NOT SO FAST

READY OR NOT, THE VIETNAMESE EV UPSTART PLUNGES INTO THE U.S. MARKET WITH ITS VF8 SUV.

- EZRA DYER

If you're a powerful international conglomerate that wants to sell cars in the U.S., the easiest approach is to buy a company that already does that. Think Tata with Jaguar and Land Rover, Geely with Volvo, or whoever controls Lotus these days. It's much more difficult, and smacks of a certain hubris, to forgo all incumbent brand awareness and institutional knowledge and just start building cars. But if any country loves blithe confidence, it's America, so let's give a warm welcome to the VinFast VF8, the latest answer to the question, "How hard can it be to build a car?"

VinFast which at least 30 percent of the U.S. population will initially hear as "SlimFast" is part of Vingroup Joint Stock Company, otherwise known simply as Vingroup, a sprawling Vietnamese company with interests in hospitality, real estate, education, and plenty more. If you want to know what a given Vingroup company does, the name is usually a clue: Vinhomes, VinUniversity, VinBigData (we shudder to ask what VinBrain does but can probably guess). The VF8, the first model to make it to the U.S., is a two-row, all-wheel-drive crossover-junior to the three-row VF9 but larger than the VF7. If that naming convention sounds so painfully obvious that it doesn't bear explaining, somebody please tell Infiniti to crib some notes.