The Hongqi CA770 Station Wagons From China

Many  versions (like parade cars, smaller versions, lwb etc.) are based on the ‘da Hongqi’, the basic CA770 Red Flag limousine. They were made by the  FAW factory itself or by local car refit shops.

I will show you here four different ‘station wagons’. Well, in fact they are a so-called ‘engineering vehicle’, an ambulance, station wagon and a hearse.

Let’s start with the ‘engineering vehicle‘, sometimes referred to as CA770L. According some info this car was used by the Petroleum Reconnaissance Department, before it ended up in the Harbin Century History Museum, where you can see the car today. In 2012 the car was restored and repainted in a deep blue. More about Chinese car museums you can find here. It seems that the Petroleum Department had two of these vehicles. I guess it is a conversion made on the base of a limousine. In technical details the car is quite the same as the standard CA770 limo, only 16cm longer. It is made in the late 70s or early 80s.

Next here the ambulance, a white beauty made by the FAW factory itself. Especially for the Beijing Union Medical College, developed between June and August 1980.

The official registration was CA770W.

I got this picture with the Beijing 01-58723 from my good friend Zhang Qiang, a famous car collector from Beijing. I am not sure if this is the same CA770W or a second ambulance. Note the differences, the flashing light on the roof, the siren, the square roadsight lamps, the flagpole.

The photo of the third car is also thanks to Zhang Qiang, this is the
31-42466 station wagon, it has the same bodywork as the CA770W. Nothing is known about this vehicle.

And number four: the strangest as we have no photo of the car, only drawings.

What you see here is part of a room wall filling drawing which I first saw in the house in Changchun of the late mr. Lv Yanbin, one of the Hongqi designers. He made this famous drawing, showing all the Hongqi’s made between 1958 and 2000, right in the middle is the hearse. This ‘x-ray’ picture shows the cooling system of the car. The car was developed in 1977 to be stored underneath the Chairman Mao Mausoleum on Tian’anmen, to be used to take care of Mao’s body in case the Soviets were invading China or dropped an atomic bomb on Beijing.

There is some confusion around this car. First, the name: ‘The first engineering car’. This name was used to cover the project. This name gives confusion with the engineering vehicle I just showed you in the start of this article.

The main difference between the ‘engineering vehicle’ from the beginning of this article and the hearse is the rear doors.

As the present day status of the car is unknown, there are rumours that it is still  stored underneath the Mausoleum. So last year I decided to write a letter to president Xin Jingping (including with the letter my Hongqi documentary), with the request to see the car and possible other old vehicles which are stored in the Mausoleum or in the Zhongnanhai workshops. Still waiting for an answer..

This is it for the moment. Comments are very welcome!