Driving from Los Angeles to Pebble Beach for Car Week means that you adjust your car-spotting expectations significantly. You go into this knowing you’re going to be seeing some rare and remarkable cars, and you’ll just have to calibrate your brain’s Losing Your Shit sliders accordingly. Otherwise, you’ll just end up in a delirious coma of astoundednessitude, due to the constant flow of cars that would, under normal circumstances, have you talking about them all week. Even knowing this, I don’t think I was prepared to see one particular staggeringly rare car that looked a lot like a staggeringly normal car, and it all happened in, of all places, a Carl’s Jr parking lot.
The car started life as a Lincoln Town Car but is now a Hongqi Qijian (红旗 旗舰) CA 7460. I described what Hongqi cars were about for Jalopnik years ago, when a pair were brought to the Pebble Beach Concurs d’Elegance from the Sanhe Classic Car Museum in Chengdu:
Hong Qi means “red flag” in Chinese, and is the oldest passenger car maker in (well, post-1949) China, being founded in 1958. Hong Qi’s cars were, like Soviet ZIL limousines, not for regular people to drive, but were reserved for government officials, diplomats, dignitaries, and foreign heads of state. If you meet an elderly Chinese person with memories of riding in a Hong Qi, they’re probably a Big Deal.
Now even though I said this particular Hongqi started life as a Lincoln Town car, that doesn’t really make it any less of a Hongqi, because this is how all Hongqi Qijian CA 7460s started life, since Ford supplied nearly-complete Town Cars to the Hongqi factory from 1998 to 2005, where Hongqi changed all the badging, headlights, taillights, trunk lid, grille, added their trademark “red flag” hood ornament, and more.
That also happens to be exactly what Yang, a student at Art Center College of Design and a Hongqi intern, did to his car that we saw in that fateful Carl’s Jr parking lot. You can see the car and Yang and hear what he did here:
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The resulting look definitely still feels like the Town Car, but all of the details are strange and different, from the unique Chinese fan-inspired grille to the slightly more curvaceous trunk lid, to the taillights with their amber indicators, to that wedge of glowing red plastic boldly mounted on the hood.
I think this is pretty incredible; the Hongqi CA 7460 is all but unknown in America, and is incredibly rare in China as well. Yang bought the Town Car in America, then in China managed to find a CA 7460, which he then stripped of its unique parts and took them to America with him, where they were used to transform the Lincoln into the Hongqi.
It’s sort of like how you may have fantasized about getting an old Chrysler 300 and then going to Europe and finding a Lancia Thema, then bringing home all the unique body parts to transform your 300 into a Thema. The only difference is that the Hongqi is much more rare and Yang actually did it.
The ratio of effort expended here to making something conventionally valuable or even recognizable to most people is, by most standards, not great. But to our standards, the only standards that matter right now, I think Yang has done something fantastic. He’s taken a pretty run-of-the-mill Town Car and made it into something baffling and unexpected.
A blip in the basic fabric of reality as we expect it, a peculiar ambassador from the other side of the world, both familiar and unfamiliar.
This is amazing. This is absolutely the type of content that I love to see on the Autopian. And this guy’s car is the type of car-nerd stuff that I just love to geek out over. Park that at a Cars & Coffee and I’m gonna geek out over this.
That being said, the only thing that separates the Lancia Thema from the 300 that it is based off of is the Lancia grille, Lancia Thema badging, and the Lancia badge in the airbag cover. The conversion of this Lincoln was way more in-depth.
While yes, I laugh at people who KDM swap their Hyundai (and will continue to) this is a gem, because of how specific, unusual and low key it is.
This is brilliant!
The VIN says it’s a Lincoln Town Car, so it’s a Lincoln Town Car with some aftermarket parts. Now that the first of those Hong Qi Town Cars are 25 years old, he can legally import one and come back next year with a legitimate car.
Dumb question perhaps but I wonder if the shells are sent to China with FMC VINs already assigned. After all isn’t the Hong Qi itself a “Lincoln Town Car with some aftermarket parts?
More than likely they were the same as the commercial chassis sent to limo companies, so they’d almost certainly have FMC VINs.
Calm down. I know it’s Monday but there’s no need to drop a corn-studded loaf on this kid’s work and efforts. Don’t be such a geriatric grouch.
“there’s no need to drop a corn-studded loaf”
LOL… I’ll have to remember that line…
It may be called the Red Flag, but it’ll always be a coxcomb to me. And I can only imagine the high pitched squeal of recognition/delight a real-life sighting of one on the road would prompt
Congrats, Yang, on bagging the headlamps in pristine condition! I have never one Hongqi “Town Car” without jaundiced or cataracted headlamps. Gathering the unique Hongqi parts and shipping them to the US to be reconstituted on a donor US Town Car is great way of bypassing the 25-year restriction.
Hongqi isn’t only one to fit the taillamps with amber turn signal indicators. Lincoln did sell some Town Cars in Japan (mostly converted into “miyagata”, the most obnoxiously ostentatious hearse cars) and the Netherlands as stretched limousine.
Town Car European taillamps (with integrated reverse lamps due to the wider European licence plates)
Town Car Japanese taillamps (without integrated reverse lamps)
However, Lincoln chose the most bizarre headlamp design ever for the export Town car. The sight isn’t savoury so consider yourself duly warned!
Great details: thanks!
And I appreciate the ‘not savory’ warning there—those things are unsettling.
My fav part has to be the turn signals assuming they’re actually fully functional.
I could not like this fast enough on Insta! What a great find. Wonder what kind of reaction Mr. Yang gets when he drives it around LA.
I can’t help myself, I like the hood ornament.
I think he actually improved the car’s looks, I always thought this generation Town Car styling was intentionally making fun of itself, these changes all tone it down a bit. Well, except the red hood ornament, but that’s such a stunning piece of art on it’s own, and part of the recipe, that you really couldn’t leave it off. Impressive.
A fantastic build!
Much respect.
OK, the car is awesome but what I really want to know is how you found it in that Carl’s Jr. parking lot?
When you’re open to the universe, the universe opens to you.
I shall now commence sitting cross-legged on the floor, emptying my mind of all thought, and releasing all attachments to earthly life. And when that’s done, I’m headed out to canvas fast food parking lots!
Yeah, but it never though that the Universe would expose itself to me in a Carl’s Junior parking lot.
Torch & David’s daily affirmations on “unique car shit” is clearly paying off!
I nearly lost my mind when I saw this at some car show in LA last year. Such a ridiculous car to recreate here but I fully applaud Yang for doing it!
Now, he just needs to find a chauffeur. The owner of this kind of car would never drive it…
Yang is an absolute legend – this is the kind of insanely, quirky, enthusiasm that I admire, and I would guess he spent much less money on his “1 of 2” Hongqi than any other person at Car Week driving a “1 of 2” anything.
You sure you guys didn’t travel so far west you would up east?
I love this, and people who properly re-panel cars to unique models we don’t have. I wanted to the same with my GX460 and make it a proper Land Cruiser Prado 150, but its cost prohibitive for me, and someone already beat me too it (insta URJ150).
yep, you can buy a whole kit, and I think the sellers of said kit are good people
I’m kind of doing that, except I’m actually re-panelling a car to a unique model that never actually existed at all! It’s an early model Australian Valiant utility, panel swapped to make it an earlier model, except it will become the model before the introduction of the utility bodystyle, thus becoming something that was never actually built by Chrysler Australia.
Would that be a VC? If so, are you using the triangular tail lights? I owned a VC Regal back in the 70’s, beautiful car to drive and very comfortable.
Not all heroes wear capes. Apparently, some of them do batshit crazy under the radar conversions wearing a big red Chinese flag for a cape. Bravo! Love this stuff
From the deep reaches of the interwebs, an old friend appears! How are you my man?
I sure hope you weren’t eating Carls Jr in that rare Lincoln?
Absolutely not! We got Arby’s
I presume you got curly fries, like a proper gentleman?
(HongQi pulls up next to the Autopian Lincoln)
“Pardon me, would you happen to have any horsey sauce?”
This is 100% totally awesome and I bow to the genius of this young man.
The Red Army was attempting to capture an important American politician on his way to the airport. Using secret technology stolen from a US government lab in Area 51, they created a quantum entanglement through the Earth which connected a Lincoln Town Car to its parallel universe Hong Qi version in China. The scheme backfired and when the wormhole closed, this kid and the Hong Qi ended up in the US while the Chinese got a 15 year old Lincoln and Hunter Biden.
Nothing says global Communism quite like the Lincoln Town Car! Marx did say “Democracy was the road to Socialism”, however he didn’t expect the Panther platform would be the vehicle to get there.
A friend of mine married a woman from Poland, the first time she saw the mid 1980s Town Car I had at the time, she exclaimed that it looked like the cars they had under Communism, which didn’t quite track, since a Polski Fiat is about as far from that as you’d get, but that was her take on it, anyway.
I mean, it’s not unlike a big Volga in being ancient and body-on-frame.
A Lada 2107 has the same basic details, too, if you’d instead described the Town Car to her over the phone. Square, old-fashioned sedan bodywork with chunky bumpers and an added-on stand-up chrome grille!
So, wait, it’s a Pinko Panther?
That joke was so bad I clousseau’d my eyes.
*golf clap*
Oh wow look! Even China has standards! Real turn signals on those tail lights!
Even China doesn’t allow those lame-ass red turn signals and combination stop/turn signals how about that