In the past 25 years China’s car industry has grown exponentially. But few people realize that #Chinesecars actually go much further back. These are archival shots of the #Jinggangshan, one of the very first Chinese cars. - The long period of instability between the 1880s and the cease fire in the Korean war in 1953 effectively prevented car manufacturing from taking root in China and it was only during the PRC’s first five-year plan that carmaking became possible. The first domestically-produced car in China was the 1958 Dongfeng CA71, heavily based on the 1954 Simca Vedette. The second was the Hongqi CA72, based on a ’55 Chrysler, which quickly replaced the CA71. Both were built in Changchun in Jilin province in the north by FAW (First Auto Works) which still exists today. - The FAW cars were intended as transport for the Party elite and built in tiny numbers. The Jinggangshan, made in Beijing, was far more ambitious - it was a small car meant to be used as taxis or by local officials. A production run of 10,000 was planned - in a country that had only produced a few dozen cars at the time of the car’s June, 1958 launch. - Like the two FAW products, the Jinggangshan was based on a western car - the VW Beetle. A sample VW was stripped down and reverse engineered - but Beijing Auto Works (BAW) didn’t want to just copy the VW, so they designed their own shell - a prototype 2-door and a production 4-door sedan. The result looked vaguely like the later VW Type 3 Notchback (2d) and Hino Contessa (4d). 30 Jinggangshans rode through Beijing in the 1st of October parade that year. - But forces were already in motion that scuttled the plan. The cars were largely hand made and Beijing, while China’s political capital, was an industrial backwater - it’s hard to make a supply chain from scratch, and very quickly the Great Leap Forward and the Sino-Soviet Split made it even worse. The Jinggangshan project stalled and hardly any survive. In 1961 BAW it began work on the BJ210/212, an off-roader with roots in the Russian GAZ-69. It became the China’s most produced vehicle until the 80s. In 1983, AMC began a JV with BAW, #BeijingJeep, building Cherokees. (at Beijing, China) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtgR1TflvNy/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=bp0tjy0najqk