A pretty Tianma Fengchi KZ6490E SUV, seen in the great city of Guangzhou in Guangdong Province in 2015. It is a typical old-school Chinese SUV; simple and cheap, slow and barely reliable, but somehow kinda cool.
This particular example was in a presentable shape, it had some bruises and dents but the body was otherwise all right. The side bars, sporty three-twin spoke alloys, wide wheel arches, roof rack, spoiler, and decals were all factory-standard.
The Tianma Fengchi KZ6490E SUV was manufactured from 2003 until 2007 by a company called Hebei Baoding Tianma Automobile Corporation, based in Baoding city in Hebei Province, which is also home to Great Wall Motors.
Tianma Automobile was founded in 1996, a spinoff from the People’s Liberation Army 9506 Factory, which was a large industrial conglomerate operated by the Chinese armed forces.
The company made pickup trucks and small trucks for the army, and added cheap SUV’s to the line-up after 1996. The car making operations were sadly not very successful and were killed in 2012.
Tianma reverted to truck making via a joint venture with Shanqi Truck, a subsidiary of Shaanxi Automobile, one of the largest truck makers in China and a major supplier of the Chinese army.
The Tianma Fengchi KZ6490E SUV was powered by the famous Mitsubishi 4G64S4M 2.4 liter four-cylinder petrol engine, an engine that powered so many of this kind of cheap Chinese SUV’s and pickup trucks.
The engine was manufactured by the Shenyang Aerospace Mitsubishi Motors Engine Manufacturing Corporation, an engine making joint venture that was founded in 1997 and still exists today.
The super cool TM Tianma badge.
Output of the engine: 127hp and 180nm, which was good for a top speed of 150 kilometer per hour. Size: 4620/1885/1825, wheelbase was 2720 and curb weight 1830kg. Price for all this pretty (2006): 68.800 yuan, and that wasn’t that much money for such a big and characterful car.
These days, this kind of old-school SUVs are largely gone and dead but some smaller car makers in the interior still make similar vehicles, selling them mainly in their home provinces.