Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF): Hainan Haisheng Auto, a brand based in the great city of Haikou in sunny Hainan province. They used the English brand name Hiseng, without the ‘H’. From the late 1990’s to the mid 2000’s they made a series of pickup trucks, legally-licensed Mitsubishi Pajero’s, semi-legal Suzuki Vitara’s, and much more.
The characters read ‘Haisheng Auto’. Their logo was a golden oval with a cross. Designations were: HKG (main), HKQ, HWQ, and HS.
Haisheng Auto was part of the larger Haisheng Group. The group was a typical product of the 1990’s with operations in all sorts of businesses that didn’t have much connection to each other. Haisheng Group was involved in: automobile industry (cars and car parts), IT, infrastructure construction, petrol-chemical, international trade, tourism, hotels, transportation, education, fishery, and high-efficiency agriculture.
In 2001, the group claimed to own “ten-plus” holding companies and stock-sharing companies. Their offices and production areas made for a total area of 16,800 square meters. Invested capital was 500 million yuan.
For their car business, the group said it had a capacity in 2001 of 20.000 vehicles. They intended to raise that to 30.000 in the near future. The company had four automobile production lines. Their welding production line, coating production line, final assembly production line and safety inspection line were up to “international advanced level”.
For this article I will use the Haisheng name as it seems more common than the Hiseng name.
Haisheng HKG1021
The company’s first modern car was the Hisheng HKG1021, a nice looking double-cab pickup truck typical for its time. It has steel wheels, speedy stickers on the sides, and a small bull bar above the bumper.
A promotional parade near the factory, with four HKG1021’s visible. The lead car has a speaker on the roof and a platform on the back.
The lead car and several more pickup trucks in front of the factory office building.
HKG5020XZH ‘Pajero’
The Pajero had a Hisheng badge on the front fender and a Hisheng logo on the grille.
Haisheng Auto had an official deal with Mitsubishi for the production of the second generation Mitsubishi Pajero and Mitsubishi Montero. These two cars were registered with the Chinese government and are included in all period car-production catalogues. The Pajero was designated HGK5020XZH and the Montero HKGXZHY. Both the Pajero and the Montero were available with a 2.6 liter four-cylinder petrol engine and with the famous ‘6G72’ 3.0 liter V6 petrol engine.
The Haisheng Pajero always had the raised roof and a standard bull bar.
Another factory photo, with a Pajero fitted with a blue factory plate.
HKG5020XZHY ‘Montero’
This is the Montero. It has the full designation on the front fender, something that was common at the time on commercial vehicles and buses, but not on passenger cars. Here the brand name is written as Hiseng, without the ‘H’, as in the English name.
The Montero came standard with two-tone paint, a bull bar, side bars, and a roof rack.
Haisheng ‘Vitara’
Haisheng Auto also made the first generation Suzuki Vitara. But unlike the Pajero/Montero the Vitara was not officially registered with the Chinese government. So factually it was an illegal car, produced under a project comparable with the Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong (CCPDoG) scheme.
Under this semi-legal scheme, foreign automakers and car traders would ship in complete knock-down (CKD) kits for local production in China. But the kits were like a car without wheels and such, so there basically wasn’t any real local production. In this way, the involved companies were able to get around the strict rules for joint ventures and local-part sourcing set by the central government in Beijing.
Most of this ‘production’ happened in Guangdong province, but some was in other provinces, including Hainan, which was also famous for car smuggling, but that’s something for another story.
Considering the relatively large number of Vitara’s it is very likely that Suzuki itself was involved in the production of the Vitara at Haisheng. But since the whole scheme was legally misty, to say the least, foreign automakers rarely officially confirmed their involvement.
The above image shows a Pajero on the left and then a long line of Vitara’s in yellow, red, and blue gray.
White and red Vitara’s with two Vitara chassis’on the foreground. The first-generation Vitara had a body-on-frame chassis. Haisheng only produced the 3-door hardtop version.
The company had plans to produce the second-generation Vitara, in 3 and 5-door forms, but nothing came of it.
A pretty picture of the factory gate with HKG1021’s and Vitara’s.
Honda Civic
An interesting picture from inside the factory. On the left a Pajero, on the right a Vitara. And in the middle a…
… 6th generation Honda Civic. This car was ‘manufactured’ by many CCPDoG companies, so I suspect Haisheng Auto made it too.
SsangYong Rexton and Daewoo Matiz
A photo showing a Huanghai Aurora SUV and a second generation Daewoo Matiz (2001-2005) in front of a factory building. It is unsure what the Huanghai was doing there, perhaps Huanghai and Haisheng had plans to cooperate.
The Matiz is interesting. At the time, Korean automakers were almost desperately looking for an entry into China. They tied up with several Chinese automakers. SsangYong for example, licensed the Musso to Dadi Auto.
The Matiz got the destination HS6350, and, according to the factory leaflet, it was electric. The original Matiz was never sold as an EV, so that was a first. The electric motor had 37.5 kw and 68.8 Nm, good for a 60 km/h top speed. Production was set to start in 2004. Sadly, it didn’t happen.
And those were the cars made by Haisheng Auto. The car making business ended sometime around 2002. The Haisheng Group went to many restructurings and takeovers, not uncommon for this kind of conglomerates in the early 2000’s. As far as I can see, some parts of the company were sold off to the HNA Group, best known for Hainan Airlines, and the petrol-chemical business was sold to a Shandong-based oil company called Shengli Oil Field Haisheng Industry.
Sources: the old Haisheng website, old books and catalogues, and the incredible archive of my colleague Erik.
This was a fun read!
That isn’t a Ssangyong Rexton in the image, but instead one of the various Chinese models that copied its main styling elements, such as the Huanghai Aurora. The front door with its chunky squared-off window and doorhandles with the big pillar gap to the rear passenger door/window in a similarly squared-off style make this obvious, as these are nothing like the actual form of the real Rexton.
Thanks Joe, and others, for pointing that out. I have updated the text and I will do some further research to see if there were any ties between Huanghai and Haisheng. Greetings!
I think there is not much difference between HKG1021 and GWM Deer pickup—because the promotional image of this car is even the one for the Deer pickup！they just removed the GWM logo with Photoshop and replaced it with their own logo. upon closer inspection, it is not difficult to see that these two images are exactly the same.