This orange beauty is an Iveco Yuhua NJK5046XGC5 engineering vehicle, as seen at a second-hand car shop in east Beijing, where it stood out for several reasons: it was not a car, it was painted in a shiny shade of orange, and it looked brilliantly cool.
It has a large cargo area with rails on the sides and barn doors.
Engineering vehicles are a special vehicle class in China. They are most commonly used for repairing things in cities that are located high up, like power lines phone lines, light poles, and the lot. The work platform is on the roof. Workers climb up via the ladder on the back of the cabin.
Sometimes, there is an additional ladder on the roof. Other engineering vehicles may be used for cleaning work, with a big tank in the back, or for all sorts of maintenance work. The cabin holds up to nine workers, and tools are stored in the back.
Most engineering vehicles are produced by specialty-vehicle manufacturers, and based on platforms of existing cars. The car we have here is produced by the Nanjing Bus Factory (南京客车制造厂), a subsidiary of the Nanjing Automotive Corporation (NAC), itself a subsidiary of SAIC. The brand of the engineering vehicle is Yuhua (雨花). The full designation is NJK5046XGC5.
The platform is manufactured by Naveco, short for Nanjing-Iveco, a long-running joint venture between NAC and Italian commercial vehicle maker Iveco. The brand name of the platform is Iveco. The type name of the platform is Daily. This sort of messy company/brand/vehicle name is very common in China, which can fuzzily confusing, but rewarding if you can figure it all out. The full name of this machine is like this: Nanjing Bus Factory Yuhua Iveco Daily NJK5046XGC5 engineering vehicle. It was built in the mid-2000s.
The characters: 工程车, gōngchéng chē, engineering vehicle.
The cabin is brilliant! At the front, it has 3 seats: two on the bench and one for the driver. The gray plastics are as hard as stone and will likely survive everything, The repair company added purple seat covers to protect the original cloth seats. It has a large-diameter truck-style steering wheel and the gear lever is located right on the floor.
The second row with a 3-seat bench. The windows are light and there is a lot of space for legs and tools.
The third row with 3 more seats, they are a bit higher, looking out over the second row. Note the fans for the cooling system in the ceiling.
The stamp on the windows, with the IVECO name and the NAC logo.
The 3M reflective tape is legally required for any commercial vehicle. The orange pain is quite rough, with the black stripes spray-painted on the sides. Yellow plates are for commercial vehicles with a length of over 6 meters. The rear license plates of trucks are often not clearly visible due to dust, bumpers, or overhanging cargo. Hence, in China, it is required by law to spray paint the license plate on the back of a commercial vehicle, in addition to the license plate.
Double rear wheels! The Yuhua NJK5046XGC5 was powered by a 2.8-liter four-cylinder turbo diesel engine with an output of 126 hp, good for a 105 km/h top speed. Size: 6010/2050/2430 (2700 with roof rack), with a 3310 wheelbase and a 2810 kg curb weight. The dimensions of the rear cargo area are 1920/1840/600, with a 740kg max payload.
Two large windows in the back of the cabin. The stairs look flimsy and appear to have seen a lot of repairs.
The door situation is interesting: on the left side it has a driver’s door, and on the right side it has a front-passenger door and a cabin door. There is no door in the back of the cabin, so if workers need to be in the cargo area they have to exit the vehicle first, walk to the barn doors, and enter again.
The Nanjing Iveco Yuhua NJK5046XGC5 engineering vehicle is probably one of the coolest orange cars I have ever seen in China. Engineering vehicles are still widely used today in China, and many of the new ones are EVs.