SAIC Motor
Founders
Chen Xianglin · Founded 1955 · HQ today: Shanghai, China
SAIC Motor was founded by Chen Xianglin in 1955. It is now led by Wang Xiaoqiu.
SAIC grew out of Shanghai's auto workshops of the 1950s. It built the Phoenix sedan in 1958 and the Shanghai SH760 from 1964. In 1984 it signed China's first car joint venture with Volkswagen to build the Santana. A second joint venture with General Motors followed in 1997. In 2007 SAIC merged with Nanjing Automobile, which had bought the MG brand after MG Rover collapsed in 2005. MG later became the centre of SAIC's export push.
A career manager in Shanghai's state-owned automotive sector.
Chen Xianglin was a senior executive of the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation in the 1990s and early 2000s, during the period when SAIC Motor was restructured and listed and the SAIC-GM joint venture was formed. SAIC has no single founder; it grew out of Shanghai's state-run auto industry, which dates to 1955. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Wang Xiaoqiu
Chairman of the Board
As President, he successfully managed the incredibly complex global rollout of the MG brand, making SAIC the absolute largest exporter of Chinese-made automobiles in the world.
Jia Jianxu
President & Director
Appointed as President in 2024, he oversees the company's severe cost-cutting initiatives and attempts to navigate the massive, impending European tariffs on Chinese EVs.
SAIC Motor was not founded by a single private individual; it was created as a state-sponsored industrial collective in Shanghai in 1955, organized by the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Mechanical and Electrical Industries to establish domestic automotive component and vehicle manufacturing.
The earliest institutional predecessor was the Shanghai Internal Combustion Engine Components Company, established in 1955 by amalgamating dozens of small automotive repair workshops, metal foundries, and parts manufacturers across Shanghai.
In December 1958, Shanghai auto craftsmen hand-built the "Fenghuang" (Phoenix) prototype, which went into serial production in 1964 as the "Shanghai SH760." Until the 1980s, the SH760 was one of only two passenger cars manufactured in China (alongside the FAW Hongqi), serving as the standard car for government officials.
Chinese engineers and master metalworkers disassembled a 1956 Mercedes-Benz 220S and a Plymouth sedan, using wooden hammers and hand-beaten sheet metal to create prototype body panels, demonstrating extraordinary artisanal resourcefulness.
Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang, Vice Premier Bo Yibo, and Shanghai Mayor Wang Daohan championed the revolutionary policy of opening China to foreign automotive joint ventures, personally negotiating with Volkswagen CEO Carl Hahn to establish SAIC-Volkswagen in 1984.
When SAIC-VW began assembling the Santana in 1985, less than 3% of the car's components were made in China. Under government mandate, SAIC established the "Santana Localization Community," modernizing hundreds of Chinese glass, steel, rubber, and electronics factories to achieve 90%+ domestic parts content by 1997.
The Shanghai Municipal Government created a dedicated local surcharge tax on every Santana sold, channeling billions of yuan into municipal infrastructure, modern industrial parks in Anting (Jiading District), and funding advanced automotive engineering laboratories.
Dr. Carl Hahn, Chairman of Volkswagen Group in the 1980s, took a historic gamble that China would become the world's largest car market, committing German engineering capital to SAIC when all other Western automakers dismissed China as an impoverished nation of bicycles.
In the early 1990s, the municipal entity restructured into Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (Group), and in 1997 established Shanghai Automotive Co., Ltd., listing shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE: 600104) to attract commercial capital.
The Shanghai Auto Museum in Anting, Shanghai (China's first dedicated automobile museum) houses pristine restored models of the 1958 Fenghuang prototype, the Shanghai SH760, and early Santana sedans, honoring SAIC's pioneering craftspeople.
The founding generation established a dual ethos: the tenacious grit to bootstrap complex manufacturing from zero, and the openness to master international engineering standards through foreign collaboration.
The early pioneers transformed Shanghai from a city with zero modern automotive infrastructure into the automotive capital of China, anchoring a multi-billion-dollar global supply chain that now exports millions of vehicles worldwide.
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