In a magazine called China Auto Pictorial from 2001 there was an article about the cars made by mr. Wang Huan from Huairou. It was my friend Robert Jablonski who gave me the magazine.
Mr. Wang Huan made his own cars.
China Concept Cars: Chery Faira Times Seven
Today in China Concept Cars the Chery Faira, a series of seven concept cars unveiled at the 2008 Beijing Auto Show. At the time, the Chinese automotive industry had just started its boom which is still getting stronger today. At auto shows in the mid-2000s, Chinese car brands sometimes unveiled up to 20 concept cars at one show, each! Chery was definitely in on the party.
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Lanjian mini sedan from Qujing, Yunnan province.
I don´t know how, but suddenly a batch of photos for sale showed up on Wechat. The origin was the Traffic Bureau of Qujing City, the photos were originally from the small blue car registration books. Among these automobiles was an unknown sedan.
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The last Citroën Visa´s.
A hall with the last Visa’s, 1997. I counted about 25 vehicles in this hall. The photos are made by Dorus Aarts., who gave me 16 pictures of the last ever made Citroën Visa’s, stored in a hall.
Not made in a Citroën factory in France, Spain or Portugal. But assembled in China, the pictures show the Wuling LZW7100 in Liuzhou city, Guangxi province.
The Santana-look alike minicars of the 1990s.
One of the interesting periods of the Chinese automotive development were the 1990s; private car ownership was exploding and there were many companies who jumped into this market to make small family cars.
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The Volkswagen Group China And The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
Volkswagen Group China was the official automotive partner of the Beijing Olympic Games. The theme of the cooperation was “Enjoy the Olympic Journey with Volkswagen”.
This partnership was mainly about providing vehicles to the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee: 4.350 Volkswagens, 650 Skodas, and 1.000 Audi-brand cars. Volkswagen Group China reportedly paid US$150 million for the pleasure of providing the vehicles, outbidding Hyundai China.
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Some more 1950s minicars from Shanghai.
The secondhand book and photo website Kongfz.com is a wonderful source of old carbooks and photos. Recently a series of 10 photos of Haiyan minicars made in Shanghai appeared and your author took the chance to buy the photos. Here a preview.
This is a closed version of the Haiyan 730 Second model convertible of 1959. Probably there was only one prototype. Note the small track width of the rear wheels.
The Tianjin jeeps again.
Tianjin jeep, ´Qiche he Gonglu´ magazine 1951-10.
More photos of the 1951 jeep.
China’s Obsession With Long-wheelbase Cars and My Obsession With Chinese Long-wheelbase cars
Today, we take a deep dive into China’s obsession with long-wheelbase variants of existing cars. Get some beer and chips because this will be a long (L) story. To be clear, his story is about LWB versions of existing cars developed for the Chinese car market. It is impossible to include every L car, for example, Audi has made 3 generations of the A6 L. So I have tried to limit myself to the most important vehicles. It is not about other China-only cars that happen to have a long wheelbase too and happen to have an L in their name, like the Audi A7L or the Ford Edge L. Chinese manufacturers sometimes use L-naming for luxury variants of cars, without any changes to the wheelbase. These cars are excluded from this article as well.
Zhonghua plastic cars from Beijing.
After his stay in the USA, Tang Jinsheng came back in 1992 and planned to restart the Zhonghua project, after the Guangdong failure.