To continue the topic of early Chinese car-building industry, recently visited by Paul, I saw it fitting to shed some light on another example of its achievements – the Dongfanghong BJ760, a Chinese car with the poetic name “The East Is Red”, which was produced from 1960-1969.
As we’ll see soon enough, the car itself is largely based on the Soviet-made Volga GAZ-21 (1956-1970) – which I personally tend to see as a testament to this car’s qualities; after all, USSR and China were no more good friends by the late 1950s, any technical cooperation being ceased, and the Chinese had a habit to choose worthy prototypes to work upon, like various American vehicles, as in the case described in Paul’s article, or the “Pontoon” Mercedes-Benz 180, as in the case of Shanghai SH760.
However, it is noticeable – and notable, too – that the Chinese didn’t copy the car outright, but rather made some significant modifications to the original design, in sake of both more modern look and functional improvements.
At front, the most obvious changes are the employment of a different, flatter windshield, with corresponding changes to the windshield frame and cowl panel, and the lack of Volga’s characteristic rain-gutter, which is running along the upper edge of the windshield on the Soviet car – more generic drip rails running along the A-pillars are used instead. Why not a more wrap-around windshield, one may ask ? By the late 1950s, it was still a hot thing even in America – just as this funky two-tone paint. In should be noted that the Volga’s A-pillars proved to be somewhat prone to stress cracking on high mileage cars, mostly those constantly used on bad roads with a heavy load on the roof luggage rack, so this could’ve been not only a cosmetic change, but an attempt to address some durability issues. The “through-the-roof” antenna is also gone.
Volga’s pop-up cowl ventilator, a design dating back right to the 1930s, was substituted with a fixed cowl vent scoop. The hood also differs from the Volga and follows the shape of the windshield, being significantly flatter and lacking the center stiffening rib – definitely a somewhat more up-to-date look for the late 1950s, and lower hood line would’ve improved driver visibility somewhat. Front bumper seems to be similar to the earliest, 1957 model GAZ-21, but has much smaller bumper guards and is moved further backwards – the Volga’s bumper was separated from the fenders and the bottom part of the grille opening by a horizontal gravel pan, which seems to be completely absent on the Dongfanghong, being replaced by a vertical mudguard beneath the grille.
All in all, it is obvious that the Chinese designers made an attempt to give their creation a distinct “face” to distinguish it from the Soviet original, as well as to incorporate some of the more recent design trends – still of the second freshness by 1960, though.
The doors, while keeping the original internals, got new outer skins with straighter edges – thick upper door frames still giving out a design dating back all the way to 1954, anyway. The Volga’s “deer’s leg” ornament on rear doors and back fenders is completely removed, creating continuous convex body sides with an unbroken character line extended all the way to the taillight. The result is a more slab-sided, boxy appearance, somewhat contrary to the Volga’s curvy shapes. A larger, panoramic rear window was added, cleverly matching the car’s reverse-canted C-pillar and rear door frames – this trait gives the Dongfanghong a somewhat studebaker-ish look from the side. By the way, that’s something I’d love to have on my Volga (the gray one on the pix) – both for better look and visibility; the original rear window is rather small and thick C-pillars create big blind spots, so a panoramic rear window was indeed a big improvement. Large 15″ wheels and high ground clearance are preserved intact.
The most drastic changes are present in the rear styling, which, while generally seeming to be inspired by American fashion, resembles the French Simca Vedette to some degree as well. The Volga’s distinctive feature – bolt-on back fenders – is still in use, what is obvious due to the presence of a rubber insulation strip that separates the back fender from the body (a usual location of rust, thanks to water collection along the rubber strip). Rear bumper also got smaller bumper-guards (what may be the reason ?), but is otherwise indistinguishable from the early versions of GAZ-21. Good thing that the designers didn’t opt to incorporate those decadent bourgeois tail-fins, as used on The East Glows: that wood look passe very soon indeed.
The interior, on the other hand, shows some traces of European influence, like the almost-Germanic dashboard instrumentation featuring two big round dials. This design replaced the Volga’s instrument cluster, which was itself reminiscent of Ford’s mid-1950s “Astro-Dial”. Other than this, changes are few, and mostly of cosmetic nature; the Chinese car also keeps the Volga’s standard 3-speed manual gearbox, completely with non-synchronous 1st gear and slow, sloppy column shifter. Retrospectively, replacing it with GAZ-69’s floor shifter (this car was also produced in China) would’ve been a better decision. The difference in hood and dashboard curvature is very clearly visible on these two photos – the Dongfanghong‘s hood and dash are much flatter. Not using the non-reflective dashboard cover was obviously an ill-devised decision. There’s supposed to be a radio, but I don’t get where the dashboard speaker is located. Hardly we’re dealing with some audiophile setup, though.
One can notice that in the lower left corner of the dashboard only one heater control lever remains – on the Volga, the second one was used to raise / lower the pop-up cowl vent, which is absent on the Chinese car. By closing the vent, the driver could set the ventilation system to recirculate warm air, significantly improving interior heating on a cold winter day – a feature hardly needed in China’s warmer climate. The “hand throttle” button (some sort of a rudimentary “cruise control”) is also removed, just as the cigarette lighter – the latter is a surprisingly modern touch; judging by the number of ash trays in Soviet cars of the time, both drivers and passengers were supposed to be heavy smokers.
Under the hood, the Volga’s all-aluminum 2.5 L engine can be identified unmistakably, as well as very characteristic combined clutch/brakes master cylinder, massive Zinc alloy generator relay unit on the right fender and snail-shell shaped heater fan housing. It seems that the Volga’s oil-bath type air cleaner was replaced by a paper filter in a remote housing, however it may be a later add-on as well. It is not clearly stated if the engine was produced locally or supplied by the Soviet Zavolzhsky plant, which produced powerplants for the GAZ. Interestingly, the car identification plate was relocated from the firewall to the center of the hood lock panel – maybe because the new air filter made in unaccessible ?
The changes to the body, while relatively subtle, indicate that the Chinese car most likely wasn’t built on duplicates of the original manufacturing equipment supplied by the USSR – its production involved many unique, most likely locally designed and produced, pressing dies. No surprise; 25 year before, the GAZ designers did just the same thing – designed their own front fenders for the body of the recently licensed 1934 Model 40A Ford (which was to become the GAZ M-1 after a heavy redesign by A. A. Lipgart’s engineering team) to test what they called the “graphoplastics” or “sculpting-on-paper” – a drafting technique used to create complex volumetric shapes, which was later used in the development of the Pobeda M-20 and the Volga itself.
One may only wonder if the manufacturing documentation was supplied by the Soviet part or reconstructed by means of reverse-engineering, a technique the Chinese mastered in the years to come. Unfortunately, no info on this subject seems to be available as of now.
According to the info I possess, somewhere from 106 to 238 cars of this model were produced – accounts differ; not large numbers for a production car, but definitely a lot of experience gained by China’s newborn automotive industry. As the photos tell us, changes were made to the car during its production run, but again, very little info on this subject is available, at least to a non-Chinese speaker, so the exact periodisation eludes me as well.
Currently, two Dongfanghongs are on display in Beijing Automotive Museum, one of which (an early modification ?) is notable for keeping the original GAZ-21 windshield, cowl and (slightly modified) hood, with a golden Chinese dragon replacing the GAZ’s deer statuette, and multiple other differences. This car looks surprisingly reminiscent of, while not identical to, another car mentioned in Paul’s article about The East Glows; it seems, the designers attempted to make the Volga simulate that Donfang Golden Dragon, which is generally referred to as the first Chinese home-designed car.
Curiously enough, another, much later Dongfanghong car is mentioned on www.carnewschina.com – the Dongfanghong Yituo, and it also seems to be based on an Eastern-European car, this time – the FSO Polonez.
Related reading: CC Volga Gaz-21: Coming Out Of Hibernation
It reminds me of one of those small Aero-Willys from the 50’s. It doesn’t look bad at all. I had never heard of the Shanghai, very interesting that the ponton body (and engine) was produced for so long. Very justifiable
Yes, indeed; this comparison came to my mind as well.
I’m not sure I would call the climate in China more temperate than Russia’s and that therefore the heater / heater control “mods” did not result in reduced comfort for the DongFang driver. I’ve made three trips to Japan and another 3 to Europe, it’s amazing how cold the nights can get in the fall or late winter…depending on destination.
I also suspect that a wraparound windshield was not added due to the massive re-engineering to the design it would have required. Considering the small / young Chinese car industry, an all new design would have made more sense but might have also required new machines or presses for the existing design…a huge undertaking not approved by the government.
Northern China can get VERY cold.
Under 250 cars must have made this a very money-losing proposition though the Party would not have admitted it. Perhaps the changes were spread out over other Glorious People’s models, too?
Well, one don’t always invest money to make profit, at least directly. Often educations is a better investment, while not always immediately rewarding.
Reverse-engineering a car and putting it into (even low-volume) mass production is a good way to educate your own engineers, technologists, stylists, production management, etc. And a non-market-driven economy can afford such things, unlike market enterprises, which are usually penalized heavily by the Darwinian market mechanisms for such things.
The Soviet passenger car building started from 190 exemplars of the NAMI-1, a light car largely based on Tatra designs; the car itself hardly possessed any economical value, but most people involved in its creation became the most important figures of the national automotive industry in the following 10 to 15 years.
“Under 250 cars must have made this a very money-losing proposition though the Party would not have admitted it.”
Stanislav explains this in a later post:
“In the USSR, profit wasn’t the primary goal as people both got payed by and bought everything from the State. The criterion was – to meet the society’s needs for transportation .”
You are all forgetting this was a planned economy. Cost/benefit calculations aren’t used in the traditional western sense, and it can be difficult sometimes to understand the actions of these economies during these times.
Basically, the production evolves from a need. There is a need for those 250 cars that have to be met. Say that the powers at be simply decided that 250 regional leaders needed a car. For political reasons, the Chinese simply couldn’t buy them from the west, even if they had the money for it. And the money wouldn’t have been a problem, even in those days. If they wanted to, they could’ve bought them.
But for simple chauvunistic reasons, they had to have their own car. And the only short term solution would be to make a Chinese version of an already existing car. Hand labour has always been cheap in China, the cost of hand beating 250 cars would probably be lower than ordering dies to make more of them in a true industrial fashion.
The overabundance of cheap hand labour has always been both the blessing and damnation of China. If you ask why the production cost of an iPhone is less then 10 dollars, it’s because there are six million people working by hand as fast as they can to deliver them for you at that price.
The point is, the true economical cost of making those cars were irrelevant for the political goal of delivering them. In a sense, it’s a money is a no object kind of situation. If you run an entire country and you find a simple need to fill, the true cost is really of no concern.
Also, I strongly suspect that a significant factor in all these low-volume cars was the PR factor, to show the Chinese as well as the world that it was capable of building cars.
If China had been serious then about starting to put the country on wheels, or at least more of the elite, it would have made sense to have a genuine industrial program in auto building. But that wasn’t the real purpose, yet.
Yes, I suppose you’re right about the climate in China. I was thinking more of the historical core of the country, the Yangtze dale, however the border moved much farther towards North since then; northern China is in the same climatic zone as South-Eastern Siberia.
There are relatively many examples of retrofitting wraparound windshields on existing car bodies without too many complications, e.g. the evergreen ’53-on Studebaker recently covered on CC. Such changes do not seem too massive compared to those already made to the original design of the Volga, including completely new cowl area, A-pillars and roof.
And I mean – completely new not even in relation to styling, but to production technology as well, because the Volga’s roof required a very specific method of welding it to the rest of the body. The type used on the Donfanghong requires completely different tech.
However, a *truly* wrap-around windshield, complete with reverse-sloping A-pillars, *could* significantly compromise the body’s structural integrity, indeed.
Anyway – actually, the whole point of the article was that the Chinese automotive executives of the time *did* approve making changes to the original design, even at a cost of large investments without any return.
Thanks for all the nice detailed pix. The underhood and doorjamb details of the Volga are purely American, no Euro flavor at all. Seeing those areas without any other context, I’d think “Wait! A ’54 Chevy with four cylinders? What’s going on here?”
Studebaker Lark front door, 54 Plymouth rear, bolted to a 55 Chevish body.
Stanislav,
Thank you for the fascinating look at a car that I had never heard about before. Before Paul started this look at Chinese cars, I only knew about the Hongki. It is interesting that three of the earliest Chinese car manufacturers emulated an American full size car (Hongki), a Ponton Mercedes from Germany (Shanghai), and the GAZ-21 Volga (Dongfanghong) — they were taking best practices from three entirely different countries and auto industries, to make very small numbers of cars each. Would you say that this diversity, instead of Soviet-style uniformity of having one car design for an entire size class, was the result of officials in different regions each wanting their own car industry distinct from the others? This kind of regionalism is common in China today, and this would be an early example of it.
One wonders what Chinese Communist officials thought of these domestically produced vehicles, since before them, cars in China were only for the most wealthy and powerful, with imported American Buicks being especially popular (Emperor Pu-Yi, Sun Yat-Sen, and Chiang Kai-Shek all used Buicks as official cars, as did Zhou En-Lai). Aside from the Hongki, these would have seemed familiar style-wise, but quite small.
Keep in mind that even these smaller cars were built by hand and in extremely small numbers. Undoubtedly, they were still only available to party big-wigs, but for those that didn’t rank a Hong Qi. That would have included the many regional party leaders, and I do suspect that’s what started this trend to regional car building, since as you said, China has powerful regional control in its system.
An interesting idea.
There was a period in the history of Soviet industry when a certain amount of economical regionalism was also present – the Khrushevian experiment with Regional Economic Councils – the Sovnarkhozs system, which divided the country into 105 separate economical regions, each with its own regulating body subordinated to the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy, simultaneously shutting down many of the centralized economical ministries, which were almost countless in the end of Stalin’s epoch (almost each type of industry had a corresponding ministry).
It was a short, but a very productive period for the automotive industry. It gave life to the ZAZ, the LuAZ, the Start and the Zarya (low-volume fiberglass minibus and midsize passenger car designed and built in Donetsk region). As well as many other consumer goods.
It’s interesting to mention that the Soviet nomenklatura also strongly preferred Buicks before Stalin’s enamor with Packards. The first ZIS was essentially a Buick, too, with a characteristic OHV engine. I’ve even heard a statement that the 1942 model Buick was almost the perfect embodiment of the Soviet style of the time, even its hood emblem resembling the red star slightly.
China should name a car “Capitalist Roader,” to commemorate what Chairman Mao accused Deng Xiaoping of being, & accurately as it turned out. What I don’t understand is how Deng stayed alive, for a charge like that in the Soviet Union would’ve earned the full treatment in the Lubyanka, at least.
Erza Vogel wrote a biography on Deng Xiaoping that is exceptionally well researched. Deng survived by being a wily old fox. When he was exiled, he steadfastly refused to get involved in the madness that was all around him, the Cultural Revolution. He also tried to keep a good relationship with Mao, who felt that Deng was such a smart guy that he had better not liquidate him, since he might need him later.
China is not Russia and things are done differently there. When I asked my father in law about the Cultural Revolution, he told me that far from being a mass of violence, the violence was very carefully planned and directed at specific targets. Dad was the communist party rep in his work unit, so he knew what was going on. I also asked him, “Did you believe in it all?” He replied, “Sure, we all believed. We only heard, read and said what Mao wanted.” Just like in 1984, they really did love Big Brother. He added that he now reaslises it was all a lie. Interesting first hand source of history for me!
That’s why I love this site! When we get off topic (“arising from the discussion”, okay, I’ll accept that), you learn stuff it would take an age of searching to find – if you could find it at all. The differences in Communism as practised in China compared to Russia, and what it was like at the coalface, so to speak. Priceless!
I like both of these .
BTW Column Shifter haters : these were added because it used to be a regular thing to put three abreast in the front seat .
Floor shifters were considered ‘ old fashioned ‘ at one time .
-Nate
Well not exactly a hater… but to handle in modern city traffic is a pain in the neck indeed ! The lack of synchromesh on the 1st gear doesn’t help either. On older (very, very old) cars the linkage tended to stuck when shifting from the 1st gear to the 2nd, engaging 1st and 2nd gears simultaneously, that required the driver to stop, get out, open the hood and push one of the linkage rods by hand.
And the car is too narrow to accommodate 3 people on the front seat anyway, there was even a specific instruction for the taxicab drivers that forbade them from doing so for driving safety reasons.
All in all, I thing the column shifter is just perfect for Automatic transmissions. But not a manual, thank you. The linkage is so awkward. Push-button selector is even better IMO, by the way. Seem to be much more high-tech than levers of any kind to me.
“On older (very, very old) cars the linkage tended to stuck when shifting from the 1st gear to the 2nd, engaging 1st and 2nd gears simultaneously, that required the driver to stop, get out, open the hood and push one of the linkage rods by hand.”
Been there, done that. The last straw was when it happened in peak hour traffic in the busiest intersection in the state capital.
My next car was an automatic.
I grew up on and with the hated ” Three On The Tree ” column shifter and yes , it often got stuck in January and you had to stop and fiddle ’round under the hood to get it unstuck and few even bothered to clean anything under the hood in those days .
I learned early on that laziness in shifting habits caused rapid and undue wear in the linkages , primarily at the shifter box at the base of the steering mast jacket , parts were scare and we poor folks & Farmers didn’t have any $ to spend anyway so I learned to properly adjust , lubricate and most importantly _correctly_operate_ these slow and ponderous mechanisms and have not ever had one stick on me since the mid 1960’s .
If you look up ‘ positive shifting ‘ or ‘ square shifting ‘ you’ll run into a basic tech article I wrote after so many folks asked me to explain how I can drive my old worn out column shift vehicles faster and never get stuck between or locked into two , gears .
If you want to race around then get a floor shifter and NEVER allow three in the front seat as someone will inevitably lean against the shift lever causing rapid wear and tranny overhaul sooner than later .
-Nate
A Chinese knockoff of a Russian knockoff of American/Western styling themes. East meets East meets West.
Thanks for this fascinating look at a completely unfamiliar car. I find it fairly attractive, in a utilitarian sort of way. I find it odd that these products of communist society so closely mimic western cars. They wind up with something designed for VIPs that was way behind what the western proletariot was driving. By the 50s, Americans were turning up their noses at Willys Aeros and even Studebaker Champions.
So odd that these places that were supposedly the worker’s paradise never built cars for the workers. In the west, workers bought Model Ts, VWs and 2CVs
The idea was to rely mostly on public transportation as the more efficient one. Including taxicabs which were also state owned and dirt cheap. By 1980s, the USSR was bus producer #1 in the world, and #2 in medium/heavy trucks, volume wise. Public transportation, industry and agriculture were routinely supplied at over 100% rate, i.e. received annually more machines than they were writing off.
For the most part private owned cars were seen as exceptions, and award for good service to the society. Later, somewhere in the 1970s, the concept migrated towards the idea that cars are provided to certain people to enhance their ability to fulfill their social roles, both through using them in day to day activities and for recreation. Anyway, outside of Moscow, they were hardly seen by most as a mean of day to day transportation even in 1980s. Especially in winter.
Oh, and, the whole concept of “worker’s paradise” is actually more of a Western propaganda cliche.
I was always skeptical about so called “people’s cars”, there is something demagogic in the term itself. The primary idea behind them was to provide more profit for the producer, and the cars were merely a by-product, often supplied in too large numbers for the society to use efficiently, so that demand had to be additionally stimulated. In the USSR, profit wasn’t the primary goal as people both got payed by and bought everything from the State. The criterion was – to meet the society’s needs for transportation – and it is was deemed to be more or less fulfilled by the existing structure of transport system. It was different for the Western model, it wasn’t perfect, but it worked and worked quite well, especially in large to medium-sized cites and intercity traffic, which was (and is) mostly done by railways.
Dong Fang Hong (東方紅) == “The East is Red”
It’s a common name in the PRC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dong_Fang_Hong_%28disambiguation%29
Thank you very much for the explanation. “The East Is Red” is undoubtedly the correct translation, very much in-context.
Have to admit that I didn’t find the exact translation. In Russian sources Dongfang is usually translated (Palladius cyrillization system) as “doon-feen” = The Wind from The East. And the “fragrance” part was taken by me from Hong-Kong “the Fragrant harbour”. However, I really suck when it comes to Chinese characters… they often have (almost) the same pronunciation but very different meaning.
Stanislav; I’m changing the title to what appears to be the more correct name of this car, for posterity and future Google searches.
“The Fragrant Wind from the East” – The East Blows?
Incorrect: the east is great, a tremendously interesting experience. Spent over a decade there and still can’t get enough.
Body dies
Maybe even not, with access to much cheaper labor, they were more likely made by labor, I can just imagine hammers were used to shape the body. I remember seeing the documentary about early Chinese car industry, the retired workers felt quite sorry for them even drilling stamping holes in the body panel but still manually shape them since they didn’t know the hole was used for stamping back then, only because they saw a hole on a foreign car in that place of the body panel. I think it explains how bad the body work looks especially on the surface, also the number. If regular body stamping is used, it wouldn’t be that limited in the number it was produced. And as I know, Chinese car industry didn’t figure out how to stamp properly at a reasonable cost until just two decades ago.
So, I imagine even in 1993, when Ford donated a brand new Modular 4.6 V8 DOHC engine to Tongji University ( one of the bed in shanghai, or the whole nation ) I can imagine how impressed they were. And it’s quite indeed an impressive engine since I drive a ’94 Lincoln Mark VIII, and for the Chinese car industry in ’90s I guess they felt it took forever to make a copy of that. Maybe?
Agreed. From what I’ve read, these early Chinese cars were quite literally built by hand, with the simplest of machine tools. Given that only some 100-200 of these were made, I sincerely doubt that larger dies were involved. They were almost undoubtedly built like so many small-scale Italian coupes and roadsters, with bucks and hammers.
Well, why not ? I have some first-hand familiarity with the process, through a group of enthusiasts in Moscow who are currently building a custom car styled after Alfa-Romeo coupes of the 1930s. They are working with steel frame / aluminum paneling, though.
A very interesting information, thank you.
As far as I know, USSR itself didn’t produce body dies until mid-1940s, using ones produced by Ambi-Budd of Philadelphia, USA instead. And the very first ones produced locally, which were used to build the Pobeda, were of a rather poor quality, resulting in massive amounts of tin/lead on the bodies. It would be logical to suppose that late-1950s China just couldn’t produce the necessary equipment. However, it never lacked in craftsmanship and cheap labor force.
Hmmm… This assumption of yours renders my theory of using this car to train personal for the future industry much, much less relevant… You won’t extract too many experience in mass production from hammering body panels on your knees.
From the other hand… it doesn’t work so well for such parts as the engine, turn signals and taillight bezels, and many other parts that *do* require elaborate manufacturing equipment. The same engine, however, was also used in a modified form on Chinese light military vehicles like the BJ212. And small bits still may be made entirely by hand, with a lot of labor and some number of non-specialized equipment.
Anyway, Robert Kim’s above mentioned idea of – testing the best each engineering school of the world had to offer – is still valid, of course.
What is the relationship between this “DongFangHong” (whatever that means..) and the “DongFeng Golden Dragon”, previously shown in that post about Chinese cars (Sept 18)? The “Dragon” looked like a clone of the French Ford Vedette of 1954 (later Simca) and this “Hong” keeps a lot of those styling clues. On another line, the Volga has always made me think about the 53-54 Hudson Jet, specially the dash layout. But that was just yesterday, some sixty years ago…
+1 on the Golden Dragon looking like a Vedette. This one has Vedette/Ariane tail lights but the body is undoubtedly Volga.
Great article by the way. Always fascinated by old cars that come from weird places (and China during the Great Leap Forward was plenty weird). More please, Stanislav! Especially if you happen to find a ZIL or a Chaika 14…
“The Fragrant Wind From the East.” And, I thought my “Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale Brougham” had a windy name.
Nowadays, we can’t even get Cadillac to call their new car the Elmiraj, or Eldorado, or something. It appears we’ll be stuck with CT6
Great write up. Love the obscure stuff.
I definitely see some Studebaker similarities in the window frames, and find parallels between some of the changes from the Volga to the BJ760 and the changes detailed recently as the Studebakers were “freshened” by increments until the end of the line.
The ‘deer leg’ rear fender line and flat section over the rear wheel certainly have late 40’s Studebaker over tones. They certainly had no preconceived notions about naming their creations, I’ll give them that…
Stanislav, thank you so much for the information and insights you provide to us. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you again.
I’m a bit late here, but as Old Pete said, this was absolutely fascinating, thank you!
The car in the Beijing Auto Museum is a terrible crude made replica, see http://chinacarhistory.com/2018/03/28/fake-veteran-cars-in-chinese-car-museums/
greetings! Erik (very nice article!)