And on that day in 2003, I went to an old housing complex in Beijing. It is very beautiful and fully accessible but tourists have never found out about it, and as far as I know the place still exists. Luckily, I saw some great cars.
This is a 4th generation Pontiac Firebird, made from 1993 until 2002. Even though it was not officially sold in China by General Motors there are quite a few of these in country, so I guess there must have been some gray-market trade. Note how wide the license plate is compared to the original U.S.-market license plate frame. This particular car would later become very famous because of its ultra special 京C 72222 license plate.
Right behind the Firebird stood a perfectly maintained W140 Mercedes-Benz S600. There are trillions of W140’s in China, some rather special ones too, and only in recent years they have started to disappear from the roads.
Behind the S600 stands a Toyota Previa MPV. The Previa has an incredible complex history in China. Toyota sold it officially, there was illegal assembly in Guangdong, and a creative Chinese company even made a fully fake one!
Behind the Previa stands a FAW-Volkswagen Audi A6 sedan.
The complex’s main building. It was October 9 and winter was starting up. The clock says it was 20:00 but it certainly was not. At 20:00 it is dark. And it was also certainly not 08:00, in those days I was never out and about before 13:00. A few more cars here: in front of the main building a white Dongfeng-PSA Citroen Fukang, to the left a Dongfeng-PSA Citroen Elysee, another FAW-VW Audi A6, and finally a Daewoo Racer.
The A6 had a cool blue 京A license plate.
When I left the area I saw a man getting into a Xiali TJ7100 taxi, carrying three large bags of goods, seemingly clothes bought at one of the many shops around the place. Happily, I was on my bicycle.