really hope my wife doesn't option her future X5 like that (if that's even possible in the future).