CarBrandLogos archive · FAW · 1958

FAWHongqi CA72

China's first home-built limousine, made for officials rather than customers.

Photo: JasonVogel · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in FAW history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the FAW Hongqi CA72, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

1959 Hongqi CA72 05 -- Shanghai Automobile Museum

Origins

Hongqi means red flag, and the CA72 was built to carry the people entitled to stand under one. Developed at FAW in Changchun from 1958, it was China's first attempt at a domestic luxury car, produced at a time when senior officials were driven in imported Soviet ZIS and ZIL limousines and the political discomfort of that was becoming obvious.

1959 Hongqi CA72 05 -- Shanghai Automobile Museum · Navigator84 · CC BY-SA 3.0

1959 Hongqi CA72 04 -- Shanghai Automobile Museum

Design and engineering

The engineering was reverse-engineered from American practice — a 5,655cc V8 driving the rear wheels through a two- or four-speed automatic, in a full-size body available as a saloon and a convertible for parade use. The detailing was deliberately Chinese: a fan-shaped grille motif, red-flag ornamentation on the front wings, lacquer and embroidered silk inside. Cars were effectively hand-built in tiny numbers, and they were not sold to the public in any normal sense; they were allocated.

1959 Hongqi CA72 04 -- Shanghai Automobile Museum · Navigator84 · CC BY-SA 3.0

In production

Production ran to the mid-1960s before the larger CA770 took over the role. The CA72 is remembered less as a car than as a statement of intent, and the Hongqi name it established still sits on the vehicles used for Chinese state occasions today.

Hongqi Convertible · ChengH · CC BY-SA 4.0

At a glance