The story
Tianjin FAW's first product, debuting in 1965, was a copy of the famous Beijing Jeep called the Tianjin TJ210. Between 1973 and 1979 the Toyota look-alike Tianjin TJ740 was also built, although only 63 were finished.
In the 1980s, Tianjin's directors decided to look abroad for a joint venture to enable them to build modern small cars. In 1983, Daihatsu had been chosen as a partner, and in November 1984 the first vehicle rolled out from the works. At first, local parts content was a mere 8%, but this had jumped to 85% by the end of 1987. The first product was a locally built Daihatsu Hijet in 1984, followed by the Charade which began local assembly in 1986.
Production began at a modest level, with 2873 automobiles (Charade) and 9329 minivans (Hijet) assembled in 1988, for a total of 12,202 vehicles. This increased rapidly, to an annual total of nearly 88,000 cars by 1996.
Before the Toyota joint venture, Tianjin FAW produced the Tianjin Xiali TJ730 (based on the 1983 Daihatsu Charade) and then the TJ7100-TJ7131 hatchback and TJ7100U-TJ7131U sedan under the Xiali brand that was formed in August 1997. Xiali (夏利) is Chinese for "Charade". The TJ7100-series cars, based on the 1987 Charade. They were very popular in China as taxicabs throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, when the Chinese Volkswagen Jetta also joined the taxi market, followed by the Hyundai Sonata and Elantra in the 2000s. The Xiali taxi was retired from taxi use in February 2006 in an effort to cut down pollution.
Production of the Daihatsu-based Xiali N3 ran from 2004 to 2012. Production at the Tianjin Xiali plant had shifted to more modern Toyota vehicles, for example the Xiali 2000 that was based on the Toyota Platz/Vitz but the production of the much cheaper Xiali outlived the Xiali 2000. Toyota also builds and sells vehicles in China under its own brand.
The Xiali brand was discontinued in 2015 and was replaced by the new brand called Junpai.
From 1984 to 2002, Tianjin FAW manufactured Hijet-based Daihatsu mini trucks in China rebranded as Huali Dafa. Currently Huali offers the first generation Daihatsu Terios and second generation Daihatsu Move.
FAW Tianjin also produced the Miles ZX40, an electric version of the Daihatsu Move which became the first Chinese-built vehicle sold in the United States when it was offered in mid-2006 by Miles Automotive Group.
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Since 2012, FAW Xiali's net profit after deducting non-recurring items has been negative, and sales have also begun to decline year by year, from 185,000 units in 2012 to 37,000 units in 2016. During this period, due to two consecutive years of losses in 2013 and 2014, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued a delisting risk warning. In June 2019, Xiali officially stopped producing models, with an annual output of only 1,186 units.
On December 23, 2019, FAW Xiali issued an announcement to disclose the asset restructuring plan with China Railway Materials. China First Automobile Co., Ltd. plans to transfer its approximately 697 million shares of FAW Xiali (accounting for 43.73% of FAW Xiali's total share capital before this transaction) to China Railway Materials free of charge. On January 8, 2021, FAW Xiali was renamed China Railway Materials, from then on the reorganized company no longer engaged in automobile production business.
From Wikipedia’s article on Tianjin FAW, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3