The story of Xingtai 114 Auto Works

Xingtai 114 Auto Works was founded in 1969 in a village to the southeast of Xingtai. Xingtai 114 was one of three main automakers in Xingtai that I have covered so far, the other two being Red Star and Changzheng. Xingtai 114’s product line consisted mainly of SUV’s, pickup trucks and buses, as well as some conversions based on products from other manufacturers such as ambulances. Perhaps most interesting of all were the unique Dacias they produced, unlike anything seen in Romania. More on those a bit later.

Prior to 1986 vehicles produced by Xingtai 114 were sold under the 邢台 (Xingtai) brand and had the model designation XT***. From 1986 onwards their products were sold under the 冀邢 (Jixing) brand. 冀 (Ji) is a short name for Hebei Province and 邢 (Xing) is the first character in Xingtai.

Xingtai 114’s vehicles were not totally their own design, rather they were based on existing vehicles from Beijing Auto and Nanjing Auto, namely:

The Beijing BJ121.

The Beijing BJ212.

The Beijing BJ130.

And the Nanjing Yuejin NJ134.

A friend of mine from Xingtai has visited the former 114 factory and was kind enough to let me share his photos with you.

By the late 1980’s Xingtai 114 occupied a 3 million square meter area of land with a 100,000 square meter factory. There were 21 Jixing models being produced and annual production capacity was more than 500 vehicles. Not a lot by todays standards, but back then that wasn’t bad at all!

At the 1983 National Auto Exhibition in Beijing (The first Auto Show to be held in China, predating “Auto China” which has been the annual Auto Show since 1990) Jixing vehicles were apparently given great reviews.

In 1987 Xingtai 114 vehicles took part in the first ever Beijing Auto Cup Long March (very rough translation – original Chinese is 北汽杯长征万里行).

For now that is all the history we have on Xingtai 114, now I will cover some their products, beginning with the oldest examples we could find.

The JX625/JX640F/C was a bus based on the Nanjing NJ134 chassis. Here we see one outside the factory gates.

The JX121 was a 2WD pickup based on the Beijing BJ121.

My colleague Erik was fortunate enough to see this Jixing JX121 in Jiuzaigou in 1989.

A view of the side.

The JX522 was an SUV/Station Wagon based also on the BJ121.

In 1989 Xingtai 114 changed its model designations in line with new government regulations governing the naming convention of vehicles. Xingtai 114 was given the XTQ brand designation.

The XTQ1030KH was a pickup truck. It had a GVW of 3 tons.

The XTQ5021XKCL was a vehicle developed specifically for Forestry Services. The text on the side says “林勘作业车” roughly translating to Forestry Work Vehicle. Text on the front of the van above the grille appears to say 冀邢 (Jixing).

The XTQ6440 was a bus that looked a lot like the Jeep Cherokee XJ. I know it doesn’t look like a bus but a model number starting with 6 designates it as being a bus. Length was 4.4 meters. We can only speculate but we think that the XTQ6440 was based on the BJ212 chassis – seemingly visible front and rear diff pumpkins lead us to suspect it was 4WD. Lots of companies made such fake Cherokees, read more about that here.

The XTQ6471 was also a bus but this one looked a lot like a Toyota Crown. Chassis of this car was likely from the BJ121 as I cannot see a front diff pumpkin so it was likely RWD. Length of this “bus” was 4.7 meters.

The XTQ6530 was a minibus. It was 5.3 meters in length.

Finally we come to a proper big bus – the XTQ6690. This bus is likely a longer version of the JX625/640 we saw earlier (compare the window sizes). Length of this bus was 6.9 meters. Wheel covers a work of art!

The XTQ1020 was a pickup truck with a GVM of 2 tons. Nothing much else to say about it except………. is it a Dacia? Yes and no. Bear with us.

You see, Dacia NEVER made a 4-door pickup like this one. edit – they kind of did in the form of the 4WD introduced in 1999 but obviously this is long after Xingtai 114 made their’s. However if you compare the shape of the doors you will see the doors are closer in shape to the 4-door below and not like the Chinese ones.

This is the only style of 4-door pickup that Dacia made (of course there were variations to the front end styling, but the basic shape remained the same. By comparing the picture of this blue Dacia to the red Chinese one we can see some key differences:

1 – The rear wheel arch of the red car does not protrude into the rear door, whereas on the blue one the wheel arch does protrude into the door and as such the rear doors have cutouts for the wheel arch.

2 – The C pillars of the two vehicles are not the same. The red car’s C pillar appears thicker.

3 – The shape of the glass of the rear doors is not the same.

4 – The fuel filler caps are on opposite sides of the cars.

5 – Taillights are completely different.

Therefore we can conclude that the Chinese one was not based on the Romanian one. So what next?

This is a Romanian Dacia 1304 pickup “King Cab”. It is only a 2 door but there are some key similarities it shares with the Chinese Dacia:

1 – The wing mirrors are identical.

2 – The fuel filler caps are on the same sides of the cars.

3 – The character lines running from the headlight to the end of the cars follow the same shape and direction (curving upwards to meet the top of the tray).

4- Taillights are the same.

So how do we address the elephant in the room – the fact that the Chinese one has 4 doors and the Romanian one only 2? I propose the following: Xingtai 114 obtained King Cab pickups from Romania and turned them into 4 doors. This would have required extending the roof and moving the C pillar back. It would have also necessitated the manufacturing of new windows for the second row as the original glass in the King Cabs from Romania is clearly smaller. It could also be possible that Romania and China reached an agreement to produce Dacias in China like they did with Roman Trucks. Perhaps China wanted their own 4-door pickup and Dacia designed this one for them. All speculation but something to think about. However a bigger elephant has just entered the room. After speaking with Adrian from Volganeagra where he wrote a piece on the Xingtai Dacia a few years ago I found out that the King Cab was not introduced until 1994, many years after Xingtai 114 began producing their Dacias.

My colleague Erik was lucky enough to see a Dacia produced by Xingtai 114 in 1992 in Beijing. The car was at a car market.

This one was different from the one I showed previously as it had a different front end. It could be possible that this was an older example produced by Xingtai 114.

No obvious clues to support my hypothesis that the 4 doors were created out of King Cabs.

On the bottom right corner of the tailgate we can see a sticker/badge that says 河北省邢台114汽车厂 meaning Hebei Province Xingtai 114 Auto Works.

The story of Dacias in China doesn’t end there. There was another company in Shenyang that produced them and we will get to them in a later article.