Hongqi CA72

The Hongqi CA72 is an automobile produced by FAW Hongqi. It was the company's first production automobile and the first representative sedan that was constructed and built in China. Produced from 1959 until 1965, the CA72 was only available to state institutions and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and was regularly used in public events until the 1970s. Numerous details about technology and production are unclear.

History

The Hongqi CA72 was developed by First Automotive Works (FAW) based in Changchun, which was founded in 1953 with technical and financial support from the Soviet Union. FAW originally primarily produced commercial vehicles, in particular heavy trucks based on Soviet models under the Jiefang brand. In 1958, the Great Leap Forward began in China, aimed at eliminating China's industrial gap to the western industrialized countries. The effects of this initiative were also felt in the automotive sector. From 1958, several Chinese plants began constructing passenger cars for civilian use: however, because China did not have a homegrown auto industry, most of the new automotive development was based on Western models, imported in small numbers: while outright copying was prohibited, most of the vehicles in this period differed far more from Western vehicles in looks than technology, where foreign platforms were often taken and completely duplicated. One of the first cars was the FAW-developed middle-class sedan Dongfeng CA71, which was basically a replica of the French Simca Vedette with a Mercedes-Benz six-cylinder engine. During this time, FAW also began to develop representative vehicles for the top politicians. The initiative for this was said to have come from the party leader Mao Zedong himself, who had expressed the wish in 1955, at the Chinese Communist Party congress, to replace Soviet limousines driving in with a car from national production.