A Volkswagen Santana 2000 in heavy rain in Beijing. Note the cool Xiali sedan in the background on the right.
This vehicle belongs to fire prevention and control (消防) department of the police, so it is a bit of both a police car and a fire brigade car. The white license plate are used by the police, People’s Armed Police (PAP), and by the armed forces.
I took this photo in 2010, when the old white license plates were still in use. WJ stands for wujing (武警), a collective abbreviation police and armed forces. 31 stands for Beijing.
The Santana 2000 was one of many Santana variants manufactured by the SAIC-Volkswagen joint venture in Shanghai. It was rather rare to see Shanghai-made cars in public service in Beijing, as the local government mostly bought locally-made cars, like Hyundai’s and Beijing’s and such.
In any way, with so much rain the fire fighters probably had an easy night!
