I spent the last week in Hanoi and northern Vietnam for work. It's an overall amazing place full of vibrance, history, and places to see, but I thought you guys would be interested in some of the Asia-market vehicles there. A few things of note:
1. The preferred mode of transport there is scooters - almost all Hondas - since parking in the city is tough for cars. Scooters are used for everything from hauling equipment (saw a guy carrying two jackhammers on one) to entire families (saw many with 2 parents and 2 kids on them). Motorcycles are there, but not all that common. Seems like only the "ballers" have them, especially crotch-rockets which would suck to maneuver in the city.
2. There are, however, plenty of cars and pickups/SUVs. Almost all of which are non-US models. The most common cars are small Kias, Corollas, and stuff like that. There are a bunch of neat trucks though. Curiously, almost none of the cars are older than about 10 years. No old junky stuff around - in fact the only 80s cars I saw at all were driven by government officials - things like Toyota Coronas and other 80s luxury cars.
3. Traffic is organized chaos. Stoplights are optional and it's law of gross tonnage to some degree. But everything on the road defers to each other coming from multiple directions, except buses. They won't stop since they have no room to maneuver. Interestingly, though, in a week there walking aroudn the city I saw exactly ZERO accidents or even any contact between vehicles. I see several every day here in DC where we actually "have laws."
4. Not surprisingly, almost everything is diesel, though seems like hybrids are getting popular as well.
Anyhow, here's some stuff:
Land Cruiser Prado is pretty popular here, both the J120 and J150 chassis..basically just a Lexus GX460/470 here, but not as luxed-out.
The new Ford Rangers are everywhere, in many different variants (diesel, gas, different door and bed configurations, etc). Definitely the go-to pickup in the city.
Probably my favorite is the Ford Everest, which is a Aussie designed/built Ford a bit bigger than the old Explorer, with leaf-spring and solid-axle rear. They look nice and seemed like a popular design there. I think it's based on the Ranger, but not sure.
As noted, most of the compacts there are Corollas, but occasionally saw Honda City, which I think is smaller than a Civic
And yeah, there are high-end supercars here too. How you could drive a Lambo in this crowded city though...even have to park them on the sidewalk
Mitsubishi Pajero
The one and only VW I saw there in a week was a new Scirocco at my hotel
Toyota Hilux...not all that common but saw some around
There is an odd Mazda pickup called the BT-50 that aws pretty common...seems like it shares a platform with the Ranger and Everest
And this fugly Mitsubishi Triton, plenty of them around
Old Nissan Bluebird
IDk what this Toyota even was...
Another common sight was the Toyota Fortuner, which is another Aussie-designed one I think, based on the Hilux. I was digging these
Peugeot 508 - only a few Peugeots there
Nissan Navara Calibres were around, looks to be a rebadged Frontier
The new Navara may be different though
I forget what this is called, but I think it's a rebadged Fit
This was some weird Chevy. Not much Chevy here, though I did see a number of Cruizes...
Nissan X-Trail (not an XTerra)
Other than Corollas, Kias were pretty popular
especially the "Morning" SI version
an old Russian motorcycle, one of the few vintage vehicles I saw..
Mercedes vans were used at our hotel..
Also saw a lot of the current-generation Suzuki Swift, which is pretty neat
Well, there were more, but that's what I grabbed off my camera. Hope you enjoyed :)
