During development, the car was named Xinghuo 76 (Spark 76), but was later changed to Dongfanghong for the production version.

The name Dongfanghong means "The East is Red" and refers to a patriotic song of the Chinese Communist Party.

[3] In November 1959, the State Council of China tasked the factory with imitating the Soviet GAZ-21, and provided a real car as an example, in the early 1960s, a group of five Soviet experts arrived at the factory with a set of car drawings, and then in April of the same year, the plant assembled the first three samples of the redesigned prototype, which passed 25,000 km of road tests by May 1965.

At the end of 1966, the plant received an annual plan for the production of 600 cars, but at that time the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations began, and by the time of the 106th unit, an order was received from the chairman of the Beijing Revolutionary Committee, Xie Fuzhi, to stop production in order "to prevent the bourgeois way of life."

[5] Later on in the 1960's, BAW started to manufacture this engine in factories located in Beijing and in Tianjin, where it was designated 492.