A very pretty and very clean Nissan Fengshen Bluebird EQ7200 SSS, seen on a sunny day at a car wash in Beijing in 2010. The good Nissan was in a perfect shape, just washed, painted in a wine red shade with factory multi-spoke sporty alloys. As you can see it has a Dongfeng badge on the grille, not a Nissan badge.
The Fengshen EQ7200 was the first China-made Nissan Bluebird. It was manufactured by a joint venture between Taiwan’s Yulon Motor and China’s Dongfeng Motor. The SSS was the sport version.
The EQ7200 was based on the Nissan Bluebird U13, which was made in Japan from 1991 until 1997. The U13 was made under license from Nissan by Yulon Motor for the Taiwanese market, and it was that car that ended up in the joint venture.
Fengshen was the Chinese brand name and Aolus the English brand name, both meaning “god of wind”.
Production of the EQ7200, also called the EQ7200-1, started in 1999 and ended in 2002. In 2003 the new Dongfeng-Nissan joint venture took over production of the U13-based models. The EQ7200 was succeeded by the EQ7200-II and the EQ7200-III.
The new joint venture heralded the end of the Yulon-Dongfeng joint venture. The Fengshen name was used for a while on the early series of the EQ7200-II and then disappeared as well.
But nothing is gone forever in China. In 2010 Yulon and Dongfeng started a new joint venture making Luxgen branded cars for the Chinese market. And the Fengshen name now sires a series of Dongfeng cars, based on a mix of Nissan and PSA platforms.
The Nissan Fengshen Bluebird EQ7200 SSS came standard with a sporty spoiler on the back and mud flaps behind the wheels. The EQ7200 was available with two engines: a 125hp 1.8 (SR18DE) and a 145hp 2.0 (SR20DE). The engines were shipped in from Taiwan for final assembly in China. ‘Boxes: 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic.
[table id=273 /]
EQ7200 badge on the left. Nissan badge in the middle. SSS badge on the right.
Red Dongfeng stands out between black and gray cars.