A visit to the Shanghai Auto Museum (上海汽车博物馆)

---

The first cars in Shanghai were two cabriolets imported by a Hungarian businessman that wanted to show his wealth about town and perhaps show try his luck with the local ladies, the arrival of his two cabriolets was big news about town, and the local car culture was thus born.

Shanghai has been a major automotive hub for the past 100 years, from both wealthy foreigners bringing their cars into the colonial areas to military invasions from Japan, and domestic production of locally developed vehicles and foreign vehicles in the 40’s to the Chinese post war self developed cars, the museum is here to tell you all about it, a job which it does fantastically.

The Shanghai Auto Museum is based in Anting, not far from Shanghai’s Auto City which is a combined metropolis of car dealers and car makers with the giant Buick building overlooking the entire show. The museum itself is a brand new five story building located 15 minutes from subway line 11 by taxi. The building is a large airy block that appears to have been designed with being an automotive museum in mind, the long upwards walkways between floors make it easy for the curators to get their stunning cars in and out without much hassle.

Although it is a five story building, you would expect it to be jam packed with cars. This is not the case, there are around 70 to 100 cars in their at anyone point the majority of them appearing to be American cars from the 70’s which really do show the train of thought at the time, 3 meters wide and at least six long appeared to be the average car length of that generation, whilst the Euro cars such as the Fiat 500 appeared to be no more than 2 meters long. A fair few of the cars in the museum were part of a cultural exchange by the American Blackhawk group, dealer and collector of antique cars. The highlight of the afternoon being the American classics that I had only ever seen in the media, and the old British cars such as the Austin7 and the Rover P6 as well as an E-Type Jaguar, the afternoon really did have me wondering where did it all go so wrong for the British car industry.

Entrance to the museum is relatively cheap at 60rmb, or 40rmb for students (don’t forget your ID card though, they don’t believe you otherwise), if you go during the week it’s highly likely that you will be the only guest and will have plenty of very friendly (and bored) curators to ask questions to, even if you go at the weekend its probable that it will still be very quiet.

In short, the museum is well worth a visit if you have an afternoon to burn. The museum’s biggest drawback is not its lack of cars but its lack of public awareness and remoteness. Go there, you will enjoy it if you’re a car nut.

How to get there:
Take the subway line no 11 from Jiang Su Road to the end of the line. Cost will be 6rmb.
Take a taxi and tell the driver to go to the Shanghai Auto Museum (上海市嘉定区安亭镇博园路7565号 No 7565 Bo Yuan Road, Anting Zhen, Jiading Qu, Shanghai), expect to pay 150rmb one way at least.

Apologies for the poor pictures, it was a last minute visit and I only had my camera phone to hand.