pictures of Chinese cities

If you are interested in the western architectures on page 6, this website may help to find about the history of Qingdao http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingdao

I cant see the pictures in your posts Firefox. :nono:

Can u see them now?

firefox said:

Can u see them now?

Click to expand...

yeah, Qingdao is a nice city. It was a German colony for a couple decades, that's why there is a lot of German architecture there. It is also famous for its Beer Festival and its local Tsingtao Beer.

Are you from Qingdao, Firefox?

Qingdao is my favorite Chinese city but actually, I'm from Jinan, a city of the same size as Qingdao and in the same province.

Now I can see them! Great pictures Firefox!

firefox, great pics. I lived in Qingdao for over 5 years - my chery still has a qingdao license plate.

great city.

anybody wants more insight into qingdao, check out www.myredstar.com and if you meet Mr Redstar ask him how the old beijing jeep is running - it used to be mine.

qingdao

Talking about Qingdao, does anybody of you know if the Etsong (Yizheng) factory is still working and producing the Chinese Rover Maestro (Lubao and Lande), even when the factory is sold to Shanghai GM-Wuling?
And what about this strange Xinxing factory of Dongfeng in Rongcheng, where the Little Prince (Xiao Wangzi) should be made, but what we only see is prototype after prototype? I there really a factory?
Erik (Laofan)

It seems that Etsong was out of production soon after the launch of this model for the extremely poor market response it received. Although I never verified this, one thing is sure however, that I haven't seen a single Etsong car in my city.

As far as the "Xiao Wangzi" of Rongcheng, first of all, I'm sooo sooo surprised that you even know this factory, it's just sooo small!!! Well, I'm pretty sure that it is closed now, or at least the Xiao Wangzi is no longer in production. There's another small factory in Rongcheng called Huatai which produces Terracan SUV under license with Hyundai, but this one is also at the verge of collapse as its cars are too expensive and therefore have little advantage compared to its competitors.

Nice to meet you Laofan, hope to see more of your comments about Chinese cars in future

I just searched 'Etsong Automobile' in Google China, sorry but I didn't find anything about this model. However, there is some information about the actual status of Etsong Auto which may be interesting. In fact, soon after the launch of Lubao, the company was taken over by FAW which intended to assemble the high-end Mazda9 at the plant. Then with the failure of this project, Faw soon lost interest in Etsong, the company was then resold to SAIC-GM Wuling for the making of mini-size vehicles.

There is almost no info about the actual product line of Etsong Motors, but considering it's owned actually by SAIC which obtained a part of Rover and that the etsong plant used to manufacture some Rover models, so I guess it is quite probable that Etsong continues to develop its existing Lubao modles.

If this was the story, then coincidentally there is another exemple of this kind but with another Shandong based car manufacturer - the once Yantai Daewoo Projet which, despite the huge investment of some billions yuan from provincial government, went finally in vain since the projet failed to get the agreement from the National Development and Reform Commitee, which meant that if the company insisted the manufacture, the vehicles could only be sold in the local Yantai market. Almost at the same moment, the Korean Daewoo Motors announced the bankruptcy and was soon obtained by GM whose Chinese partner was SAIC. Being a jointventure with Daewoo and without hope to commercialize its products in the national market, the Yantai Daewoo Company was naturally taken over by SAIC at a very low price. Today the plant, rebaptised '' Yantai SAIC-GM Dongyue Motor Company'' manufactures exlusively the GM mini vehicles like ''Sail''.

But wait a minute, sounds we're a little off-topic, no?

firefox said:

But wait a minute, sounds we're a little off-topic, no?

Click to expand...

Yes off-topic - these need moving to an Etsong thread...

Your story seems correct, I have read much the same story but it doesn't explain that new model I think Erik knows some more...

I hope the new Rover / MG chinese models are more successful than this older chinese one, although this was an Austin originaly not a Rover. There was also an MG version of it.