Red cars are better cars. Just look at this incredible Beijing-Jeep Cherokee City Special that I found in Beijing in November 2017. The good Jeep was covered with winter’s mud and snow but was otherwise in a great shape.
The Jeep Cherokee XJ was manufactured in China by the Beijing-Jeep joint venture from 1984 until 2009 in countless versions and variants. I had one too! It was such a fantastic car for China at the time. It’ll go on any sort of road and could be repaired at any sort of shop.
The Cherokee we have here is a 2001-2003 City Special. It was basically the successor of the Cherokee that I had. Red was a factory color but a very rare one. Most folks went for green or gray. The roof rack, window wind deflectors, and black door handles were factory options. The twin-five spoke alloy wheels were standard on high end versions.
The super cool City Special decals on the front doors.
There were so many variants and sub-variants of the Cherokee in China that is sometimes is hard to say which one is which, even for experienced Cherokee watchers like yours truly. Happily, in those days most new cars had the full factory designation on the car. Mostly in badge form, some in decal form. The badges mostly stayed in place, but the decals were not very strong and often disappeared very soon. But our red car still got it! The full designation is BJ2021E. That translates to a City Special model powered by the 2.5 liter four-cylinder with a five-speed manual gearbox and four-wheel drive.
And that makes this red XJ a relatively rare car. Most China-made 2.5 liter cars had only rear-wheel drive, like mine had. The 4.0 version had always four-wheel drive, but with an automatic gearbox. It is the combination 2.5 + manual + four-wheel drive that makes this variant very special.
The 2.5 liter four-cylinder petrol engine was produced locally by Beijing-Jeep. Designation was C498QA1. It had an output of 135 hp and a top speed of 145 kilometers per hour. I can personally confirm it could do 140 on the speedometer.
The interior was in a great shape too. The gray leather seats are original. The owner added a faux-wooden steering wheel and white dials in the instrument panel. The center tunnel looks very good. That was a weak point in China-made XJ’s. The center tunnel was made of very cheap plastics could simply fell apart.
Controller-handle for the four-wheel drive system is just visible below the wheel.
Only the high-spec versions had a rear-window wiper. This car has a tow hook, which was rare back then and even today. In China, you just hire some folks and a van when you need to move stuff around. The hook looks pretty serious.
The engine badge.
The BJC badge. This stands for Beijing Jeep Corporation, the official and full name of the joint venture. I still got a shipload of Cherokee’s to come! But this red one really was a beauty.