Category: All Brands

Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: The Brilliant Wedding Cars And Other Oddities Of Jinma Auto & Soar Auto

Soar Automobile

Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF): Jinma Auto / Soar, famous for their gigantic Rolls-Royce ‘wedding cars’. But there was more, much more!

Jinma (金马) means Golden Horse. The brand was owned by a company called Qingdao Shengma Classic Car Co., Ltd. (青岛圣马老爷车有限公司). The designation was QJM. In 2001, the company changed its name to Qingdao Suo’er Automobile Co., Ltd. (青岛索尔汽车有限公司). This was abbreviated to  Soar Automobile (索尔汽车), and that is the name they are best known for. That same year, the Jinma brand name was replaced with the Soar name.

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China Concept Cars: Guangzhou 4-Door Coupé And Cabrio-Coupé

GAC 4-Door Coupe
GAC 4-Door Coupe

Today in China Concept Cars the Guangzhou Auto Corporation (GAC) 4-Door Coupé and Cabrio-Coupé. The two cars were closely related in design and GAC called them “sister cars”.

The 4-Door Coupé debuted on the 2007 Guangzhou Auto Show and the Cabrio-Coupé on the 2008 Beijing Auto Show. On the 2009 Guangzhou Auto Show, GAC unveiled a new variant of the Cabrio-Coupé.

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Bamin redone.

In 2012 my friend Tycho wrote in Car News China about Bamin. Time for a make over.

Bamin started as a repair company of the People’s Liberation Army in 1950. In 1955 it moved to Xujia Village, Jingxi Town, Fujian Province. Since 1965 the company was named People’s Liberation Army Factory Number 7427.

Bamin advertisement, Shanghai Qiche Bao, Automotive China 1988.

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Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF): Hangtian Auto

Hangtian Auto

Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF): Hangtian Auto. This brand was owned and manufactured by two closely related companies: Guizhou Hangtian and Zhongguo Jiangnan Hangtian. Both companies were based in Guizhou Province and their core business was military aerospace, including spacecrafts, airplanes and missiles.

Hangtian Auto (航天汽车) literally means ‘Aerospace Auto’. The brand was founded in 1984 and existed until about 2005. During that time, Hangtian Auto made a series of vans, small trucks, and minibuses.

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A Hongqi for the common people.

After their life times efforts to make cars for the leaders, mr. Hua Fulin and two other FAW senior researchers and engineers decided to develop a real “people’s car”. The project was named “Sankoule”(literally “Three Mouths”) the name revers to the then standard Chinese family with two parents and one child.

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Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: Haisheng Auto

Haisheng Auto

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.

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Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: Dadi Auto

Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF): Dadi Auto, a somewhat crazy brand that made a series of station wagons and sedan in the early 1990’s and a series of SUVs and pickup trucks in the late 1990’s and 2000’s.

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