The year 1967 saw the establishment of office for the construction of No.2 Automobile Factory in Shiyan under the decision of the Central Government. In February 1973, Shiyan was promoted as a prefecture-level city directly under the jurisdiction of Hubei Province.

　　Since October 1994, the combination of Yunyang Area and former Shiyan City has brought a new Shiyan City with its name unchanged, consisting of Danjiangkou City, Yunyang District (formerly Yunxian County), Yunxi County, Zhushan County, Zhuxi County, Fangxian County and Zhangwan and Maojian Districts.

　　The emergence of Shiyan, the auto-city, was completely attributed to the settlement of No.2 Automobile Factory in the 1960s since there was only Shiyan Township instead of Shiyan City before that.

　　In a sense, it is this factory that has brought the development of Shiyan. Serving as a production base of commercial vehicles enjoying No.1 in China and top 3 in the world, Shiyan houses over 500 enterprises for the production of finished automobiles and their parts, with nearly 100 billion yuan of stock assets of manufacturing and an annual production capacity of 0.5 million automobiles.