According several sources the engine of China’s first car, the Dongfeng CA71, is based on a Mercedes engine. A 1930cc engine, square: bore and stroke 85x85mm, 4 cylinder in line, delivering 52 kw at 4400 rpm.
The engine of the Mercedes 190 series (W121), itself code named M121, was a 85×83.6mm engine, capacity 1897cc, 55kW at 4600 rpm. It seems that the Chinese drilled the stroke a little bit (as I told before, straight copying of foreign vehicles was not allowed, but they used the foreign technology as an example).
When I visited the FAW Warehouse in 2006 (the closed building where FAW stored all the foreign cars they used for their development, plus their own old products) I was invited to take place in the famous 2*42406 sedan, regarded by the People’s Republic as China’s first car.
One of my wishes was that they would open the bonnet, to see the resemblance between the Dongfeng engine and the Mercedes one. It is what they did (they even tried, but failed to start the engine..) and you can see here above the resemblance. There are minor differences, but in general you can see it is the same engine.
There is a second Dongfeng, in the famous museum of mr. Liu. When mr. Liu told us years ago that he was the owner of another CA71, we couldn’t believe him. Yes, but the car was stock in Zhongnanhai, he said. And later he exhibited this precious car in Huairou.
These two Dongfengs are the only known remaining Dongfengs. The others (like the one in the Beijing Museum) are just fake, badly made copies.
I visited mr. Liu several times. In 2015, during the preparation of the Beijing-Shanghai rally I had a chance to take some friends to the museum. We were the only visitors and that gave us the possibility to open the bonnet of this second Dongfeng.
Surprisingly this engine was not the Mercedes copy. We recognized it as the side-valve engine of the Russian GAZ Pobeda M20. This 4-cylinder engine is completely different than the Mercedes engine, details are: 2120cc, 82x100mm, 37kW.
This engine was also used by the Soviet GAZ 69 jeep which was very common in China. In 1958 the Nanjing Auto Works made a Chinese copy, named Yuejin CN050, used for several prototypes like the first Shanghai-made Fenghuang, for the Yuejin CN750 (an M20 copy), and in several truck prototypes. The Nanjing 6-cylinder version was mass-produced and used for instance in the well sold Yuejin NJ130 3-ton truck.
Like always, this leaves us with questions. Copying the Mercedes engine was a hard and difficult job. According the old statistics FAW made in total 20 cars. I have reasons to believe it was much less.
It is possible that FAW switched during the production from the Mercedes-copy to the Nanjing CN050 engine.
Another possibility for FAW was to mount a Soviet GAZ engine, very easy to get. And using Russian parts was politically less complicated than using Western parts.
And, of course it is possible that the original Mercedes-copy engine was later replaced by a GAZ engine.
I don’t know.
(they even tried, but failed to start the engine..) it just makes me sad… that all these cars are dying in museums unrestored. chinese don’t have interest to actually maintaining these cars. they hope museums will make them moenys(as with everything in general). just looking at photos you made, it’s clear nobody has even ever tried to restore them. And foreign cars are just newly imported stuff, cause nobody is interested to work on old cars in china. Once I performed at a horse ranch , somewhere around Huangshan… guy has a Gaz and old Isuzu, many cool old bikes…..… Read more »