At the Beijing Auto Show, a Chinese company called Fullgood Motors stopped crowds in their tracks with something nobody expected: classic 1950s-style cars with chrome bumpers, whitewall tires, and suicide doors — hiding a CATL battery pack and a CCS2 charging port underneath. Based in Nanjing, Fullgood is mass-producing plug-in hybrid classic cars on a real assembly line, not building them one at a time by hand. Each car combines the sweeping curves and chrome detailing of a bygone era with modern EV tech: anti-lock brakes, traction control, level 2 assisted driving with adaptive cruise control and lane centering, and a PHEV drivetrain that lets you commute on electricity and use the gasoline engine for longer trips.

Fullgood's story stretches back to 1995, when the company started building custom motorcycles, eventually opening a factory in Los Angeles in 2009 before moving the entire operation to Nanjing in 2019 to plug into China's dense automotive supply chain. Now the company uses purpose-built platforms designed around battery packs and electric motors, sources cells from CATL — the same supplier used by Tesla, BMW, and Volkswagen — and plans to expand from left-hand drive to right-hand drive for markets like Australia, where demand is already described as massive. With a new 4-door, 4-seat convertible featuring a folding soft top, suicide doors, and a CATL battery mounted low in the floor for structural stiffness, Fullgood is betting that a global market exists for retro-bodied hybrids that deliver classic styling with modern reliability, safety, and running cost — all at a price that only makes sense because the cars are produced at volume in China.