This is a painting made by my good friend Jörg-Peter Rabe, to show you how the Shanghai SH7180 (or SAIC96) would have looked like when it was really produced.
The designer Zhong Boguang, who worked for the Shanghai Automotive & Tractor Research Institute, made a lot of drawings of potential successors for the Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana, which was completely outdated at the end of the 1990s.
It was Mr. Zhong Buguang who developed earlier the Shanghai SH750 and the Shanghai SH7181 MPV.
His designs were not only for Shanghai-Volkswagen, but also for SAIC, the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation.
One of his ideas was chosen by SAIC for further development. Zhong made a small wooden model.
The plan was a car based on the Santana platform, equipped with the Santana 1.8-litre engine.
The SAIC people were enthusiast, and asked for a 1:1 wooden model.
In the end, there was no money.
And the joint-venture with Volkswagen and the new joint venture with General Motors were making it unnecessary to develop a 100% Chinese program.
With the purchase of Rover and later of Nanjing (including MG) there was enough input for the development of the full Chinese Shanghai auto industry in the early 2000’s. Nowadays SAIC makes Roewe, MG, Maxus and some more 100% Chinese makes.
Thanks, Jörg Peter, for your nice painting, I like it so much that I show it again (!):
Looks like an early Citroen Xantia copy.
mixed with Peugeot 405
Yes Raul, the Western vehicles were a lot of inspiration.But the Xantia was more angular, though it had the same not in the rear door. Xantia and 405 were ckd assembled in Huizhou by Dongfeng, aso they were known in China at that time.
I think is just what normal family cars back then would look like regardless of who created them. People have a weird obsession with calling everything that is chinese a copy.
There is no original Chinese car. This is clearly a Peugeot rip-off, Excuse me, I don’t know how you can’t possibly see that. There was no successful Chinese car that was independently developed without inspiration, since Shanghais started being hammer-built to the latest ORAs (oh I mean Honda e ripoffs) to Tesla competitors with foreign designers to hide the hideous quality and typical adhesive smell of a new Chinese car.
I can recommend for you to touch some grass, it does seem like a better way to spend your time than going on a website about cars you hate. Untill you learn some nuance, I am not going to entertain your bad faith arguments.
Actually, there are lots of Chinese cars in the past and nowadays are very good and high-quality. And they are original, not by copying from others. Also, if you dont like them, why you come here to read this website and say these comments?
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