About the History of Cars in China
In the 2000s, Geely was concept car crazy. On most auto shows, the brand would launch up to ten (10) concept cars, packed into the booth, next to the production cars. One of the most interesting cars from Geely’s golden concept era was the Geely Meirenbao II (美人豹II), a concept for a successor of the Meirenbao sports car.
Continue reading “China Concept Cars: The 2007 Geely Meirenbao II”
Two times before, in 2018 and 2020, I showed you pictures of vehicles of which we wanted more information. Here are some new ‘questions’ about unknown Chinese cars. In 2018 I wrote: “But each answer leads to a new question. ” That is the fate of the researcher…
Continue reading “Questions, questions, questions (3) About Unknown Chinese Cars”
Today in Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong (CCPDoG™): Beijing Zhonglian. Earlier, we saw their normal cars.
CCCPDoG was a ‘creative’ scheme to get around China’s extremely high import tariffs for foreign-made cars in the late 1990s. Several companies would collaborate to ‘produce’ cars in China, piggybacking on an existing Chinese car maker with a valid car-making license.
Continue reading “Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong: Beijing Zhonglian”
Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF™): Beijing Zhonglian. In the 1990s and early 2000s, this brand made a bus, a series of SUVs, and a couple of minicars.
Continue reading “Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: Beijing Zhonglian”
Today in China Concept Cars (CCC): the Haima Me and MPe electric minicars. The Me debuted at the 2008 Beijing Auto Show and the MPe debuted one year later at the 2009 Shanghai Auto Show.
Continue reading “China Concept Cars: The Haima Fstar Me & Haima MPe Electric Minicars”
In my last article I promised you to write more about the Dutch Globe B.V. initiative.
It was a brave Dutchman, Peter de Koster, who bought about 6 BJ212s when making a sales trip to Beijing in 1987. He started a company named Globe B.V., established in Loon op Zand in the south of the Netherlands, where he was a local Chrysler, Jeep and Mercedes dealer. Later De Koster imported more BJ212s.
Continue reading “Globe B.V., European import of the Beijing BJ212 in the late 1980s.”
The first 4×4’s used in the People’s Republic China were of Russian origin. After the GAZ 67 followed the GAZ 69.
When it was time for a replacement, the Soviet Union and China worked together to design a successor; the Soviet Union got the UAZ 469, China the Beijing BJ212.
Continue reading “Export of the Beijing BJ212 in the 1970s and 1980s.”
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.
Continue reading “So many sedans made by the Jiaozhuo Bus Works.”
During my studies of all the small cars of the 1990’s, those made outside the regular car producing industry, I encountered this car on the web: the Whale JZK1010S.
Continue reading “A case of double identity: the Whale JZK1010S.”
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 car 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.
Continue reading “Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: Shanghai Maple”