About the History of Cars in China
Welcome at a special New Year’s Eve edition of China Concept Cars. And we have a very special car. This black beauty is the Geely Fengyin, a concept car that debuted at the 2006 Beijing Auto Show.
Today in China Concept Cars the beautiful Chery A6cc, a coupe that came so close to production we could almost smell it. Here is the car’s ultimately sad story:
In 2005 China’s Nanjing Automobile bought the right to the MG brands, and various assets of the MG Rover Group.
But things were pretty messy in England and the Chinese were somewhat inexperienced. This lead to lots of confusion over what Nanjing Automobile had purchased exactly, and what not. Further complicating matters was Honda, which owned the most of the rights to the design of the Rover 45.
Continue reading “The Original Chinese MG3 & MG5 That Almost Made It To The Market”
Today in Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong (CCPDoG™): Hebei Xinkai Automobile, a Chinese automaker based in the great city of Gaobeidian in Hebei Province.
The company made various cars under the Guangdong scheme, including at least three variants of the Toyota Camry.
Continue reading “Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong: Hebei Xinkai Automobile”
Welcome to the second article on the Shanghai brand. In the previous article I introduced you to the saloon cars and took you through the development of those models. In this article I will cover all the pickup truck models produced under the Shanghai brand, starting with the reasoning behind creating these models and going on through the development stages to the models that went on sale.
Recently we got a lot more questions about how the model designation system for cars made in China works. Today we will give you an overview of the three systems that have been used over the years.
The Shanghai brand is one that has always fascinated me. Growing up in Shanghai certainly helped fuel my curiosity but I was never really able to understand the evolution of the brand and when different models were sold, particularly in later years. Searching online I also found that an accurate account of the development of the brand is hard to find, even finding accurate production dates for the models in one place is a challenge. So I decided to create my own articles on the Shanghai brand, starting with the saloon cars and in future articles focusing on the pickup and station wagon variants. Many thanks to Erik for his help with this series of articles.
This is part 2 of the story of Thunder Sky and their experimental electric vehicles, part 1 can be found here. In my last article I introduced Thunder Sky and gave you an overview of their early history as well as details on their vehicles prior to 2007. In this article I will introduce you to the cars they made after 2007 and also go into detail on their interesting relationships with companies such as FAW, Krystal and MVP RV’s. I won’t go into detail on some of Thunder Sky’s other ventures but it would be an understatement to say that they’ve been involved in just about everything! Winston Chung has been recognized for his work by the United Nations and Thunder Sky donated 10 million dollars to University of California Riverside to establish a research center named ‘Winston Chung Global Energy Center’, produced LiYPO4 battery packs (using 1000AH battery cells) and also helped install the batteries in buildings. All very cool stuff but not really car related and so I won’t be covering it all in my article because it doesn’t really relate to vehicles. For more details please search on Thunder Sky’s website www.thundersky-winston.com.
Not content with the physical labour people offered to transport others: the rickshaw and the pedicab, the Chinese authorities stimulated in the 1950s the development of minicars, to be used as taxicabs. The Automobile and Tractor Department of the Qinghua (Tsinghua) University in Beijing developed in the years 1958-61 a whole series of them, I counted 5 different models with 11 different versions which I will introduce here. Qinghua worked together with the Beijing Second Repair Works.
Continue reading “Minicars made by the Qinghua University in Beijing.”
Back in 2006 Iranian automaker Iran Khodro (IKCO) tried, and failed, to get into the Chinese car market. They went into China in two ways: with a localized version of the Samand Soren sedan, and with the Peugeot 206 SD sedan.
Continue reading “How Iran Khodro Tried, and Failed, To Get Into China”