This is a Beijing Weiwang 306 police van, seen in the Sanlitun embassy area in Beijing in December 2011. The van was brand new and looked very nice in police livery. It had a police light-siren unit on the roof but I didn’t see any additional lights on the bumpers.
Weiwang (威旺) was a sub-brand under Beijing Auto, founded in 2011. Weiwang-branded cars were produced by Beiqi Yinxiang Automobile, a joint venture between Beijing Auto (Beiqi) and the Yinxiang Motorcycle Group from Chongqing. This joint venture also sold the Huansu brand.
In 2019, during one of the many restructurings at Beijing Auto, the Weiwang brand was killed off. Over its short existence, Weiwang made a series of minivans, mini MPVs, and a small pickup truck. Those were fine cars mostly, too bad the brand is no longer with us today.
The rear: left: 北京汽车, Beijing Auto. Center: the Weiwang logo, with ‘BEIJING’ lettering. Right: 威旺306, Weiwang 306. Right-bottom: BJ6400L3R, the official designation of this particular version of the 306.
It was powered by a 1.3 liter four-cylinder petrol engine with an output of 82 hp and 102 Nm. The motor was mated to a 5-speed manual gearbox, sending horses to the from wheels. It has a sliding door on the right and seven seats in a 2/2/3 setup. The Weiwang 306 was very cheap with a base price in 2011 of only 36.800 yuan.
A little further I found another 3 306’s. One painted in blue, another police version, and, at the front, one in white and blue. It did have 公安 (gong ‘an) stickers on the doors but no other police signs or lights. Perhaps one for more discrete police business… Gong ‘ an means public security, a blanket term for law enforcement entities. At the time I suspected these were new cars for the local Sanlitun police department but I never saw them again in the area. Perhaps they were shipped elsewhere.