Three mystery Volkswagens.

This is about three mystery-Volkswagen’s. The FAW-Volkswagen Olympia Taxi, a FAW-Volkswagen Vento (Jetta A3) and a Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana (Passat B2).

Let’s start with the FAW-Volkswagen Olympia Taxi, you know already.

Jörg-Peter Rabe made a painting (impression) of the car, with help of the two existing spy photos, posing in front of the Shanghai Stadium.

Still no news about this car. There are three options: The whole story is fake and the car in the photos was photo shopped;  there was a mockup, model or prototype, maybe made by a design studio, or by a research institute; or it was just a test model, made by (FAW) VW.
(But the last option is against all the info I got from Volkswagen: mrs. Peng Feili from Volkswagen Group China wrote me today: Just got info from FAW VW –  it seems that there was no car which was materialized for the Olympics from their side.  The car in the photo also looks to them like a Touran…).

Number two is the FAW-Volkswagen Jetta 3 or Vento.
The Volkswagen Vento A3, also named Jetta A3, was made in Germany, Mexico and South Africa from 1992-1999. It was the successor of the Jetta A2, which was a big success (together with the  Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana) of Volkswagen in China.
To our knowledge, the A3 was never made in China, after the Jetta A2 came the Bora Classic (Jetta A4), then Sagitar (Jetta A5, A6, A7).

Romanian reader Iulian Pintea, living in Dongguang came with the Vento photos. Many thanks, Iulian!

There are different options about the origin of this car:
– it is one of the many cars described by Tycho in his Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong range. A locally imported, grey-assembled foreign Volkswagen.
– an unknown FAW-Volkswagen prototype, which became old and lost in Guangdong.
– an enthusiastic owner who re-badged the car.

Let’s have a look at the text at the rear end.

This photo needs an enlargement:

Quite mysterious: text to the upper left (with a bit of fantasy) JETTA CiX (one T the wrong way around), text right under yiqi-dazhong, Chinese for FAW (First Auto Works)- Volkswagen.

Note that this car is not a face-lifted Jetta (King) of 1997. That car is really based on the Jetta A2. Here under a photo of a Jetta (King).

And number three is from the other Chinese Volkswagen company: a Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana (Passat B4).

It is our dear friend Damien (Navigator 84) who made the pictures in Shanghai eleven years ago.

The Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana (B2) was made from 1983-2012. Its successor, the Santana 2000 from 1995-2004. The 2000 was updated as Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana 3000 and produced from 2004-2008. The next facelift, named Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana Vista from 2008-2013.
The Volkswagen Passat B4 was made in Germany and Belgium from 1993-1997.

Here the rear end in detail: left SANTANA and right Shanghai-Dazhong in Chinese (=VW).

The Passat B4 was never officially produced in Shanghai. Here we have the same possibilities as with the Vento: grey-imported, or a test car of SVW, or an enthusiastic owner.

In the case of the Chinese Passat B4 we have to add that Tycho and I  wondered how many of these Passat B4 cars were on the road in China  at that time. For us the possibility of a Chinese production or assembly was always open.

Here some photos of ‘regular’ Passat B4’s in the streets of China.

And then  this: in a book about the Shanghai auto production (History of the Shanghai Automobile Industry, 1999) I found statistics, showing the Santana production.
But also Passat production: 1986: 369, 1987: 31, 1991: 5, 1992: 6672, 1993: 4697, 1994: 4306 and 1995: 2939. That is where the statistics stop. After research I think that this is the production of the Santana Variant (the B2 estate car), which was also named Passat Variant. These figures have nothing to do with the Passat B4.

In 2000, Shanghai-Volkswagen started the local production of the VW Passat B5 as the  Shanghai-Volkswagen Passat SVW7183.