I don’t know of a more delicate way to put it: The Shelby-tuned version of the Chinese Great Wall Cannon pickup has an Xbox controller for a grille.
The truck itself is an interesting one. It comes from a company called Great Wall, which is fair to describe as the most prominent domestic pickup truck manufacturer in China. Great Wall also has a few sub-brands, including the EV/compact car Ora, which makes adorable designs that sometimes look like Smarts and sometimes look like overgrown VW Bugs.
This pickup from Great Wall itself is called the Cannon and is in the sort of style of a Chevy Colorado or Ford Ranger. This one is part of a partnership with Shelby, as car writer Greg Kable reported in April.
With the Shanghai Motor Show just a few days away, it’s no surprise that Great Wall showed off the truck’s face in full.
A lot has been done to the truck, but it’s the visual styling that stands out, as Autohome.com.cn reports. Pardon the Google Translate on this one:
As a special-edition model, the Dragon Ball Cannon basically adopts a brand-new front shape, and the visual effect is quite dynamic. Specifically, the new car’s front grille has fangs, with a competitive-style front bumper and a raised bonnet with a diversion opening. The visual effect is outstanding. At the same time, the racing stripes extending from the front bumper to the rear along the engine cover greatly enhance the sense of competition on the basis of the original model.
I myself am overjoyed that car styling has gone through so many trends and permutations that we are returning to comically shaped grilles. Maybe the days of dogbone-faced Ford Escorts are coming back.