Sanxing Auto | ChinaCarHistory

The Story Of Sanxing Part 2: The Passenger Cars [updated 2]

Earlier on I wrote about Sanxing Auto, a Guangdong-based company that built and assembled a bewildering number of different vehicles under all sorts of different deals, at the same time. Today we have a look at the passenger cars.

This article is a work in progress, because every time I think I know all the Sanxing cars; a new one pops up! I show the cars one by one, later on I will write more in detail about each car in separate posts.

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Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: Hainan Automobile Works and Hainan Mazda

The first HMC6470 rolling out of the factory in Hainan.

Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF™): Hainan Automobile Works.

Hainan Automobile Works (henceforth referred to as HAW) was founded in 1989 as a result of cooperation between the Hainan government and already established Hainan Auto Stamping Factory (henceforth referred to as HASF). HASF had experience with producing automobile components but the new company (HAW) would need a full assembly line on which to produce vehicles. Help came from an unlikely source – former President of The Philippines Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos sold HASF a factory that was once operated by Ford between 1968 and 1984. It was in 1988, 4 years after Ford ceased manufacturing operations in The Philippines that Marcos sold HASF the factory, allowing them to obtain a production line for their own future vehicle manufacturing. In 1989, Hainan Auto Stamping Factory was renamed Hainan Automobile Works.

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The Story Of Sanxing Part 1: History & Background

This the first part of the Story of Sanxing, about an almost forgotten company that made a crazy selection of cars, including the Dodge Caravan, the Mitsubishi Pajero, the Mercedes-Benz MB100, and a range of Daihatsu-based trucks.

Sanxing Auto was based in the great city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province. They were the Big Thing for a while, visited by big wits from China and abroad. But then it all went wrong due to politics and rivalries between Guangdong and Beijing. Their cars are virtually unknown today, descending into anonymity. This series of articles will bring them back.

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