its not a mere red LED, its the guiding light of the People’s Party
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2021 Honghu ZX8
Formerly the 88888888
This is about 4+ months overdue so I might as well get it out of the way.
Yes I have completely redesigned the 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888 and renamed it for the sake of putting the old time meme to rest and developing the brand as a proper Hongqi knockoff something serious. Basically everything is the same from the pre-redesign. Big old 6.0L V12, jade, rosewood, it’s all the same underneath.
Literally just read the new-ish 8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888^8 post above.
The design isn’t the same though. I’ve taken cues from @On3CherryShake’s Five Stars Eight Numbers entry, took the previous rendition and morphed a couple things to reflect more elegance and less edge in the design.
The rear however, is now completely original and with the advent of some really cool new fixtures, doing more elegant stuff like this is now possible.
A new Feng-Shui taillight design is implemented in the latest rendition, creating a smooth swoop emanating the flow of the Yangtze. I’m really just bullshitting because I just came up with this design in 10 minutes and thought it looked cool.
Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaat’s right look at all that edge.
Well there we go, that’s my reveal.. I guess.
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I must say, your company is one of my favorites here. It’s fundamentally corporate and modern. Exactally the oposite of what I usually work with. I’d love to do a collab sometime, would be a great challenge.
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This is encapsulates everything I hate in Chinese cars. It’s perfect!
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Damn I forgot to transfer the Relentless photos to my new computer but that’s ok. That’s for another time.
2026 Honghu Beifeng Series
The Beifeng name might be familiar to those who frequently entered CSR almost 5(!!!) years ago. I’ve generally positioned this car in the same market as a 5 Series or E-Class, but it seems to flipflop between that and smaller segments depending on the challenge context. That being said, while I work through refreshing the entire Honghu lineup for 2026, I thought I’d give the Beifeng name some priority given that it’s gotten me top 3 in multiple challenges, with a few wins to boot.
With a 2.95 metre wheelbase, 4.97 metre length and a 1.92 metre width, it’s about on par with the size of the 5 Series. Most of the length is allocated towards hood space, not to jam anything large inside, but just to give it a bit more of a longitudinal demeanor. Whatever that means…
I say “not to jam anything large inside” because, similar to the Hongqi H9, it comes with a 2.0 litre turbocharged 4-cylinder engine for most models, making around 270 horsepower and spinning the 20-inch wheels to 100 km/h in just under 7 seconds.
Models have choices between single and two-tone colourways. Ok enough of that.
You might have also noticed the jade-ish coloured one. Many other old heads had probably seen me throw the “Heilong” trim level around in a couple different challenges. Think of it as something like SRT, M, AMG, etc.
A fun fallacy I noticed when giving it a 3.0-litre twincharged inline-6 is that I could have just matched Hongqi in real life with a 4.0-litre engine - V8 or not - and still be taxed the same amount.
Edit: Nuh uh I’d be taxed half of that. Reading isn’t my strong suit.
These are 2008 rates from an old UWaterloo paper that are apparently still in effect today, which brings some interesting insight as to why Hongqi capped their V8 at 4 litres.
This big inline-6 engine, among other things, has increased the weight of this Honghu from the standards 4,300 lbs to almost 4,750 lbs. An 8 speed auto shoves its weight to 100 km/h in 4.1 seconds.
The above photo was supposed to be a template for an ad but that’s ok. Incoherent ramblings about Chinese Automation vehicle lore vs real life Chinese vehicle lore is way more fun. Maybe I’ll make an EV of this one if so inclined as well.
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Well ackshully… If that 3-litre six was below 3000 cc, you’d be taxed less than half the amount for a 4-litre V8.
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2026 HONGHU RELENTLESS SERIES
HONGHU RELENTLESS 8
I guess bro…
One day after going through a lot of the CSR 167 entries, I got inspired to get moving on revamping a lot of my Chinese car lineup. Unfortunately, the MHero bug bit and the Relentless 8 ended up being the first in line…
This thing is stupid man. There was even a point where I wanted to make this thing into a coupe SUV. Thankfully, there were no bodies nor roofs that would have that a plausible reality without putting too much time into it. After all, I think this car took roughly 2-3 hours solely for the exterior.
I’ve seen the kind of stuff some people have been making these days. Really really good stuff. Super smart ways to push the game to its limits, just perhaps a bit too much time invested for myself to do. Definitely nothing wrong with putting in the hard work though. This game’s skill ceiling has raised significantly in the last 5 years and the concepts of then are slightly less relevant these days.
On closeups you can see the roughness of some of these edges, as well as the fact that this car basically has no underbody nor chassis. At least to me, it’s the general idea that matters anyways so I don’t mind as much. I make these for my own enjoyment after all.
Anyways, I digress. Stats! By the end of all the tuning and everything from a good friend @DoctorNarfy, we got this thing to about 7100 lbs with.. some degree of horsepower. Enough to bring it around the Nurburgring GP circuit in roughly 2:27:00 on some not so realistic tires. Mind you, this is only a second off from the Honghu Beifeng Heilong.
It also crabwalks.
Shoutout @DoctorNarfy for his efforts in the interior too. I usually find this step time-consuming at the moment but maybe I should take some time to practice and get good myself.
Gaudiness was the goal. Lots of rosewood, some gold garnish, some quilted leather.
As always, this is inspired by Hongqi, although somehow these guys manage to keep on outdoing themselves with whatever is going on in the 2nd image. Da Joka.
Lol.
Don’t ask us, the Chinese did it first. You really can’t make this shit up.
The rear compartment? Yeah that’s where the drone is stored. Think this is an original idea?
I can’t keep doing this man.
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Is the flashy interior really suitable for this positioning SUV?
its chinese so id say so
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nah
What I want to say is that Hongqi own full-size SUV doesn’t have such exaggerated interior decoration.
Serious answer, it’s a bit of a rough mix of the M-Hero 917, Hongqi L5, some Hummer EV, but the general layout followed the M-Hero
We baked in the colours based on various Chinese vehicles with a mix of rosewood and Hongqi red.
Forgoing the gold would help but I don’t mind too much, as I tend to focus my efforts much more on the exterior. I never really liked making interiors so I take my liberties in doing thing relatively quickly in them.
Although there’s lots of Hongqi influence in Honghu, I tend to draw inspiration from other Chinese cars in roughly the same bracket (for this one, E-HS9 + M-Hero 917 + Leopard + GWM TANK), albeit I try to keep designs as original as possible so that they don’t look like carbon copies or full derivatives.
So it’s not an exact derivative of Hongqi both inside nor outside and as a result, is original enough to not go “A ha! This car!” but not too far off that you can draw similarities to the current trends in the market.
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