After my article about the Whale JZK1010S last week, we received a lot of comments. (Super! Continue sending!) Some were about the different versions of the Changjian sedan made in Meng county, Henan province.
Changjian JZK6420, photo copyright Erik van Ingen Schenau, Xi’an 1991. Registration Shaanxi 01 T3177.
Our history begins in late 1999, where Li Shutong, younger brother of the renown Li Shufu who has founded Geely, decided to take a different path and ends up founding his own company JM Star (Shanghai Jieshida Group – 上海杰士达集团). An issue arised, that many of our long-time readers might expected – nation-wide licence to produce cars. Without it, you run into the issue of not being to sell cars outside of the home province, which is obviously very limiting.
One of the most desirable cars is the Rolls-Royce. It is not strange that over the years many copies, look-a-likes, or Rolls-Royce-inspired cars, appeared in China.
Geely GE, Shanghai Auto Show April 2009.
At the Shanghai Show of 2009, Geely introduced a whole range of concept cars, small and big. They were designed by Nova Design of Taiwan.
Today in China Concept Cars: the Hongqi C601 sedan. In the early 2000s, Hongqi was looking for a new mid-size luxury sedan. To get there, they developed four concept cars under the C601 code name. These were:
Today we take a deep dive into the Chinese Hummer program. Like so many other countries, China got interested in an HMMWV-like vehicle after the first Gulf War. We take a look at four Chinese Hummer programs. China being China, each of these programs has a base model + dozens and dozens of derivative military and civilian variants.
At the end of the 1990’s it was clear that the Chinese state limousine, the Hongqi CA770, designed in 1965, was old fashioned and needed replacement. A last revival was the Jiang Zemin version of 1999, called the “9910 Model”. In fact, five old CA772 armoured cars were rebuilt to make a last appearance during the celebrations of the 50 years existence of the People’s Republic.
Time for new blood.
FAW Hongqi HQD, design Chang Bing, 2004.
This is a drawing of the Hongqi HQD concept. The drawing is made by the designer Chang Bing.
Today in China Concept Cars (CCC): the Chery Fulwin II Coupe, a sporty two-door concept car that debuted at the 2006 Beijing Auto Show. It was an important car for Chery as it marked the debut of a new design language and the debut of the new Fulwin 2 series.