The Chinese automotive industry is 109 years old. You probably don’t believe this. But here it is:
In the streets in China today you will find a lot, a lot of cars. Most of them are from Japanese, European or American origin, some are Chinese. When you ask someone in the street which was the first Chinese car, most people will answer “Santána”. The Shanghai-Volkswagen Santana is made from 1984- 2012.
No, it is not the first Chinese car. Older Chinese people will answer this question with “ Shanghai” or “Hongqi”. But officially the Dongfeng is China’s first car. Made in 1958 by the First Auto Works, according to factory sources 30 were made. I doubt it, I would guess around 10. Two still exist, one in Mr. Lou Wenyou’s museum in Huairou, the other in the factory collection of the First Auto Works in Changchun. The car was based on the contemporary Simca Vedette from which the factory owned one.
The story is not ending here. Now we are going back to the early years of the People’s Republic. In 1951 a group of Chinese engineers built in Tianjin their first car: a station wagon (woody) based on an old 1932 Dodge pickup chassis. The engine was a homemade 4-cylinder. Some sources say that they made four cars, but I think that they stopped after the first one. The same group trial-produced a jeep based on a Ford GPW and a bus.
The real Chinese automotive history friends know that the first Chinese truck was developed at the end of the 1920s. It was a local warlord in Manchuria, Zhang Xueliang, who decided that he wants to make automobiles. Though initially in 1929 he sent a delegation to Birmingham to study the Austin facilities with the idea to produce the Austin 7 in China, he changed and chose to start motorization by producing trucks. He hired an American engineer named Daniel F. Myers who worked together with the factory director general Li Yichun to design and develop a truck, to organize a factory and start the production. Myers had worked at the Relay factory in Ohio and designed a truck with Relay influences, using a Relay engine. The first prototype, named Mingshen or Zhongshan, was ready in May 1931, made from both Chinese and American parts. After a second prototype was made and the production of a series of 45 trucks was prepared, the Japanese invaded Manchuria and bombed the factory in September 1931. Myers flew to Beijing and Shanghai where he designed a people’s three-wheel cycle car, a project which was never realized.
This is not all. We go further back, to Shanghai of the roaring twenties and thirties. No car factories, but a lot of coachbuilders. One was the most important: the Shanghai Horse Bazaar and Motor Company (SHB). At least one car of their production has survived. You will find the SHB-Studebaker Light Six Coupe made in China in the Studebaker Museum in South Bend USA. SHB made a complete series of the Light Six, but they also built coaches on other makes: for instance Scripps-Booths or Stearns. There were a lot of other coachbuilders in Shanghai, like Mark L. Moody, Honigberg, Hudford, AutoPalace, the French Garage, Eastern Garage or China Motors.
Recently we found in China a 1908 Swift brochure, stamped by the Shanghai Horse Bazaar. SHB offered motor car bodies that will equal the best European production”. So I count 1908 as the start of the Chinese automotive industry.
Words and pictures: Erik van Ingen Schenau, Chinesecars.net |
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The Chinese automotive industry is 109 years old.
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