The real reason why the red flag dismounted that year： Some officials wanted to take imported cars.

The last stroke of the red flag

Hongqi’s comeback has an unprecedented opportunity: before Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced that he would take the Red Flag official car, the supreme leader of president took the same Red Flag car when he met French President Hollande, and gave the other party 20 Red Flag cars as gifts when he visited Fiji.

From 1958, FAW people knocked out a Dongfeng car (the predecessor of Hongqi car) and sent it to Zhongnanhai for inspection by Mao Zedong. On May 30, 2013, FAW Group announced the official listing of the latest Hongqi C-class car H7 in Beijing Bird’s Nest. Hongqi brand has gone through 55 years of history. Like the fate of Audi in Germany, which came to an abrupt end in the ruins of World War II, Hongqi was once ordered to dismount and stop production in the 1980s. Starting again this time, the red flag is aimed at "China Audi". However, Xu Xianping, the general manager of FAW Group, said that he preferred to mark the Red Flag brand as Toyota’s "Lexus" in service, so as to attract the vast number of private consumers, rather than occupying a very small number of government officials among potential customers.

"What Hongqi has to do is a balance between buses and private cars. In the end, the private car market is the life of Hongqi." At the celebration of FAW’s 60th anniversary, Xu Xianping said publicly. For the red flag brand that has been baptized for half a century, such feelings are sad. Prior to this, Hongqi brand had been revived twice, but all of them failed for various reasons, leaving behind FAW people’s helplessness to reality and a sense of urgency to revive Hongqi next time. This time, Xu Xianping hopes that the red flag can be successfully "upper".

Nowadays, the revival plan of Hongqi brand will be kicked off in two battlefields: one is the government-purchased "official car" market, which used to be the traditional territory of black Audi A6L, and now Hongqi H7 hopes to replace it; The second is a broader private consumption territory, which is more challenging for Hongqi, because Audi, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have made rapid progress in the past two years.

"From the perspective of the growth of China automobile market and the development process of Hongqi brand itself, Hongqi can no longer afford to fail, which is likely to be the last comeback of Hongqi. If you lose, it is difficult for Hongqi to stand up again. " Analysts close to the top of FAW Group said that it has become a political task to ensure the success of Hongqi brand under the background that the central leadership has repeatedly stressed that "officials should give priority to domestic cars".

There is no denying that now is the best time for FAW to raise the "red flag". On June 17th, 2013, the official Weibo "Diplomatic PHS" of the Public Diplomacy Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that "Foreign Minister Wang Yi will use the domestic red flag car as of today", which immediately caused onlookers and crazy turns. On that day, the share price of FAW Car (000800), a listed company of FAW Group and operating the Hongqi brand, closed up by 1.73%. Prior to this, due to the frequent concept of "Red Flag Favorable", the share price of FAW Car had pulled out several daily limit in two weeks, and the share price broke through the 15 yuan mark at the highest time, and nearly doubled in two weeks.

If success must have the right time, place and people, then the "right time" for the comeback of Hongqi brand can be described as just right. Before the Foreign Minister announced that he would take the Red Flag official car, the Supreme Leader of president also took the Red Flag car when he met French President Hollande. In addition, the Supreme Leader also gave 20 Red Flag cars to Fiji after a foreign affairs activity. This is also the second time that the central leadership gave the Red Flag cars as a "national gift" to countries with diplomatic relations after decades.

Hongqi brand was born in the late 1950s. Because it was recognized by the central leadership and frequently appeared in foreign affairs activities, Hongqi sedan was awarded the reputation of "foreign affairs concierge car" and "national car" in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, "staying at Diaoyutai, sitting on the red flag and meeting Chairman Mao" was considered as the highest reception standard of the new China foreign affairs protocol, and the red flag brand rose to the top of the brand under the aura of "foreign affairs protocol car".

So far, only Red Flag has enjoyed this honor for China automobile brands. In a sense, Hongqi car has been labeled as "official car" since its birth, which is also the goal that Hongqi brand must overcome this time. According to the promotion strategy of Hongqi brand formulated by the senior management of FAW Group, before actually launching Hongqi sedan for private consumers, Hongqi must win the most important target customer group-officials at or above the provincial level in the "official car" market, and the "official car effect" triggered by the latter will maximize the expansion of Hongqi in the private consumer market.

Prior to this, FAW had smelled the signal that the wind direction of bus procurement policy was about to change greatly. In February, 2012, official website, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued "Catalogue of Official Vehicles for Party and Government Organs in 2012 (Draft for Comment)", which showed that the "selected vehicles" of government official vehicles were all made in China. This means that with the new round of "the strongest bus reform in history" kicked off, the joint venture brand models headed by Volkswagen, Audi and Toyota were completely excluded from the bus sequence for the first time.

Although officials of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology repeatedly clarified when answering media questions, the scope delineated in the Catalogue is only the general official vehicles within the "Double 18" standard (the displacement does not exceed 1.8 liters and the price does not exceed 180,000 yuan), and the "high-end official vehicles" applicable to leading cadres are not within the scope delineated in the Catalogue. But in fact, no matter at the level of the central government or local governments, it seems that they have understood the hint that private leading cadres also give priority to domestic brands in car use.

"If the scope of changing official cars to Cheng Hongqi continues to expand, our company and all companies in the group will buy red-flag cars because we often have the need to receive government officials." An insider of a state-owned enterprise who asked not to be named told Outlook Oriental Weekly.

The best time is to consider that it may cause a strong rebound of foreign brands, and the Catalogue released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in the form of "draft for comments" has not finally landed. However, in the actual implementation process, it has become an established fact that independent brands have priority to occupy the official car market. The "upper position" of the Hongqi brand in the official car market is also borrowed from such a policy "Dongfeng". Subsequently, among the major ministries and commissions of the central government, organs directly under the Central Government, central enterprises and local provincial and ministerial officials, it became a common practice to purchase red flag cars as "cars for leading cadres".

This kind of "time of day" is unprecedented in the first two comeback experiences of Hongqi brand, and it is also the biggest chip for FAW Group executives to bet that Hongqi will eventually win in the new round of revitalization plan. According to the official data disclosed by FAW Group, before Hongqi H7 was officially sold to the private consumer market at the end of May 2013, the cumulative number of orders for delivering "official cars" by Hongqi H7 had exceeded 1,000.

For FAW, this is an exciting start, because when Hongqi regains the lost ground of "official car", it is an excellent opportunity for Hongqi to brew into the private consumer market in a big way. At present, Hongqi is recruiting more private consumers through the first batch of "Red Pavilion" located in nine first-tier cities across the country. Due to the support of the government and the media, Hongqi car is making great strides in the "official car" market. In the private consumer market, the "official car effect" of Hongqi is fermenting: in Beijing, Hongqi chose to open the first "Red Pavilion" in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei in "Jinbao Street", and received 80 ~ 100 private orders in the first month of trial operation; In Jinan, Shandong Province, the Red Pavilion sold 20 red flags H7 within 9 days of trial operation. The Hongqi H7 sedan, with a price of 299,800 ~ 479,800 yuan, takes a differentiated route with a higher configuration than Audi but a slightly lower price. Together with the red flag playing historical cards, political cards and emotional cards, it is enough to capture those "patriotic" high-end car consumers.

According to the official data released by FAW Car, as of July 1, 2013, Hongqi H7 received 250 private orders and 150 cars in the first month of listing nationwide. For Hongqi brand, which has only nine "Red Pavilion" as its distribution channel, this achievement is not easy. Guo Shijun, director of FAW Hongqi Business Department, believes that the path of the revival of Hongqi brand is to go directly from C-class cars, covering C-class cars, D-class cars and E-class cars. At present, Hongqi has two platforms: H platform and L platform. C-class cars produced by platform H include Hongqi H7, which has been listed, and D-class cars and E-class cars produced by platform L..

"There are also two vehicle platforms in the L platform, one is a growth platform and the other is a non-growth platform. These three platforms will generate many cars and put them on the market one after another. " Guo Shijun said. Why was Hongqi discontinued in that year? From the time point of view, the historical span of more than half a century has made Hongqi a high-end car brand with more historical accumulation than Toyota Lexus. However, compared with Lexus, which was born in the late 1980s, achieved annual sales of more than 400,000 vehicles in the global market in less than 30 years, and challenged Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi in developed countries such as Europe and America, the Red Flag is ill-fated.

If there were no sudden "production suspension storm" in that year, would there be a better situation for today’s Hongqi car? On May 14th, 1981, People’s Daily published the words "the State Council issued a power-saving and fuel-saving instruction", and the words "Hongqi brand limousine stopped production in June this year due to high fuel consumption" appeared. After a lapse of 30 years, the outside world discovered that the real reason for the red flag car dismounted was something else.

On May 30, 2013, Hongqi H7 Bird’s Nest went on the market, and FAW carefully described the development history of Hongqi brand and made it the scene of Beijing Satellite TV’s "Archives" column. Shi Liang, the host, deliberately "left a hand" when telling the chapter why the red flag dismounted in the 1980s-only talking about the results but avoiding talking about the real reasons, leaving the media and audience here wanting more. We have learned from various sources that the real reason why Hongqi was forced to dismount in those years can be roughly described as follows: The first one is that the hand-built Hongqi sedan experienced serious quality problems in the course of use, forcing the central leaders to reluctantly give up what they wanted, and finally gave up Hongqi sedan. From the root point of view, it is because Hongqi lacks the core independent technology research and development capability and the mass production manufacturing system.

Li Anding, an internal editorial board member of Xinhua News Agency and a well-known automobile reporter, once said in "Family Cars Seduce China": "In the 1980s, with the opening of the country, the horizons of red flag riders were broadened, and the shortcomings of red flag cars were exposed one by one: the red flag was too heavy, and the acceleration performance on foreign highways was too poor. Seeing that foreign cars passed behind it, foreign ambassadors felt humiliated; The reliability of the red flag is not ideal, there are more international exchanges, VIPs are sent to welcome, foreign heads of state visit the Badaling Great Wall, but the red flag brakes on the mountain road; The leader greeted the foreign guests at the airport, and the guests got on the bus and left, but the owner’s red flag could not be started at the airport. "The latest statement comes from Rao Da, the son of Rao Bin, the old factory director of FAW and former Minister of the First Machinery Industry.

On June 7, 2013, Rao Da disclosed for the first time in his personal blog: "The fuel consumption and poor reliability are just excuses. The red flag weighing several tons has 19 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers, which is lower than that of imported luxury cars at that time." Rao Da believes that the real reason why the red flag was dismounted was that some officials at that time wanted to ride in more comfortable imported cars.

Rao Da said in his blog that during the 26 years from 1958 to 1984, the quality and technical level of Hongqi were greatly improved. During this period, we are also going to cooperate with Ford to carry out model change and substantial technical upgrade. However, at the beginning of the reform, the output of domestic cars was very small, and a large number of Japanese cars were imported, forming a situation in which Gao Qian took domestic cars and middle-level cadres took imported cars, forming an unbalanced situation, which became an important reason for the suspension of production of Hongqi.

According to some data, after the production of Hongqi car was stopped, the central state organs, provincial and municipal government departments increased the import of medium and high-grade cars because of the need to use cars. According to statistics, 173,400 cars were imported from 1982 to 1986, more than twice as many as those imported in the previous 32 years (73,800 cars were imported from 1950 to 1981), of which 106,000 cars were imported in 1985, spending a total of 2.95 billion dollars. ("Looking at Oriental Weekly" special contribution Mu Yi | Beijing report)