This is the Fenghuang, the Chinese Phoenix. He is different from the Western Phoenix, the bird that rises from its ashes. The Fenghuang is the chief of all birds. Originally the Feng part of Fenghuang was the male, the Huang the female, nowadays the bird is regarded as feminin. The Fenghuang is multi-colored; black, white, red, yellow and green.
In the car world hood ornaments were very popular till the 1970s, when pedestrian and cyclist safety started to be more and more important.
Different makes had their own ornament, like the lion of the Peugeot, the Spirit of Ecstasy of the Rolls Royce, the jaguar of the Jaguar and the deer of the GAZ Volga M21.
The Fenghuang ornament was in use on Fenghuang cars. It is not easy to find good photos to show you the several ornaments which have been used on the Fenghuangs.
We start with the 1958 Fenghuang prototype.
Ivan Kolev made a drawing of the Fenghuang ornament:
Fenghuang replica, Shanghai History Museum.
There are several replica’s made of this first prototype.
In 1959 a second prototype appeared.
Then a special one with a superb grille. It has already the basic look of the Shanghai SH760.
And finally the production version, only in detail different of the Shanghai SH760.
It seems that there have been several different ornaments. For the drawings and the replica’s people had a lot of fantasy. It is difficult to see how the ornaments in reality must have looked.
When the Fenghuang was updated and became the Shanghai SH760 in 1964, the ornament disappeared and the emblem became bigger.
More about the Shanghai vehicles here.
Not only the Shanghai vehicles had an ornament. The Beijing made Dongfanghong BJ760 prototype (1960, 01-03264) was originally named Xinghuo 760 (Meteor or Spark). The first car was bearing an ornament, I suppose it is a kind of rocket thing (?). It was missing at the production models of the Dongfanghong.
The first Beijing BJ750 (1973) had an ornament which looks like the logo of the Beijing Auto Works (?).
Of course we all know the red flags placed on the Hongqi series.
The car which came before the Hongqi’s, the Dongfeng CA71 (1958), had the nick name Jinlong, golden dragon, because of the dragon ornament.
Though the car was nick named “Jin Long” = Golden dragon, it seems that the dragon on the prototype was silver coloured, not gold.
The Heping (1958) made in Tianjin had a kind of bird or airplane as ornament. The second model showed the same ornament.
The Hongyuzhuan, made by professors and students of the Tianjin University showed a similar ornament.
The last car we show you is the Jiaotong from Shanghai.
This unknown 1959 prototype showed, according Ivan Kolev who made a beautiful drawing of the car “on the front hood were putted two pigeons and on the grille were two golden dragons dispalyed with luminous eyes.”
Thank you for the new post Erik!