Beijing Auto Works Qishi S12 Listed & Priced

February 1, 2011 by Tycho de Feijter

Beijing Auto Works is a brand from BAIC, Beijing Automotive Industry Corporation. ‘Beijing Auto’ is another brand from BAIC, they bought the old Saabs and make the Benz B-copy. These names are confusing indeed and so most Chinese just call the company with all of its products and brands simply ‘BeiQi’, an abbreviation of Beijing Qiche which means Beijing Auto.

The BAW Qishi S12 is a continuation of the Beijing-Jeep Cherokee. BAIC and Jeep (first AMC, later Chrysler) had a joint venture called Beijing-Jeep that made the Cherokee for the Chinese market, it started in 1984 and was killed in 2009.

BAIC kept the tooling and the rights to make the now ancient Cherokee for those few eager buyers in China. The name changed from ‘Cherokee’ to Qishi, meaning ‘knight’ and now there is the updated Qishi S12.