The Beijing Sky Star.

At the Beijing Auto Show, 2004, in a dark corner, there was a bright blue car.

It’s name: Sky Star.

The Sky Star ( Lantian Zhixing) was made by the Beijing Sky Star Composite Materials Applied Technology Research Institute. This institute was erected in 1992 and it was specialized in the technology research of the application of composite (fuhe cailiao) material from space research into the traditional industry.

The blue car was based on the Tianjin made Xiali TJ7100 sedan. Sizes: 3995x 1615x 1385mm. Net weight 1027kg, max. speed 120km/h.
Equipped with an electric engine, battery type: high energy lead-and-acid (2004!), good for a travel distance of 200km when fully charged, driving 50km/h.

The institute developed an unmanned aircraft (nowadays we would call it a drone), a motorcycle, several bicycles and the above car.
They wrote: “in the field of electric passenger car, (we developed) a sample four-wheeled car…. Adoption of a specific platform for (an) electric car made of compound (sic:composite) material and many new technologies…. It is made on (the) basis of 18 patents with high-tech level and self-owned property right.”

The nice man on the photo gave me some documents, mostly a list of their patents but also some photos of other cars they had made.

A Tianjin Xiali sedan. It is possible that it is the blue car above, but then before it was repainted and the front end redone.

Toyota Lite Ace.

The third car is an interesting station wagon. Two pictures, one with the car in green:

And the same picture (!), the car in blue:

Those who know my history document “Made in China. Lost small cars of the 1990s.” will recognize here another vehicle, the Beijing-made Zhonglian WL5010XSD.

One of these Zhonglian cars survived, there is a Zhonglian in the “FAW Warehouse Collection”. You saw the entrance door of this collection at the end of my Simca article. Most of the Hongqi cars from the Warehouse Collection are now to see in “the Red Flag Cultural Pavilion“.

I don’t know if the Zhonglian is made of composite.

Well, in the end, after this short episode, the Beijing Sky Star Institute continued its work, but not in the automobile field.