Did a bit of reading into SAIC's history as one of China's oldest car companies and can't help but feel like they have a massive missed opportunity with their Shanghai lineup of cars.
Shanghai was first known as Fenghuang aka phoenix during the prototype stage. This first picture shows a reconstructed Shanghai 760 prototype along with its ornament that was later removed in production vehicles. From what I know the ornament design actually differed from car to car because they were handmade.
These two pictures are interesting. It is a very rare prototype of the SH760 that has very little real pictures. But it has an incredibly dominating design with 2 massive dragons in the front.
Finally they decided to go with a plain design with a shield logo with shanghai written on it, as a more plain step down from the Hongqi reserved for higher officials.
Links to more of these early car pictures:
In fact, there was news of the brand's revival back in 2012, around the same time that Hongqi got revived in 2013 as part of a government push:
It was supposed to be a high end fuel cell brand to be unveiled in 2012 Beijing Auto Show, but for some reason it never happened.
After seeing FAW's success with Hongqi I can't help but feel SAIC missed a golden goose. It could have become China's equivalent of Audi, like how Hongqi is kind of China's equivalent of Mercedes.
A modernised Fenghuang brand, incorporating these early design elements like the Phoenix ornament, perhaps a little bit of dragon styling would probably have done better than SAIC's current attempts to produce high end cars like IM Motor, Feifan etc that have no history to speak of and little unique selling points.
