Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong: Guangtong Passenger Car – Jinhui Auto

Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong
Jinhui Toyota Previa

Today in Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong (CCPDoG™): Guangtong Passenger Car, a company based in the great city of Zhuhai in Guangdong Province.  They produced a series of small and medium sized buses under the Jinhui Auto brand name, using the designation GTZ.

In addition to that they also ‘made’ at least five cars under the infamous Guangdong scheme in the 1990’s. Read all the details about it here. Under this scheme Guangtong Passenger Car would be approached by a third-party company to ‘manufacture’ cars, using Guangtong Passenger Car’s car-making license.

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China’s Zotye Auto Almost Made The Lancia Lybra And The Fiat Strada

Zotye Libolang
Zotye Libolang

In the mid 200’s Fiat was in big trouble, so they went to China. Not to sell cars but to offload entire production lines to Chinese car makers.

In 2007 they sold the platform for the Alfa Romeo 166 to Guangzhou Auto, and then the Italians went to Zotye for a more complicated deal that included cars of Fiat, Fiat do Brasil, and Lancia.

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Fake Veteran Cars in Chinese Car Museums

Fake Dongfeng CA71, Beijing Auto Museum.

Car museums and veteran car exhibitions are getting more and more popular in China. These museums like to exhibit those cars which stood at the dawn of the Chinese automotive industry. And here they are confronted with a problem: due to intensive scrap regulations most of these cars have disappeared. China would not be China if there was a creative solution. The exhibitors simply make replicas of these cars. Now we meet two problems; one, the replicas are often crudely made, mostly due to ignorance; two, some museums don’t tell the visitor that he is looking at a replica. Here some examples.

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Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: People’s Liberation Army No. 5408 Factory – Ling Kong

Ling Kong KJ5020.

Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF™): Ling Kong, a brand under the People’s Liberation Army No. 5408 Factory. The company was based in the great city of Luoyang in Henan Province. In the late 1980’s and 1990’s they made a series of wagons, pickup trucks, and mini cars, using the designation KJ.

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Chinese Car Brands that Time Forgot – Zhenjiang Auto Works

 

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

Zhenjiang Automobile Works (ZAW), based northwest of Nanjing in Zhenjiang city, potentially has a rather long history that dates back to as early as 1958 according to this Zhenjiang History website. However, we will have to fastforward to 1973 because we simply have no information on the company before this time.

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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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Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong: Guangdong Wanli

Guangdong Wanli
Wanli Mitsubishi Pajero – by Fr33-L00k

Today in Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong (CCPDoG™): Guangdong Wanli Automobile, a company that was based in the great city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong Province.

Guangdong Wanli was heavily involved in the infamous Guangdong scheme in the 1990’s. Read all the details about it here. Wanli was a company similar to Sanxing, making all sorts of deals and running all sorts of operations.

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The Brilliance-Rover 75 Cars of China

The Brilliance Rover 75 Cars of China

In 2002 China Brilliance and MG Rover started talks about a joint venture to make the Rover 75 in China.

During the negotiations MG Rover shipped two dozen 75’s with Brilliance badges to China, with the aim of showing the Chinese side how a ‘Brilliance-Rover 75’ would look like. All these cars were powered by the 2.5 liter V6.

What MG Rover probably didn’t expect was that some of these cars were actually sold and ended up on Chinese roads with valid license plates. Most, but not all, of these cars were labelled as Zhonghua B8.

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