Today in Crazy Car Production Days of Guangdong (CCPDoG™): the first-generation Toyota Avalon, produced by Jiulong Auto.
CCCPDoG was a creative late-1990s scheme to dodge China’s high import tariffs. Near-finished foreign cars were shipped to China and minimally assembled under a local manufacturer’s license, magically turning an imported car into a China-made one.
The Jiulong Auto Toyota Avalon
The first-generation Toyota Avalon was manufactured from 1994 until 1999, which fits nicely into the CCCPDoG timeframe.
The type plate contains a lot of information: the brand is Jiulong Auto (九龙汽车). The logo depicts an oval with two connected circles. The manufacturing date is October 1996.
The manufacturer is Anhui Province Jiulong Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (安徽省九龙汽车制造有限公司). This is not the same company as Jiangsu Jiulong Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (江苏九龙汽车制造有限公司), which was founded in 2002, long after the 1996 date on the plate – and in a different province.
The model code is HF6490. HF is the manufacturer code, while 6490 denotes a passenger vehicle roughly 4.9 metres long. The first-generation Avalon was 4,831 mm long, so 6490 is entirely plausible.
The serial/production number is incomplete. It starts with 9090. The engine number is incomplete too; it starts with 518. The engine power is likely a mistake. On the plate, it says 209.5 kW. That is way too much. A 1996 Avalon used Toyota’s 1MZ-FE 3.0-liter V6, with a 143 kW factory rating.
About Anhui Province Jiulong Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
According to company records, Anhui Province Jiulong Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd. was based in Hefei, Anhui Province. As far as we know, it didn’t produce any other cars. Its largest shareholder was Hefei Axle Co., Ltd.
Anhui Jiulong was closely connected to another local company, Hefei Automobile Manufacturing Plant (合肥汽车制造厂), which also used the HF designation. It produced buses, as well as pickup trucks and SUVs based on the BJ212 series. Hefei Automobile Manufacturing Plant also owned Hefei Axle, the largest shareholder in Anhui Jiulong.
In 1997, Hefei Automobile Manufacturing Plant merged into the much larger Anhui JAC Automobile Group, which still exists today.
It appears that Anhui Province Jiulong Automobile Manufacturing Co., Ltd. was a special-purpose entity set up specifically for the CCPDoG scheme.
More on the cars of Hefei Automobile Manufacturing Plant in another post!
Red book: 1-13 and 2-272 [hf].