Classic chinese cars in videogames

There is a place where classic chinese cars can live forever – where that might be you ask? Videogames! Today we will look into some of the games that feature classic chinese vehicles.


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Replacement of the Shanghai Saloon.

Just before the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (1966), Shanghai Auto started to work on a replacement for the SH760 Sedan. The prototypes were bigger than the SH760.

Factory photo of a proposed successor of the Shanghai Sedan, photo sold at Kongfz. Car registration 08-02384.

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MPV’s made in Shanghai long ago.

Long before the popularity of mpv’s, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation made prototypes of mpv’s.

The Shanghai Santana SVW7181, later SH7181. The Institute gave me this brochure, they had crossed out the SVW denomination by hand.

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Jeeps made before the production of the BJ212.

Chairman Mao inspecting the Red Guards in a Beijing BJ212 cross country vehicle.

The most important Chinese cross-country vehicle is the Beijing BJ212. Developed in the early 1960s, in production since 1965. Yes, still in production!! The introduction was during the mass-movement Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, chairman Mao using it to inspect the Red guards.

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Minicars from Shanghai.

Haiyan CK730 taxi in Shanghai Traffic.

Not only Beijing made minicars in the late 1950s (see our entry “Minicars made by the Qinghua University in Beijing.“), also Shanghai did an effort to replace the pedicab and the rickshaw by small motorized vehicles. There was one big difference: in Beijing it was the Qinghua University which was behind all these efforts, in Shanghai it were several small workshops. It is possible that some factories were differently named in press releases, and that these products were in fact from the same manufacturer. But that is difficult to find out after 60 years. Here we give you the factory names as found in books and newspapers.

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The Shanghai Station Wagons

Shenlian SQL5020 on display in the Taishan Classic Car Museum

Station wagons and China have a funny relationship. The old adage of Chinese people preferring cars to have a proper boot could not be more correct, but tastes are changing. Nowadays station wagons are slowly becoming more and more popular and Chinese manufacturers are starting to cash in, though they won’t fully commit and most of the time will sell a lifted version and call it a “Cross” or something like that (looking at you Skoda). But back in the day there were numerous station wagons on sale in China, not counting those weird SUV station wagon hybrids of the 1980’s. Cars like the Buick Sail and Fiat Palio wagon sold reasonably well in China, and let’s not forget the likes of the Haima and Yunbao wagons. Sadly these larger wagons never did as well as their smaller brethren and indeed the same must be said about the Shanghai wagons, which did even worse. So join me as we learn about the Shanghai wagons and the many companies that made them.

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The Shanghai Pickup Trucks

Shanghai SH1020SP on display in the Taishan Classic Car Museum

Welcome to the second article on the Shanghai brand. In the previous article I introduced you to the saloon cars and took you through the development of those models. In this article I will cover all the pickup truck models produced under the Shanghai brand, starting with the reasoning behind creating these models and going on through the development stages to the models that went on sale.

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The Shanghai Saloons

Fenghuang (Shanghai SH760)

The Shanghai brand is one that has always fascinated me. Growing up in Shanghai certainly helped fuel my curiosity but I was never really able to understand the evolution of the brand and when different models were sold, particularly in later years. Searching online I also found that an accurate account of the development of the brand is hard to find, even finding accurate production dates for the models in one place is a challenge. So I decided to create my own articles on the Shanghai brand, starting with the saloon cars and in future articles focusing on the pickup and station wagon variants. Many thanks to Erik for his help with this series of articles.

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