View the profileThe history of the Nanjing Automobile Corporation can be traced back to March 27th 1947 when a repair shop was set up in Shandong province in northern China to repair some of China’s most common motorised vehicles of the time, the American built Sherman tanks run by the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) East China Field Army. This would have presented a fair challenge, as it’s unlikely the Americans would have been supplying the PLA with spare parts at the time; the tanks after all were ones that the PLA had captured from their opponents rather than ones they had purchased. Nanjing at the time was held by the opposing forces and was not taken by the PLA until April 23rd 1949 with the PLA repair shop setting up in existing Nanjing workshops on July 13th of the same year.
Vehicle production didn’t begin until 1958, when they put China’s first light truck into production. The truck was known as the Yuejin (Leap Forward) and the Yuejin company has successfully been producing light trucks ever since. In addition to the light trucks they also have bus and special vehicle (road maintenance, military etc) divisions plus a joint venture with IVECO trucks of Italy producing small to medium sized trucks. All of these businesses have run reasonably successfully throughout their history with Yujin being one of Chinas leading Automotive companies up until the expansion of the Chinese car industry.
The one thing missing above is car production, mass production of cars didn’t start in China until the mid 1990’s when the government decided to kick start the industry with some significant investment in a few of the larger automotive companies. Various local governments also invested on a much smaller scale in their local industries. The result is a small number of large, well funded and successful companies such as the Shanghai Automobile Industry Corporation (SAIC) and First Automobile Works (FAW) and a whole load of far smaller and less successful companies including, as far as cars were concerned, Yuejin.
Its name was changed to Yuejin Motor Company in 1995 in order to take part in the automobile revolution. A reorganisation took place in 2000 bringing in extra investment to form Yuejin Automobile Group and the The Nanjing Automobile Corporation (NAC) was formed by Yuejin and a number of local government investment companies in 2003 with Yuejin itself being the controlling shareholder. Following formation of NAC, the Yuejin name was publicly used only as the brand name of NAC’s light truck range.
Before the introduction of MG, NAC’s car production consisted of Nanjing Soyat and Nanjing Fiat. Nanjing Soyat was a small and throughout its life not very successful venture part owned by NAC. It was somewhat surprisingly, still producing and selling small numbers of cars up until the beginning of 2008. Nanjing Fiat was a 50-50 joint venture with Fiat cars of Italy which achieved higher production figures than Soyat but was never profitable and production numbers failed to increase over the years. After much public argument about its future, by the end of 2007 Fiat had pulled out of the joint venture, selling their 50% stake to NAC for the grand sum of €1 (One euro), their factory was converted during the first half of 2008 to produce VW Santanas for SAIC.
The remaining brand of NAC, MG, was one of the British brands that BMW took possession of when it bought the Austin Rover Group from British Aerospace in 1994. In 1999 it split the group, selling Land Rover to Ford, retaining the Mini and selling the remaining assets to the British Phoenix Venture Holdings (PVH) for the grand sum of £1 (one British pound). Since then both Land Rover and Mini have been very successful while MG-Rover (MGR), set up by PVH consistently made losses, both financially and in market share, finally running out of money and entering bankruptcy, or more accurately administration, in the spring of 2005. The administrators sold the entire assets, including the MG brand, to NAC in the summer of 2005.
Both NAC and MGR suffered from having insufficient investment to produce new car designs competitive with the larger automotive groups while at the same time they were attempting to compete with those larger groups, a problem which both companies where seeking a solution to almost from the time of their formation. Eventually MGR lost the fight while NAC eventually merged itself into the Shanghai Automotive Industries Coorporation (SAIC) at the end of December 2008.
NAC still exists as a subsiduary of SAIC, MG has been seperated out and is now part of SAIC Motor along with its sister brand - Roewe.
Yuejin has now been re-formed and is part owner of a joint venture with SAIC known as the Tung Wah Group (East China Company) (25% NAC, 75% SAIC) which supplies automotive components to various manufacturers, most significantly the MG and Roewe brands and the NAC Iveco truck and bus brands. The Tung Wah Group was originally formed in early 2004 during a previous attempt to merge NAC, SAIC and MG-Rover, which was at that time still in business however they failed to reach an agreement and it was abandoned until the begining of July 2008 when, as part of the merger with SAIC, it was reformed to take control of most of NACs subsidiary companies excluding MG.
© 2009 www.MGUK.org
Vehicle production didn’t begin until 1958, when they put China’s first light truck into production. The truck was known as the Yuejin (Leap Forward) and the Yuejin company has successfully been producing light trucks ever since. In addition to the light trucks they also have bus and special vehicle (road maintenance, military etc) divisions plus a joint venture with IVECO trucks of Italy producing small to medium sized trucks. All of these businesses have run reasonably successfully throughout their history with Yujin being one of Chinas leading Automotive companies up until the expansion of the Chinese car industry.
The one thing missing above is car production, mass production of cars didn’t start in China until the mid 1990’s when the government decided to kick start the industry with some significant investment in a few of the larger automotive companies. Various local governments also invested on a much smaller scale in their local industries. The result is a small number of large, well funded and successful companies such as the Shanghai Automobile Industry Corporation (SAIC) and First Automobile Works (FAW) and a whole load of far smaller and less successful companies including, as far as cars were concerned, Yuejin.
Its name was changed to Yuejin Motor Company in 1995 in order to take part in the automobile revolution. A reorganisation took place in 2000 bringing in extra investment to form Yuejin Automobile Group and the The Nanjing Automobile Corporation (NAC) was formed by Yuejin and a number of local government investment companies in 2003 with Yuejin itself being the controlling shareholder. Following formation of NAC, the Yuejin name was publicly used only as the brand name of NAC’s light truck range.
Before the introduction of MG, NAC’s car production consisted of Nanjing Soyat and Nanjing Fiat. Nanjing Soyat was a small and throughout its life not very successful venture part owned by NAC. It was somewhat surprisingly, still producing and selling small numbers of cars up until the beginning of 2008. Nanjing Fiat was a 50-50 joint venture with Fiat cars of Italy which achieved higher production figures than Soyat but was never profitable and production numbers failed to increase over the years. After much public argument about its future, by the end of 2007 Fiat had pulled out of the joint venture, selling their 50% stake to NAC for the grand sum of €1 (One euro), their factory was converted during the first half of 2008 to produce VW Santanas for SAIC.
The remaining brand of NAC, MG, was one of the British brands that BMW took possession of when it bought the Austin Rover Group from British Aerospace in 1994. In 1999 it split the group, selling Land Rover to Ford, retaining the Mini and selling the remaining assets to the British Phoenix Venture Holdings (PVH) for the grand sum of £1 (one British pound). Since then both Land Rover and Mini have been very successful while MG-Rover (MGR), set up by PVH consistently made losses, both financially and in market share, finally running out of money and entering bankruptcy, or more accurately administration, in the spring of 2005. The administrators sold the entire assets, including the MG brand, to NAC in the summer of 2005.
Both NAC and MGR suffered from having insufficient investment to produce new car designs competitive with the larger automotive groups while at the same time they were attempting to compete with those larger groups, a problem which both companies where seeking a solution to almost from the time of their formation. Eventually MGR lost the fight while NAC eventually merged itself into the Shanghai Automotive Industries Coorporation (SAIC) at the end of December 2008.
NAC still exists as a subsiduary of SAIC, MG has been seperated out and is now part of SAIC Motor along with its sister brand - Roewe.
Yuejin has now been re-formed and is part owner of a joint venture with SAIC known as the Tung Wah Group (East China Company) (25% NAC, 75% SAIC) which supplies automotive components to various manufacturers, most significantly the MG and Roewe brands and the NAC Iveco truck and bus brands. The Tung Wah Group was originally formed in early 2004 during a previous attempt to merge NAC, SAIC and MG-Rover, which was at that time still in business however they failed to reach an agreement and it was abandoned until the begining of July 2008 when, as part of the merger with SAIC, it was reformed to take control of most of NACs subsidiary companies excluding MG.
© 2009 www.MGUK.org
