One of the intriguing mysteries of China’s car history is the missing CA70.
In the mid-1950s First Auto Works (FAW) started truck production and the development of a complete automobile production program. The first products were the CA10 truck, a CA30 cross-country truck, a CA40 dumper truck, a CA50 truck tractor, a CA80 agricultural truck.
And a CA71 car. The CA71 car is the Dongfeng which is beautifully described by my colleague Tycho in a recent article. Soon followed by the bigger Hongqi CA72.
That gives a mystery, as which car was the CA70?
There are two possible explanations, one is given by my Chinese friends. They told me that CA7 was the designation for the car series and that the Dongfeng was the first CA7 car (so CA7.1= CA71) and the Hongqi the second (CA7.2 = CA72). Sounds logical. But also illogical, when you take into account that after the CA10 a CA11 prototype was shown. Why not CA1.1 and CA1.2, and why here starting with CA1.0?
The other explanation is that there was a car before the CA71. For this opinion we have three options: in 1957 a strange sporty two-seater was developed, named Feiche.
We have only one photo of this project, and you can’t find it back in the contemporary press. It is not really a car like the Dongfeng and the Hongqi, it is more a one-off sports car experiment. The car was shown to Bo Yibo at November 7, 1957.
The second option is the clay model which preceded the Dongfeng. This clay model was developed from December 1957 till April 1958.
It was also based on the Simca Vedette but it had a full width horizontal grill. We show you in this article the four pictures we have. The car had even a license plate: ‘1*04954’.
The third option is speculation. Was there a real car before the Dongfeng CA71? Maybe a prototype, we missed until today, based on the ‘1*04954’ clay model, named CA70?
We don’t know. As I wrote in Questions, questions, questions “Of course, I always hope someone comes up with something that gives an answer to one of these questions”. Have you any idea?
More about the Dongfeng’s and Hongqi’s in my book “Hongqi, the history of a Chinese limousine”, after this summer not only available in English but also in Chinese.
[…] The Dongfeng clay model!! Described here. […]