Volkswagen Almost Produced The Transporter T4 In China.

At the end of the last, and at the beginning of this century, both FAW-Volkswagen and Shanghai-Volkswagen were interested in producing the Volkswagen Transporter. In the end, it didn’t happen. This is how, and why.

A 1998 Taiwan-made Volkswagen T4 in Guangdong Province. Photo via Weibo.

Volkswagen assembled the T4 at the Qinzhong facility in Taiyuan, Taiwan, from 1994 until 2004.

Some of these Taiwan-made cars eventually ended up in China, mostly in Guangdong Province.

A 2000 Taiwan-made Volkswagen T4 in Shanghai. Photo via Weibo.

Production in Germany was ending in 2003, to make way for the next generation, the Transporter T5. The assembly contract with Qinzhong Automobile Co. Ltd.  would end in 2004.
Before that, already around 1998-1999, Volkswagen came up with the idea to start the production of the T4 to China. This was the moment, the complete Taiwanese line could be moved to China.

SAIC-VW

At the planned moment, 2003-2004, Shanghai-Volkswagen already had a shortage of production capacity. It produced the Gol, Polo, Santana, Santana 3000, and Passat in Shanghai. Production of the new Touran MPV was scheduled to start soon. So, SAIC-VW didn’t go for the T4; the company simply couldn’t add another vehicle to its lineup.

FAW / FAW-VW

The other Volkswagen partner, FAW, showed more interest. But it didn’t want to produce the T4 at the FAW-VW joint venture. Instead, FAW wanted to launch the T4 under its Jiefang name. The T4 would be a good replacement for the aging Jiefang CA6440, which was over 10 years in production. Volkswagen agreed, and FAW started a testprogram with the T4 in China

The test cars had FAW badges on the grille and Jiefang in Chinese on the front fender. The prototypes were named Jiefang CA6485. FAW planned to make two versions of the T4:

A luxury version, equipped with the Volkswagen AET 2.5L 5-cylinder petrol engine, 2461cc, delivering 109 hp (81.5kW).

And a basic version, equipped with the FAW CA488 4-cylinder petrol engine, delivering 65 kW (87hp), the old Chrysler engine.

But nothing came of it. There are different stories why.
The first is that the political situation between Taiwan and China, the so-called cross-strait relations, always was tense. Around 2000 the problems had flared up again. That was a reason to block the negotiations of sending a complete assembly line from Taiwan to a state factory in China. FAW had an escape road; the Transporter could be produced under the FAW-Volkswagen flag.
Second was is that, when that was going to happen, there was much obstruction within the Volkswagen joint ventures to start ‘commercial vehicle’ production activities in China. Commerical vehicles would be bad for VW’s reputation. Volkswagen was a ‘passenger car’ company.
A third is that EV development and the development of newer ICE models got priority in these years. And remember that the design of the T4 was in 2004 already more than 13 years old.

thanks Tycho for your corrections and additions!
sources: BiliBili, AutoNet, PCauto, mp.weixin.qq.com.