China Concept Cars: The 2002 Hafei Menghuan Was A Cool Pininfarina Designed Coupe

Hafei Menghuan

In the great year of 2000 Chinese automaker Hafei Motors decided they needed a new design direction and a bit of much-needed cool. Hafei therefore asked famed Italian design studio Pininfarina to design a small city car and a concept car. The latter would eventually become the Hafei Menghuan.

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The first products of the Tianjin Auto Repair Works.

We know the Tianjin Auto Repair Works from the Heping saloons made in 1958. People name this factory as developing the first Chinese car. For two reasons, the 1946 Feiying closed three wheel vehicle and the 1951 station wagon.

Tianjin ‘woody’ 1951, beautiful drawing (and copyright) by Ivan Kolev.

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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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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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