This beauty is a very rare BAM BJ2020SA, a two-door 4×4 off-road vehicle. I saw it in Beijing all the way back in 2003, just across the street from the Workers’ Stadium. The building on the left has long been razed to the ground and replaced by something new, and recently the stadium went down as well! Note the purple trousers and the old δΊ¬C license plate.
This was actually one of my very first real spots after I arrived in Beijing to live there that very year. I stayed 16 more, but that’s another story. The BAM BJ2020SA was manufactured by a great company called Beijing Automobile and Motorcycle United Company, abbreviated BAM.
This company was born in 1987 out of a merger between Beijing Automobile Manufacturing Plant (aka Beijing Auto Works, BAW) and Beijing Motorcycle Manufacturing Plant. As the name implies, BAM made cars and motorcycles. In 2001 they were in turn merged into a new company that eventually became the colossus Beijing Auto Industry Corporation (BAIC).
To make matters a bit more complex: the BAM BJ2022SA was based on the BAW Beijing BJ212. The BJ212 was a typical platform-car that was used by dozens of smaller Chinese automakers to base their own cars on.
There is/was a small restaurant and shop front-left. It was a bit shady but I had lots of very-late nigh noodles and beer there. The shop sold Coca-Cola and ice creams and such.
Back to the BJ2020SA. Amazingly, it may be, these 2-door long-rear cars were used as buses down country. There have benches on each side of the rear compartment and can carry up to 8 people.
The one I saw was in good shape for its kind, they always look kind of battered. That’s their character. I love the yellow-brown paint, black-painted steel wheels, the triple round rear lights, and the super simple rear doors. It is a convertible car so the entire fabric roof can go off, and the doors can be taken out as well. But I have rarely seen these people-carrier variant with the roof off.
Power came from a 2.4 liter ‘Beijing’ 492 QA four-cylinder petrol engine, good for 70 hp and 160 Nm. Transmission was a four-speed manual, four-wheel drive. Top speed for the BJ2020A was rated at 120 kilometers per hour.
A great car in the greatest city. Sadly, it is very likely that this BAM BJ2020SA is no longer on this world. Ever stricter environmental regulations have taken care of that! But maybe, just maybe, it was moved to the relative safety of the countryside in time.
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