What you don’t know about Qingdao Yizhong Automobile: Acquired the Rover production line to build cars, and eventually sold it to Wuling

How did Qingdao’s local car dream begin and how did it end? Let’s talk today.

Every city has a car dream, and for Qingdao, which was promoted to a sub-provincial city in 1994, this dream is even more urgent.

In 1997, Yizhong Tobacco Group, a large state-owned enterprise in Qingdao, began to prepare an automobile project. It was also that year that Yizhong started playing football, and the original Qingdao Hainiu was renamed Qingdao Yizhong Hainiu. Many people know that Qingdao Yizhong started from football. Qingdao Yizhong's best result was winning the Football Association Cup in 2002.

Back to business, let’s continue talking about cars.

After a year of planning, in 1998, Qingdao Yizhong purchased the British Rover Motors production line from the 1970s and 1980s from BMW for 11 million pounds. Calculated at the exchange rate at that time, it was approximately RMB 150 million.

Yizhong Automobile (the company's full name is Yizhong Transportation Vehicle Manufacturing Co., Ltd.) was also announced in March, in which Yizhong holds 57% of the shares, Qingdao Automobile Industry Company holds 18%, and the British RDS International Engineering Company holds 25% of the shares. At the same time, Yizhong Automobile began to build the Yizhong Automobile Industrial Park in Qingdao Economic and Technological Development Zone, covering an area of ??more than 600 acres.

According to the plan, Yizhong Automobile’s products are all imported from the British Rover, mainly including four models: van, hatchback, station wagon and sedan, with an annual design production capacity of 60,000 units. .

On December 15, 2000, Yizhong Automobile’s first complete vehicle rolled off the assembly line.

However, the Rover models introduced by Yizhong only have technical data and no accessories, which also limits the development pace of Yizhong Automobile. Therefore, among the four originally planned models, only the "Rand" van truck was launched in batches, and not many "Land Leopard" hatchbacks were produced.

The Rand sedan is actually the cargo compartment version of the MG Maestro Van, named Yizhong QE6440; the Lubao sedan is the hatchback version of the MG Maestro - named Yizhong. The QE6400 is equipped with Toyota 8A-FE? 1.3-liter engine and is priced at around 60,000 yuan.

According to insiders, in more than a year since it was put into production, Yizhong has only produced more than 300 vehicles and sold more than 200 vehicles, which is far behind the planned production capacity.

Another problem is that Yizhong Automobile has not obtained national production qualifications and can only be sold in Shandong Province.

The solution that Yizhong Automobile came up with was to join a large automobile group. The first thing they thought of was FAW, because at that time FAW already had a successful cooperation precedent with Qingdao to liberate trucks.

At the end of 2001, FAW officially took over Yizhong Automobile, and Yizhong also took this opportunity to solve its urgent needs.

After the trusteeship, Yizhong Automobile continued to develop on its own. However, due to problems in management, production capacity and products, in 2003 when the automobile market was extremely hot, Yizhong Automobile did not take advantage of the situation to develop, but suffered a loss of 40 million yuan. FAW does not want to just host it, but wants to turn Yizhong into another car production base of its own.

Under such circumstances, in December 2003, FAW Group signed a contract with Qingdao Yizhong Tobacco Group and decided to jointly establish FAW Yizhong (Qingdao) Automobile Co., Ltd., with FAW holding 60% of the shares and Yizhong 40%. %.

The agreement stipulates that both parties to the joint venture will produce and operate self-owned brand cars in a new model, and FAW will also introduce new models with market competitiveness. According to the plan, FAW Yizhong will reach an annual production and sales volume of 150,000 vehicles by the end of 2005.

As for the Yizhong project, FAW was quite concerned about it at the beginning and continued to contact overseas car companies in an attempt to introduce new products. During that period, FAW had already reorganized Hainan Mazda and was therefore in line with Mazda, so Mazda became a key consideration.

At that time, Mazda9 had great hopes of settling in Yizhong, but the plan ultimately aborted. According to people familiar with the matter, experts from Japan's Mazda said after inspecting Yizhong Automobile that "(Yizhong Automobile) is not even as good as a repair shop. It looks luxurious, but in fact it knows nothing about car production."

However, there are some problems with this statement, because according to the plan, Mazda 9 will not be produced using Yizhong’s original production lines, but will re-build the factory and introduce supporting production lines from Japan. Qingdao Economic and Technological Development Zone has also planned 1,600 acres of land for this purpose .

The abortion of the Mazda project also brought the marriage between FAW and Yizhong to an end.

It is worth mentioning that during the short marriage with FAW, Yizhong’s two cars, respectively transformed into the Jiefang Landbao CA6410 and Jiefang CA6440UA, finally left Shandong and were sold to Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Beijing, Tianjin and many other provinces and cities across the country.

There are mixed reviews for Yizhong Automobile's products. Some car owners said that their Yizhong Jiefang Lubao CA6440UA has good performance and is basically not broken. However, the problem is that the inventory is low and accessories are difficult to buy. Top Gear in the UK treats Yizhong Motors as a joke.

After FAW gave up, Yizhong Automobile began to look for another way out. It first contacted Chery through various relationships, but was decisively rejected by Chery.

Later, in accordance with the principle of "not seeking everything, but seeking where it is", Yizhong Automobile sold SAIC-GM-Wuling for 300 million yuan and established SAIC-GM-Wuling Qingdao Branch.

The second-hand Rover production line purchased by Yizhong was sold to Sichuan Yema in 2008, reportedly for more than 100 million yuan.

Later, Sichuan Mustang launched a series of models such as the Mustang T99 on this third-hand production line, and began to promote its British origins.

In 2014, the Qingdao Branch of FAW-Volkswagen Co., Ltd. was established in Jimo. FAW’s original idea of ??setting up a sedan base in Qingdao finally became a reality.

This article comes from the author of Autohome Chejiahao and does not represent the views and positions of Autohome.