Leap forward, from the top stream to the spectator. Author: Pan Lei
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Source | MG 7
In the Yimeng mountain area of Linyi, Shandong Province, there is a village with less than 2000 people called "Gengjia Wangyu Village".
It is famous for the spirit of "Red Yimeng" and belongs to the "fortress village" in the extremely difficult years.
But in the past few decades, this village has been tied to a car brand - for example, it is called "the first village of China's leap forward brand".
This "leap forward" is the first light truck brand in China.
Because the "Huaye Special Vertical Repair Shop", which went out of this village, later became the Nanjing Automobile Factory, and officially launched the "Leap Forward" brand in 1958.
This makes NAC more like a startup company - starting from a small repair shop, then developing into a "car manufacturing plant", and finally becoming a genuine "car manufacturer".
The car enterprises of the same era with NAC belong to another model.
For example, FAW and FAW (Dongfeng) were set up in the form of "battle" - the whole country transferred technical and management talents, formed a huge team, and finally established a super car enterprise similar to the former Soviet Golf Car Factory with huge national investment.
This is also entrepreneurship, but compared with the more self-reliance development mode of NAC, the latter is closer to "entrepreneurship" in the general sense.
Based on this, the "entrepreneurial gene" of NAC, which has grown up in the form of snowball, should have stronger vitality, and at least should continue to play an active role in the Chinese automobile market, which is logical.
However, the reality is that there is no such person in China's automobile market today.
The "Leap Forward Training College" in Wangyu Village, Gengjia, is still in existence, and even has planned an idyllic complex named "Leap Forward Town". But NAC, which created the brand of Leap Forward, has become a background emperor only in the industrial history in the huge development dividend of China's progress to the world's largest automobile market.
Leap Forward, IVECO, Fiat, and Mingjue sum up the life of NAC - from the peak to the end with a sad song.
Leap forward, king of the shortage era
"Leap forward" is the summit of NAC.
This brand, which was born in 1958, was first copied as a "GAZ 51" car from the Soviet Union.
In the childhood of many people, three kinds of cars may be the most common -- NJ130, NJ131, and "35" tractors -- if tractors are also cars.
Among the three models, NJ130 and NJ31 are all made by NAC.
In the era when the state-owned economy plays an absolute role, most of the first cars that the tractor drivers printed with RMB actually drive are the NJ130 light truck called "130".
There are also some people who know a little well, and call them "Gass".
But in fact, on both sides of the front of the car, there is a clear line of factory names, with the words "Nanjing Automobile Factory" written on it.
This is a famous name and has been popular for almost half a century.
Some even call it "Three Auto" - second only to the two giants "First Auto" and "Second Auto" - although the establishment of NAC was actually earlier than that of Second Auto.
The reason why it is honored as "Sanqi" is that in the peak era of NAC, the light vehicles produced by it accounted for 46% of the whole country, which is the mainstay in fact.
However, the leap forward has another meaning for NAC - it is the successful imitation of GAZ 51 that has transformed NAC from "Nanjing Automobile Manufacturing Plant" to "Nanjing Automobile Manufacturing Plant".
This is not easy.
Because in the 1950s, there were more than 100 factories across the country, all of which wanted to engage in such light trucks as GAZ 51.
This is probably the first "car building boom" in China.
The winner takes all who gets it first - at that time, the national light truck market was almost blank.
Of course, it is not only NAC that sees this. Even in Nanjing, there is also a "Chenguang Machine Factory" that wants to build cars.
At that time, there was also a mechanism similar to "horse racing". Whoever got the car first would become an automobile factory.
NAC finally succeeded in building the first car during the rush period.
If the car is not built first, many things may become uncertain.
There is also a small episode - the original plan of the state is to turn NAC into a tractor factory.
But then the director of NAC went to Beijing specially, hoping to make cars.
Later, the situation changed, and Nanjing Tractor Factory stopped, so that NAC could continue to build cars as expected.
The unique entrepreneurial temperament of NAC is also reflected in that, in fact, before copying GAZ 51, NAC had its own CN120 new car project, and the imitation object was the "Prince" brand AKTG flat head light truck from Japan.
This car has almost been completed, and it is said that the technical level has reached the "middle level in Europe", but finally gave way to the imitation GAZ 51 project.
After the first car built was named "Leap Forward" and the factory was officially turned into "Nanjing Automobile Factory", NAC started a glorious period of decades.
During this period, the supply of NAC's products exceeded the demand in most years.
By 1985, NAC had produced 200000 vehicles in total, and the output in that year exceeded 22000, second only to FAW and FAW.
At that time, NAC had as many as 10 factories and 19 professional factories in Nanjing, including the final assembly plant at Lot 401, Zhongyang Road, which was actually "Three Auto".
But in fact, in this year, the Chinese automobile industry is also brewing a special mood - that is, an urgent mood for opening up and introducing technology brought about by a long period of closed door manufacturing - the most intelligent people who take the helm of China's automobile industry have realized that compared with foreign countries, China's local automobile enterprises have lagged far behind.
And someone has already made a demonstration - at the end of July 1985, Guangzhou Peugeot was founded - even earlier, it was Beijing Jeep and the god like Shanghai Volkswagen.
The trend is obvious, and NAC has also taken action.
This project is Nanjing Iveco.
Domestic IVECO offline Source: Nanjing IVECO official website
Iveco, a secret wish
How hot was Nanjing Iveco?
There was a time when I often needed to go back to Luoyang from Zhengzhou, about 150 kilometers away, and the travel time of ordinary buses was about 3 hours.
Every time I want to be in a hurry, someone at the station always says, "Take Iveco.".
It only takes less than 2 hours to sit in Iveco.
This is my first impression of IVECO, and it also shows that Nanjing IVECO at that time has become a phenomenal model of high-speed passenger transport.
Moreover, from the perspective of time, it is not too late for NAC to start. In 1985, NAC and IVECO signed a technology transfer contract, and the following year, the two sides officially signed a contract.
In retrospect, Iveco's conditions for NAC can be regarded as excellent - the Italian government provides $110 million in low interest loans, and another $100 million in export credit.
Surprisingly, the construction period of Nanjing Iveco is a little long. It was started in 1986 and completed in 1994.
However, as the "second venture" of NAC, this project is still attracting much attention.
Nanjing Iveco's challenge to NAC is that it is the first time to jump from light truck to light passenger car, which makes NAC closer to passenger cars - which may satisfy NAC's secret desire.
An interesting detail is that the focus of Nanjing IVECO's technology introduction is still light truck, because NAC does not want to continue to live in the shadow of GAZ. However, what was unexpected was that Iveco light trucks were not really accepted by Chinese users. Instead, light trucks almost dominated the high-speed passenger transport market.
This is a little bit of the east is not bright and the west is bright, which also pushes NAC to a new peak.
In 1995, the output of NAC exceeded 80000 sets, including more than 10000 sets of IVECO. NAC still maintained the name of China's largest light vehicle manufacturer.
Also in this year, NAC was officially reorganized as "Yuejin Auto Group".
This is almost the second peak of NAC - if the indicators in 1995 are taken as an assessment, NAC's second venture can be called brilliant.
However, the hidden danger has emerged.
From the data point of view, NAC has been unable to maintain its position as the third largest car company in China - the output of FAW, Shanghai Volkswagen and Dongfeng has exceeded that of NAC.
Even with light truck as the basic market, NAC is a little powerless. When dealing with competitors with Japanese characteristics such as Qingling and Jiangling, although the sales volume is still dominant, the economic benefits have fallen behind.
The flat head light truck from Isuzu, Japan, is liked by users for its excellent economy, while the Iveco short head light truck technology introduced by NAC is difficult to match Japanese brands in terms of applicability.
This is similar to the competition in the field of passenger cars - the reliability and economy of Japanese cars cannot be rejected by most users.
Another uncertainty is light passenger transport.
Although Nanjing Iveco has set off a trend in the high-speed passenger transport market, with annual sales of more than 20000 units at the peak, after more and more long-distance luxury buses, Iveco's relatively small body size and poor ride comfort became prominent.
This makes Iveco's popularity in high-speed passenger transport more of a flash in the pan.
However, NAC should still thank Iveco, which made NAC earn more than 400 million yuan in 1998.
After the popularity of Iveco, competitors also came to us. Also around 1995, Jiangling was ready to cooperate with Ford to develop "Quanshun" light passenger products. The price was about 200000 yuan, similar to that of Iveco.
It is also worth mentioning that the success of Shanghai Volkswagen and the crowds of visitors at major auto shows have shown that passenger cars will be the largest asset in China's auto market, while NAC has been constrained by the positioning of "light cars", and has been unable to do passenger cars according to their own minds, which is a great stimulus to NAC.
At that time, the legend was that "no sedan, no wealth", and light vehicles, such commercial vehicles, did not have much fuel and water, so NAC was planning to build cars for the third time.
Nanjing Fiat, one year brilliant
The passenger car road of NAC is quite legendary, and all kinds of tricks have been used.
At first, NAC built a plot of land in Jiangning, saying that it would relocate the plant, but actually it was preparing for the production of cars.
But what about technology?
NAC raised most of its own funds and bought a used car production line from Seattle (later acquired by Volkswagen Group) to produce a project named "multi-purpose agricultural vehicle".
In order to promote the project, NAC also drew a "Lion Group" from Malaysia as an endorsement and established a "agricultural vehicle joint venture" to acquire the second-hand production line.
These things happened around 1997.
It is not difficult to see that in order to produce cars, NAC has played a variety of sidekicks on the edge of the policy.
All these operations are aimed at breaking through the label of "light vehicle" and successfully launching the sedan project.
However, at that time, it was still impossible to obtain a formal car license plate, so the "Ingel" car produced by this project actually appeared in the national automobile catalog in the name of "commercial vehicle".
The idea of NAC is to make the car project a fait accompli by circuitous means, and get on the car first and then buy tickets.
To some extent, it was a successful adventure.
Lion Group soon withdrew from the joint venture with NAC, and Fiat took over the offer with 60 million US dollars in 1999, which opened the era of Fiat for NAC.
But is there any sequela to this strategy of exploiting policy loopholes?
The answer is yes.
Nanjing Fiat built the first Pellio with Fiat logo, but it could not be listed in the national car catalog.
In order to solve this problem, NAC wrote more than a year's inspection to the competent department before it officially obtained the car production qualification.
However, after breaking away from the policy constraints, Nanjing Fiat is considered to represent the Italian design style because of its fashionable appearance and compact body of the Pellio model. Even the F1 god Schumacher is also the station platform.
Pellio, which was put on the market at the end of January 2002, rolled out its 20000 cars in December of that year, and sold 36900 new cars in 2003.
This makes the success of NAC's third venture look easy to get.
Unfortunately, Fiat was in a mess in those years.
At the end of 2000, Fiat Group fell into a debt black hole - although the alliance with GM this year brought 18.4 euros of blood transfusion funds (the consideration was 20% equity), it did not really solve the financial crisis.
In the situation of being too busy, Fiat played down the attitude of the joint venture Nanjing Fiat and did not introduce any new models.
Even engines cannot be introduced into the joint venture because they contain GE technology.
This makes the joint venture can only rely on three compact products, including Pellio, Siena and Weekend Wind - in fact, these are niche market models, which are difficult to play the role of mass models.
Or it can be said that Fiat's weak performance does not have enough vehicle resources to put into Nanjing Fiat.
Now it seems that Nanjing Fiat is right to expect to produce medium and high class cars, but the European brand of Fiat is more of a small car.
In addition, Fiat personnel changes frequently in the turbulence, which also affected the joint venture - from 2002 until the closing of the joint venture, Nanjing Fiat appointed a total of five general managers.
After Marchionne took the helm of Fiat, he began to pay more attention to financial indicators. The loss of Nanjing Fiat was also a burden to him.
The contradiction between the two parties in the joint venture has intensified - since 2005, when NAC purchased the bankrupt MG Rover with 53 million pounds, and intended to shift resources to the MG brand, it actually has no hope for Nanjing Fiat.
This is the last big bet.
The two parties of Nanjing Fiat's joint venture have been divorced from each other, and the marriage officially ended at the end of 2007.
"Nanjing Grand Prix" represents the identity of NAC
Sir, the last fight
The acquisition of MG Rover by NAC was a fight, but it did not achieve the desired result.
This fight has even surpassed NAC itself - the governments of Jiangsu Province and Nanjing City, hoping to save NAC in a short time through this acquisition.
The background is that since 2002, NAC has become a state-owned enterprise in Jiangsu Province rather than a subsidiary of "China National Automobile Corporation".
At that time, NAC was in a bad situation.
In 1995, NAC could barely rank the fifth in the output of auto enterprises in China (less than 300 more than the sixth Beijing Jeep), but by 2000 at the turn of the century, it had dropped to 12th place.
Jiangsu Province and Nanjing witnessed the decline of NAC and intended to revitalize this meritorious auto company, so they invested as much as 800 million yuan in NAC.
But it also puts forward a clear KPI - the sales target of 100000 units in 2003 and 300000 units in 2005.
Nanjing Fiat is still in the state of annual sales of 20000 to 30000 sets, which makes NAC realize that it must look for new opportunities to start a new medium and high class car project.
The bankrupt MG Rover is regarded as an ideal goal.
Once the acquisition moves forward, it can drive the whole of NAC to achieve a major strategic transformation of "from business to business".
In the proposal for the acquisition project, NAC said that this was "a major move to achieve leapfrog development and an excellent development opportunity" for NAC Group.
In order to fight this battle well, NAC set up a "566" (June 6, 2005) project team to bid for MG Rover.
But before NAC started, SAIC had almost taken the lead - at the end of 2004, SAIC spent 67 million pounds to buy the core intellectual property rights of Rover.
In fact, the original plan of NAC and SAIC was to jointly set up an investment company and jointly bid for MG Rover.
However, as NAC pinned its hopes on this acquisition, the two sides have changed from partners to bidding rivals.
This makes the acquisition of MG Rover actually become an auction of SAIC and NAC.
At the critical moment of the acquisition, Chen Hong, Chairman of SAIC Motor, flew to the UK and the highest bid reached 60 million pounds.
However, in the end, the competition ended successfully in NAC - although the acquisition conditions were actually very strict.
The conditions for completing the acquisition include that NAC needs to employ at least 2000 employees of the acquiree and continue to produce two MG cars in the UK.
However, these conditions were diluted in the emotional state of defeating SAIC at that time.
It seems that as long as we defeat SAIC in this acquisition, we can defeat SAIC in the market.
After the completion of the acquisition, NAC quickly promoted the MG MG project.
At the beginning of 2007, NAC pushed the MG off the production line and delivered it to users in less than half a year.
From the product level, the first model MG7 has a remarkable British style and a high recognition rate.
Unfortunately, the sales volume of the Mingjue project did not rise as expected, and only 3000 units were sold in 2007.
This may have something to do with people's perception of medium and advanced models when the Chinese automobile market was in its infancy.
A typical case is Beijing Hyundai.
This car company, a joint venture of BAIC and Hyundai, sold more than 50000 new cars in its first year in China, and Sonata, the main sales force in that year, sold 179000-26500 yuan.
At that time, Beijing Hyundai, as a joint venture car company, had endorsements from Hyundai Group, which enabled it to gain users in the high-end market.
However, it still needs a process of user acceptance for NAC to use the assets of the bankrupt company it has acquired to make such models with similar positioning - MG's recognition in China is not high.
At that time, the price range of MG7 reached 171600-302800 yuan, and the price ceiling even exceeded the Sonata of Beijing Hyundai.
Moreover, NAC itself has long lost its brand influence.
The feedback from the market side is that, at least in the short term, the MG Grand Prix project makes people fail to see the hope of the resurgence of NAC.
In 2007, the output of NAC was only 94000 units, and all expected indicators fell short.
This makes NAC look like a bottomless pit, which has exhausted all the thoughts of the rescuers.
So another option appears.
After several months of negotiations, NAC was annexed by SAIC and was no longer an independent automobile group.
"Light vehicle" is both a crown and a shackle
Most people's final impression of NAC may be Nanjing Fiat.
The iconic fashionable car produced by this joint venture company has briefly triggered an Italian trend.
Mingjue brand is now owned by SAIC Motor Corporation, and it has become popular overseas. In the middle of last year, Mingjue sold its 1000000th new car in the overseas market.
But all this has nothing to do with NAC.
Then the question arises - where did NAC lose?
The label of "light vehicle" is both a crown and a shackle.
In the past 40 years, the mainstream of the rise of Chinese cars has always been passenger cars, rather than the commercial vehicles started by NAC.
People often say that China has entered the automobile era, which means that every family has passenger cars, not 130 or 131 small trucks.
This naturally excludes NAC from the development dividend.
It is not difficult to find that the peak years of NAC are actually the shortage era of "NJ130" without competitors.
When the door of a joint venture car company was opened by Shanghai Volkswagen, and NAC also wanted to introduce a joint venture, it was Isuzu that was in its sights.
It can't be blamed that NAC doesn't want to engage in passenger cars, but the positioning of "light vehicles" has become a shackle for NAC to switch passenger cars for a long time.
In this case, Isuzu is already the best choice - although Iveco finally reached cooperation.
Another reason may be that Nanjing is not Shanghai.
Volkswagen Group is also confused about its joint venture partner, "Shanghai Tractor Factory", but this project is regarded as the benchmark of Shanghai and the opening up of China's automobile industry, so everything is not a problem.
But the policy of NAC is less tolerant when it wants to engage in passenger cars.
This also has something to do with the subordination of NAC - sometimes NAC belongs to the central enterprise, sometimes it is a municipal state-owned enterprise, and sometimes it becomes a provincial state-owned enterprise.
In the constantly changing role, NAC has to explain for half a day who is the child of its own family. It is too difficult for NAC to continue to get policy benefits.
The last point may be the bad luck.
Iveco started talking about it in 1985, but it took more than 8 years to put it into production. Some of the sudden factors are really difficult to control, which can only be attributed to the god of destiny.
Fiat, a joint venture of curve, did not expect Fiat to pull its legs like that, even without a medium and large car.
This has made China's once most innovative car enterprises gradually deviate from the development track of mainstream car enterprise groups.
If NAC had a joint venture with a giant auto company like Ford and GM, would the result be different?
There is no if, and there is no time gem - all the car companies that are still alive have been roasted on the fire, but they have carried it, while NAC has not.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
