John Welsh said:Get em while you can...
Judge rules Mahindra Roxor looks too Jeep-like
https://news.yahoo.com/judge-rules-mahindra-roxor-looks-151300187.html
That is funny. Built under license at the time because Jeep, and years later looks too much like a Jeep.
noddaz said:John Welsh said:Get em while you can...
Judge rules Mahindra Roxor looks too Jeep-like
https://news.yahoo.com/judge-rules-mahindra-roxor-looks-151300187.html
That is funny. Built under license at the time because Jeep, and years later looks too much like a Jeep.
While "history is not without a sense of irony", I also have a feeling that Jeep licensed Mahindra to build them for the Indian market, and they were allowed to continue building them afterwards because, well, different market.
But as has been pointed out, if you don't show some attempt to protect your IP, that can be seen as abandoning it. And then it's a free-for-all.
In reply to Knurled. :
Wow, that is a very un-dick-ish letter from the attorney. Even offers to help pay for the changes.
yeah normally its a stop what you are doing and give us big $$$$$$
if I drank I would change to Jack Daniels :)
John Welsh said:In reply to Knurled. :
Wow, that is a very un-dick-ish letter from the attorney. Even offers to help pay for the changes.
I was astonished as well. Normally it’s “Cease and Desist or we will drag you through the hot coals”
John Welsh said:In reply to Knurled. :
Wow, that is a very un-dick-ish letter from the attorney. Even offers to help pay for the changes.
my guess is that the JD attorney knows that it's a tenuous case if it actually went to court, due to the the cover clearly being somewhat of a parody, which is generally accepted as *not* trademark infringement (assuming the book isn't about bourbon). I'm not a lawyer, but that's my understanding of trademark law. Seems like JD is looking to make a compromise beneficial to both parties and not start a war that they conceivably could lose (and which would garner plenty of bad publicity for them). Just a guess, could be totally wrong :)
The Mahindra clearly isn't a parody of a jeep though haha....
FWIW, a lot of articles have been written about it. Search for "nicest cease and desist" and you'll get a bazillion hits.
Duke said:...it's crazy to think of paying $15,000 for something that is not a truck, and will never be road legal (or even weathertight), when you can just buy a $5,000 beater pickup truck instead.
x1,000
In reply to ebonyandivory :
There will be niche markets or clients with enough cash that the Roxor serves. I agree that I would rather have a $8k Ford Ranger over a $8k Kei Truck but they still seem to import a lot of those Kei trucks to the US.
John Welsh said:Last night I spent more than an hour watching Roxor videos on youtube. Pretty interesting. Not exactly cheap as new but I can see where these are going to be really popular as the get older and cheaper. As such, I don't think they will really get that cheap. I suspect they will have a pretty rabid cult following. Furthermore, it is possible that these could get yanked off the US market. If they do that will make the cult following even more rabid and then the 'rareness" will keep the prices up even higher.
I can see for the right application that these could be really fun. One example is markets and communities that allow golf carts and SxS's to be on the roads. Another example is in some places like Michigan, SxS's are allowed on State Run snowmobile trails but full "Jeeps" and "road vehicles" are not. This means you can then take the Roxor to places that a CJ2 is not allowed.
I expect we will see some people towing their $17k Roxor to the off-road park with their $60k Jeep Gladiator. Its a lot more palatable to bash the rockers and fenders of the $17k than the $60k. And, when you do dent the fender of the Roxor the side airbags don't activate!
Here in UT all sorts of things are road legal, including these, on roads <55mph. Local power sports place had one on the lot for a couple months. Didn't seem anyone wanted it. Then they did. I see one at least every week. Now that dealer probably has 30. I'll be interested to see what impact this has on my local market. Granted this area is probably one of the most off-road-iest places there is outside of Moab.
ebonyandivory said:Duke said:...it's crazy to think of paying $15,000 for something that is not a truck, and will never be road legal (or even weathertight), when you can just buy a $5,000 beater pickup truck instead.
x1,000
Ah yes the old why buy a new xxxx as for half the money you can buy a used yyyy with all these mods on that can outperform it. There's good reasons for buying new with a warranty rather than beat to E36 M3 pos.
True- but here it also depends on legality. The Roxor could not be taken legally on most city roads no matter how nice and new it is.
We can get away with side-by-sides for use on roads in Michigan. I'd still be in the "used 4x4" camp before I'd buy buy a$15K offroader, but that's just my preference.
Windshield, wipers, & turn signals.. & its legal here in Tn. Sadly, from what ive been hearing from legal folks... its probable that the ROXOR's days are numbered here stateside, (maybe the new 2020 grill will help...now its a FJ-40 lookalike... or maybe old 1960's Japanese toy robot//)thanks to , well, mainly FixItAgainTony lawyers. NEVER did i think that JEEP would be owned by FIAT... Sad.. You'd think, that if they were worried about it SO MUCH... they'd just build a "CJ2" for off road. Get into UTV's themselves.
Here's an update on Jalopnik with a response from Mahindra.
https://jalopnik.com/mahindra-fires-back-at-fca-and-media-reports-about-the-1840154728
Sorry FCA, but I'm on Mahindra's side here. You haven't made anything that looks remotely like this for over 30 years, yet Mahindra have been building something that looks like this continuously for over 70 years. They purposely have a grille that doesn't look like the classic (Ford, not Willys designed) seven bar grill and it's not sold as a street vehicle. Get over it FCA, you don't deserve to win this.
In reply to teckserve :
Given Jeep's history, I assume that even Suzuki will own it at some point. It's the cheap ham radio of the automotive world.
What would be funny is if Mahindra bought Jeep...
In reply to Knurled. :
That may have been on the cards 30 yearsa ago, but right now FCA without Jeep is called 'a liquidation of assets'
In reply to Adrian_Thompson :
Isn't that the normal reason Jeep gets sold to someone else?
I'm not thinking it's a curse on Jeep. I'm thinking more it may be a case of struggling-but-not-badly company buys Jeep's parent company on the strength of the Jeep name, and then... what? No more ideas other than "Buy Jeep and watch money roll in", and fail out of complacency?
There's a pattern, and I'm wondering what the root cause is.
In reply to Adrian_Thompson :
Just for the record , Ford built Willys licensed GP's during the war.. The oiginal Ford had a similar grille but was beat out by Willys because they had more power.
iceracer said:In reply to Adrian_Thompson :
Just for the record , Ford built Willys licensed GP's during the war.. The oiginal Ford had a similar grille but was beat out by Willys because they had more power.
Then Ford built the Willys under licence and added the 7 bar grill, all though originally it was 7 bars.
The Jeep brand has been a valued commodity forever - Kaiser bought Willys in the 1950s, AMC bought Kaiser in the 1970s, Chrysler bought AMC in the 1980s, Daimler bought Chrysler in the 1990s, Cerberus bought Chrysler from Daimler in the 2000s, and of course they're part of Fiat today. The Jeep brand was the most important part of the deal each time. The point is, they're going to protect their brand identity, even if it's related to a design they stopped using 60 years ago.
It's similar to how GM still holds all the rights to Oldsmobile and Pontiac even though those brands are long dead - they don't want someone else using them.
In reply to stuart in mn :
Don't forget Renault!
I dunno. I think FCA has a strong argument. I look at the Roxor and I only think Jeep. I showed it to my wife, who knows nothing about Jeeps, just showing her the picture I asked "what do you think of it". She responded with "Why do you need a Wrangler?"
Ultimately I think the best thing for BOTH parties involved would be to enter a licensing agreement for the US for a specific amount of time and market them as an actual JEEP.
In the latest installment of this saga, FTC sides with Fiat/Chrysler and bans the sale of Roxor in the US.
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mahindra-roxor-imports-blocked-fiat-chrysler-legal-dispute/
Maybe they need to make an "X" front grill , or something like that ,
probably too late now to make a deal.....
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