About the History of Cars in China
This black beauty is a 1958 Hongqi CA72 parade car prototype. It debuted a few months after the CA72 sedan prototype. Like the sedan, the open-top parade car was intended for the 1959 parade in Beijing, which was to celebrate the 10th birthday of Communist rule in China.
Today we take a good look at the beginning of the development of the Hongqi CA72 state limousine. The CA72 was the very first Hongqi-branded car, 198 examples were made from 1959 until 1965. The development of the CA72 started in early 1958, and Hongqi build five prototypes in about a year.
The prototypes were numbered 1E, 2E, 3E, 4E, and 5E. This post is about 1E, featuring a design that was so wild one could almost call it a concept car.