Conspicuous consumption may not be a dirty word in neo-capitalist China anymore, but there are limits. And recently the denizens of the People's Republic have been getting a bit miffed at the profligate spending of local government.
So, in an attempt to avoid the ire of the local citizenry, the police in the city of Fengchenggang in Guangxi Province sprinkled their Mercedes ML350 (worth 900,000 yuan or £87k) with Honda badging so as to make it look like a humble Honda CR-V (worth 200,000 yuan, or around £19k).
Inevitably, the ruse did not work, and China Car Times reports that the car - and police department - have been roundly (and rightly) abused on the net by car-savvy members of the public.
Bizarrely, it seems that the Fengchenggang police flatly denied that they'd made any changes to the car (though we admit that this is not quite the same thing as continuing to call it a Honda CR-V...).
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