01
Origins
The B90 of 2012 aimed Besturn at the executive class: a full-size saloon with upscale intentions, contemporary equipment and pricing beneath the joint-venture incumbents that owned the segment's prestige. The pattern held across every SOE's equivalent flagship — respectable engineering, ceremonial sales — as private and official buyers alike defaulted to established badges for status purchases. The B90 served fleets and faded quietly. Its record documents the own-brand movement's ceiling in the combustion era: value could win compacts and SUVs, but the executive saloon guarded its gates until the electric transition — and Hongqi's state-sponsored revival — finally changed the locks entirely. The segment's gates fell eventually — to electrons and Hongqi, not to value.
Besturn B90 02 China · Navigator84 · CC BY-SA 4.0
