Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot: Yemingzhu

Today in Chinese Car Brands That Time Forgot (CCBTTF™): Yemingzhu, a brand owned by Chendu Tiuanju Automobile, a company based in the great city of Chengdu in Sichuan Province in China. In the late 1980’s and 1990’s they made some interesting cars.

Introduction

The gate to the old factory. The sign, on the right side, from top to bottom: Chengdu Tianju Auto.

Tianju Automobile was founded in 1987 by a businessman named Li Junyou (李君佑). It was jointly owned by three companies that had nothing to do with the car industry: Hongpailou Container Factory, Great Wall Mattress Factory and the Hongpailou Enterprise Company. In those early automotive days when the economy was opening up, everybody wanted to go into cars.

The Yemingzu brand was launched in 1988. Yemingzhu is a poetic name; it means luminescent pearl. In 1990 Tianyu Automobile got a car making license from the Sichuan provincial government. That was no easy task. The license had to be approved by four different government agencies: The Sichuan Automobile Industry Office, the Sichuan Provincial Public Security Department, the Chengdu Economic Commission, and the Chengdu Public Security Bureau. Designation was YMZ for Yemingzhu.

Tianyu Automobile did not get a license from the Chinese central government to sell the Yemingzhu YMZ 5010 X nationwide, a problem that plagued so many small automakers in the 1980’s and 1990’s. So officially, they could only sell their cars in their home province Sichuan.

But in an interview quoted online, Mr. Li Junyou claims the company sold over 5000 cars in the “whole country”, with 500 cars sold in Sichuan and high sales in northeast China.

Yemingzhu YMZ 5010X

The first Yemingzhu was the 1989 YMZ 5010X, a four-door sedan with square-shaped headlights and a small but shiny grille. The body was made of fiberglass.

Power came from a 0.8 liter four-cylinder petrol engine with the designation JL462Q5. The engine was manufactured by Dongnan Engine Works and mostly sold to minivan makers. But apparently, it also worked in a sedan.

The engine-size was small for a four-cylinder. Output was 35 hp and 52 Nm. Top speed was 102 km/h and average fuel consumption was 4.93 liter per 100 kilometers. Size: 4240/1580/1380, and wheelbase was 2320.

Tianyu Automobile set the price at a very low 28.500 yuan. Production of the YMZ 5010X ended in 1994. During that time it was updated a couple of times but only in detail.

A newspaper article announcing the start of production.

An official factory photo, showing a YMZ 5010X in an attractive blue shade and with steel wheels. The wheels were tiny for the size of the car. Detailing is nice, with chromed frames around the light unites and a chrome stripe over the side.

In 1990, the Chengdu Rongcheng Taxi Company bought 50 YMZ 5010X sedans. The taxi company still exists today. I would love to have a look in their archives!

But Tianyu Automobile also sold taxi’s to other cities. A number of bright red Yemingzhu taxi’s were seen in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi Province, by Eric Ingen van Schenau during a visit in 1993. The taxi’s are fitted with beautiful shiny wheel covers.

It looks very classy at the back, with large tail lights and a chromed strip over the bumper’s top.

The A pillar’s base is behind the rear axle, indicating the platform was not originally intended for a sedan. The tiny wheels are placed far under the body indicating the platform was for a smaller car. Sadly, I have been unable to find out on which platform the Yemingzhu YMZ 5010X was based. Most likely donor is the Suzuki Alto.

The Alto has a tumultuous and often confusing history in China. It was made by the Changan-Suzuki joint venture, Suzuki sold licenses to many other Chinese carmakers, there were semi-legal and illegal manufacturing operations, and there were lots of downright copies. On top of all that, many outfits used the Alto platform to create their own distinctive vehicles, often using fiberglass bodies.

The exhaust pipe is very small and sits far under the body, again indicating a smaller-car platform. The rear bumper design is interesting, with the bumper almost touching the wheel arch.

There are not many images of the YMZ 5010X. This one is probably the best-known picture. It is a blue car that was offered for sale on a second-hand car website for 30.000 yuan some ten years ago. The site is long gone but we have all the pictures.

The first one is a picture of the picture in the car’s official registration book, the so called ‘blue book’. That book shows how the car looked when it was first registered. The car has chromed mirrors, whereas all the other cars we saw so far had simple black mirrors.

These are the pictures showing how the car looked at the time it was offered for sale second hand. It has new wheel covers but otherwise it seems in a fine shape.

The white seat covers are after-market.

The rear bumper is much larger on this car than on the taxi’s. It does touch the wheel arch! Design is different too, simpler with a straight line running from the arch to the rear.

A January 1992 issue of the Sichuan Automotive Journal, with an advertisement for the YMZ 5010X on the front cover, complete with the six-digit telephone number of the company: 551025.

In 1996 Erik visited Xi’an again, where he met an updated YMZ 5010X. This one has a once-piece black front. The chrome around the lights and the shiny grille are gone. Door handles are in black too, they were chromed on the older cars.

Yemingzhu YMZ 1010

The Yemingzhu YMZ 1010 was a panel-van variant of the YMZ 5010X. The cabin is cut right on the B-pillar and the rear is replaced by a pick-up truck bed, topped by a plastic roof with rear windows and an open-close front window.

Who needs windows for transporting things? I bet this actually was some sort of people carrier, perhaps a taxi van, with a bench on each side of the compartment. Chinese companies have made many such vehicles. Sadly this is the only picture we have of the YMZ 1010 so we cannot be totally sure.

The full photo.

Yemingzhu YMZ 463Q-A

In 1997 Yemingzhu launched the YMZ 463Q-A, a sporty looking small sedan, likely again based on an Alto platform. It had a long bonnet and a very short front overhang. At the rear, it has a spoiler that was semi-integrated in the boot lid.

The YMZ 463Q-A was billed as the successor of the YMZ 5010X. It looked far less solid and build-quality seemed pretty basic. The body was once again made of fiberglass.

The YMZ 463Q-A was powered by the same engine as the YMZ 5010X. It was enlarged to 0.869 liter and output was 52 hp and 68.5 Nm, good for a 138 km/h top speed. Fuel consumption was rated at 5.2 liter per 100 km.

These very beautiful black-and-white pictures are of the original 1996 design-patent application. The patent was granted in 1997. The applicant was Mr. Li Junyou, and he has a whole lot of patents on his name., including tennis rackets, a dashboard, and all sorts of automotive innovations.

A blue example was shown at the Chengdu Industrial Civilization Museum in the early 2000’s. The tiny wheels are far under the body, just like with the YMZ 5010X.

The semi-integrated spoiler gives it a sporty look. White light unit goes over the boot lid, which has a very small load-opening.

Much later, the same car was seen parked on the roadside, looking very sad. But the insurance stickers on the windshield prove it had been used.

Air vents in the lower bumper are very racy. Yemingzhu really did have some design ideas.

The badge on the right side says ‘869ml’, referring to the engine size.

In 1998 Yemingzhu presented a YMZ 463Q-A concept powered by compressed natural gas (CNG). The car was painted in red with a CNG sticker under the left-front light, and blue decals on the doors.

At the same time, Tianju Automobile registered a patent for a technology through the National Patent Office: an automatic air-fuel mixing controller unit for dual-fuel vehicles. This technology was about mixing alcohol gasoline in a 10:90% mix. Research by the ‘Sichuan Automobile Product Testing Station’ reported a 50% reduction of emissions. The patent was approved. 

Finally, also in 1998, Tianju Automobile established a joint venture with Dongfeng Motors. It was called Dongfeng Tianju Automobile, with a 49% share for Tianju and 51% for Dongfeng. Due to an ongoing restructuring process and other difficulties at Dongfeng nothing came of it, and no cars were ever built.

Yemingzhu CTJ-2

The company also made cars under a different designation: CTJ, for Chengdu Tiuanju. The first CTJ car was the Yemingzhu CTJ-2. It has been described as a small coupe with a design inspired by the Honda CRX. Power came from the Dongnan 0.8. There are no known pictures of this car.

Yemingzhu CTJ-3 ‘Off-road small jeep’

The Yemingzhu CT3 ‘Off-road small jeep’, as it was called, was a roughed-up variant of the Suzuki Alto, made in the late 1990’s. The Yemingzhu CTJ-3 was based on the Suzuki Alto. Two examples were displayed in the same Chengdu Industrial Civilization Museum, in the same space as the YMZ 463Q-A.

Chengdu Tianyu changed to small city car into a serious off-roader with increased road clearance, extra-wide bumpers, side steps, a bull bar, a heavy-duty roof rack and a spare wheel on the back. They also fitted a longer axles to move the wheels further out, under the extension.

The new rear-bumper unit was a large single piece of plastic, with a back oval takeout just above the bumper. In the bumper are two small oval fog lights on the far sides.

Power came from the Suzuki 0.9 liter three-cylinder engine with 44 hp and 65 Nm. The engine was mated to a 4-speed manual gearbox. Price for all that pretty: 80.000 yuan, or almost 45.000 yuan more than the standard Alto. That’s a steep hike and sales were low. Only some 180 units were manufactured until production ended.

One on the road! This lights in the bumper are different on this one. The oval lights are orange and there are red reflectors higher up in the bumper.

Sadly, the Yemingzhu CT-3 was the last car manufactured by Chengdu Tianyu. But the company survived for a very long time, making their patented fuel-mixing parts and parts for CNG systems. In 2011 the company went bankrupt. And that was also the final end of the Yemingzhi brand.

Sources: Baijiahao, Sina, Sina, QQ, Dazhongkanche, Xcar, and ChineseCars.