by ZachC

 

Awhile back I did a side by side comparison of two coupe paintjobs. One was an original design, the other was, shall we say… a very close duplicate. I left it up to my readers to make up their own minds as to whether anything more sinister was involved. I’ve decided to do this once again today.

The comparison will be between the M:Core GoldenBrown by Mullachops from back in May of 2007 and the Blue Devil by Elizzle. Neither is in auctions at this time, but the Blue Devil has been relisted several times since its introduction. I’ve checked the dds files and the similarities are even more evident there. I can’t publish those here because that would be “mining” the files, and also someone would inevitably decide to submit one or the other… or even both. People with no interest in learning how to do their own work but want to “design” will stoop to anything.

Let’s start at the front end. The headlights are 100% identical, as are the leading hood scoops and the ones directly in front of the windshields. It’s hard to tell from the images due to the darkness of the Blue Devil, but the front intakes are also identical.

Moving to the side, what’s most obvious is the rims. Once again, other than color, they’re 100% identical. Normally if two people were to find the same rims on the web and use them, they’d be slightly different sizes. Using the dds files, I was able to verify that they are exactly the same size. They match up perfectly, pixel for pixel. The scoops on the side of the Blue Devil are not seen on the GoldenBrown. Interestingly enough it appears those may have come from a ZMW buggy. I’ll be looking into that further very soon. You can also see from this view that the roll bars are identical as well.

From the rear end, the similarities are somewhat obscured in these images due to the dark coloring of the Blue Devil. I’ve marked a few of them on the image itself, like the scoops and the tire treads. The bezel around the tail lights is also identical, as are the tail lights themselves.

Moving to the interior, the Blue Devil uses a different seat. The dashes on the other hand are once again identical other than some added caution stripes on the Blue Devil and the writing proclaiming Elizzle Designs. If you are able to do your own comparison you’ll also see that the floors are exactly the same, as are the interior side panels.  In this view you can also see the headlight bezels. Those too are 100% identical.

Some items are difficult to present in this format, but I did look and found that the undercarriages are almost identical. It appears that the Blue Devil uses dual exhaust while the GoldenBrown doesn’t. The pipes are otherwise identical as are the rest of the under body details like louvers, vents and even the shading on the underside of the fenders at the top of the wheel wells.

The M:Core buggies have been around for a long time and Mullachops has created many of them. The Blue Devil, as far as I can tell, is the only one ever created by Elizzle. Judging from the numbers in the dds files, it was created after the GoldenBrown.

I did email both designers regarding these buggies. Mullachops advised that he has indeed reported this buggy for texture theft. As of this writing I have no idea what the outcome of that is. Elizzle advised me that he had purchased this design from a friend and submitted it. He went on to state that he paid good money for the design and he wouldn’t pull it; he’d take his chances with There staff.

Does any of what we’ve seen here constitute using someone else’s work and calling it your own? I’ll leave that conclusion up to my readers. If you want check these buggies out for yourselves, there’s a GoldenBrown currently listed as a resale in the auction. The Blue Devil hasn’t been relisted.