Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: Yungang Motor

Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF): Yungang Motor, a brand under the Datong Automobile Factory. Yungang Motor made a series of SUVs, several minivans, a bus, and two cars under the CCPDoG.

The Yungang Motor logo, with a registered trademark logo next to it. That is a rare thing to see in China, especially in those days.

Datong Automobile Factory was founded in 1954 as ‘Datong Automobile Repair Factory’. In 1989 the ‘repair’ part was deleted, and in that same year the Yungang Motor brand was born. Designation was DTQ. The company was based in the great city of Datong in Shanxi Province.

A great photo of the worker’s dorm building at the factory. It has all the names in Chinese and English: 大同汽车制造厂 for Datong Automobile Factory. 云冈汽车 for Yungang Motor.

On the short side of the building stands yet another sign. Chinese is again 云冈汽车, but the English name is shortened to Yungang. The Yungang logo is there too, twice, but without the trademarker.

The factory, apparently quite a large operation. There are several Yungang vehicles visible, and it seems a busy place. I will come back to this picture later on.

This is a really cool picture of the north side of Datong Railway Station sometime in the mid-1990’s. Note the FSO taxi on the far right.

There are two large billboards advertising cars. The right billboard is for Yungang Motor, and the left billboard is for Saibeijian. The latter was another Datong-based company. I already wrote an article on their CCPDoG cars, in the future I will write an article on their own cars.

Image via Sohu.

A photo showing the factory gate, with the company’s name on the pillar on the left side on the gate. Three Yungang minivans are exiting the premises!

A mystery car seen through the fence.

Now to the Yungan Motor lineup:

SUVs

The first know Yungang-branded car is the Yungang DTQ 5020. It is an attractive five-door SUV with a shiny front and well-designed wheels. It was based on the BAW BJ212. Beijing Auto Works supplied platforms or even entire vehicles to many smaller Chinese automakers. The DTQ 5020 has a Yungang badge on the grille, and…

… another one on the rear on the right side.

Above the license plate was another badge with the Yungang name in latin script.

Grille.

The only image I have of the interior, showing a surprisingly modern dashboard, an old-school gear lever, and a typical BJ212 steering wheel.

This is the badge on the back again, with the full Chinese name of the company below it.

This is an image from a company brochure. Note again the pretty wheels and the oddly shaped fuel door. The seats in this car seem to be white!

Left-bottom two Yungang buses, see further below, and right-bottom the…

… new DTQ 6490, also see first image of this article. This was a much longer vehicle with far less ground clearance. It was based on a FAW pickup truck. Yungang designed a sweet set of wheels again, and the mirrors are in faux-chrome.

The DTQ 6490 seems the most common Yungang car. There were many variants, for both civilian and government use.

From inside the factory, with police-variants on the assembly line. The factory looks very clean and modern for the period.

A long line of DTQ 6490, with the police lights installed on the roof.

Image by Erik van Ingen Schenau.

This fantastic example was seen on the street by Erik. It is a bit dirty and the license plates are gone but it sill looks very strong.

Image by Erik van Ingen Schenau.

Compare the ultra large windows with cars of today! In those days you really had a view of the world. Nowadays the touch screen is larger than your side  window.

Image by Erik van Ingen Schenau.

Another law enforcement variant seen in 2013 by 4xXentic.

The fuel door is located just behind the rear-side door, pickup-truck style.

Via Erik van Ingen Schenau.

The DTQ5030 was an attempt to go upmarket. It was again based on the BAW BJ212, note the ground clearance and the very visible 4×4 platform underneath the car. Design was nice, with a Toyota-inspired front that was used by many Chinese automakers in that time. The yellow fog lights are almost cool and the mirrors are comically small. Wheel design is a bit of a disappointment compared to Yungan’s other cars.

Minivans

Image by Erik van Ingen Schenau.

The very first car to appear under the Yungang brand was this minivan.

There were two variants: the Yungang DTQ 6400 and the Yungang DTQ 1020. For easy-sake, I will refer to it as the DTQ 1020 for now.

The big question with these early cars is always: where was it based on?

As we can see, the DTQ 1020 looks very much like the second generation Toyota Lite Ace van. To be more specific: it looks almost exactly like the 1982-1985 YM21 LiteAce. All the details, including lights, bumpers, creases, door handles, and even the mirrors are a near-100% match.

Still, in China it is simply known as a “LiteAce copy”. I am not so sure of that. In the late 1980’s China was in no way as good in copying stuff as they later became. And copying a whole vehicle is a very hard thing to do.

We know that Yungang started buidling the DTQ1020 in 1990, five years after production of the YM21 LiteAce had ended. We also know all the specifications of the DTQ 1020, so let’s compare:

DTQ 1020: 3965/1625/1720, wheelbase is 2080.
Toyota LiteAce: 3940/1625/1736, wheelbase is 2080.

Crucially, width and wheelbase are exactly the same. So when it comes to looks and size, the DTQ 1020 and the YM21 LiteAce seem to be the same car. But when it comes to engines, they couldn’t be more different.

Yungang offered two types of engine in the DTQ 1020/6400:

1) Type: 475Q four-cylinder petrol. Manufacturer: Beijing Internal-combustion Engine Assembly Factory (北京内燃机总长). Output: 64 hp and 108 Nm.

2) Type: 4G33 four-cylinder petrol. The manufacturer of this engine is not listed in Yungang’s specifications. The specs only say that this engine was imported from Japan, output unknown. But we do  know that the 4G33 is a Mitsubishi engine.

The difference between a locally-made engine and an apparently imported one was visible in price: the 475Q equipped car sold for 70.000 yuan in 1990, whereas the 4G33 car sold for 90.000 yuan.

Even more interesting; there was yet another company in Datong that also made a ‘LiteAce’. This company was called ‘State-operated Donghua Machine Factory’ (国营东华机械厂), selling cars under the Donghua brand with designation HD.

Via Erik van Ingen Schenau.

At Donghua, the ‘LiteAce’ was called DH5020, with various variants such as DH5020 YCC, DH5020 XKF, etc.

Size-wise, it is the same as the Yungang, and the engines are the same too. So what’s going on here?

Sadly we don’t know for sure. Most likely scenario is that Toyota sold the production line to Datong Automobile Factory sometime between 1985 and 1990, and that Datong sold assembled cars to State-operated Donghua Machine Factory, which put its own badges on it.

In these days, many defunct production lines found their way to China, from Japan, Europe, and the United States. In most cases there was very little publicity. Also in most cases, the production lines came without a seperate engine line, which is quite a different thing. Chinese car makers therefore had to find their own engines, as seems to be the case here.

Chinese car makers making cars for other Chinese car makers was, and still is, very common in China.

So for now, until we know better, I assume this was how it went: Toyota sold the old HiAce line to Datong Automobile Factory but they didn’t sell an engine line. Datong went looking and found a local engine and imported a Mitsubishi engine from Japan. To earn some more yuan Datong sold the ‘HiAce’ to State-operated Donghua Machine Factory.

DTQ 1020.

Datong Automobile Factory production line. First car has modern-looking alloys. Perhaps this was an option. I haven’t seen these wheels on any other DTQ1020. Perhaps they put ‘m on just for this picture!

Then we get to this DTQ 6400. It is an interesting car. It appears to be a second-generation Toyota LiteAce (R20, R30) but many details seem off. I think it is actually based on the first generation Yungang ‘LiteAce’ fitted with new body panels to make it look like a sec-gen LiteAce.

The next minivan was the DTQ 6400B. It looks very much like the second-generation (R20, R30 rebodied), but again, details seem not right. To make things a bit more complicated the R20, R30 rebodied was also manufactured by several Chinese carmakers under the CCPDoG. In this case, however, it again seems not the real thing but a look-alike based on the DTQ 1020.

Bus

Yungang made one bus, the DTQ 6600. Design-wise it was very much inspired by the Toyota Coaster but it is clearly a smaller vehicle. Many Chinese automakers made, and still make, all sorts of copies of the Coaster.

In 1997, Yungang did something unique. They created a flexible-fuel vehicle (FFV) based on the DTQ 6600. It run on a gasoline blended with methanol. The Yungang DTQ 6600 FFV  was the “first methanol vehicle in China”, according to Yungang at the time. It was an expirimental vehicle and only one example was ever made.

Via Erik van Ingen Schenau.

Newspaper photo of the Yungang DTQ 6600 FFV.

Guangdong scheme

Yungang made two cars under CCPDoG: the Mitsubishi Pajero V20 and the Honda Accord CD5. Both were made by many Chinese CCPDoG ‘car makers’.

Photo by 4xXentic.

The Pajero had the designation DTQ 2022. The factory photo shows a neat silver example with a factory-standard bull bar, cool decals, and even cooler steel wheels. The street pic shows the Yungang badge in the grille, similar decals, and alloy wheels.

The Honda Accord was designated DTQ 7200. The factory photo shows a fiery red example with a rather large square-shaped badge on the bonnet. It is definitely not a Honda badge but it also doesn’t really look like a Yungang badge.

Back now to the factory image! We can identify most vehicles now. Botton left to top-right: DTQ 6490 police, Honda Accord black, Mitsubishi Pajero, Honda Accord red, 3 x DTQ 6490, DTQ 5030, DTQ 1020, unknown, BAW BJ212, DTQ 6600.

In the mid-00’s Datong Automobile Factory was taken over by First Auto Works and that was sadly the end of the Yungang brand. If you know more about Yungang let me know in the comments below!

Sources: TWgreatdaily, Tieba, SXDT, Qichacha.