This is a pretty Nanjing Yuejin Encore, seen in Beijing in the cold winter of 2012. It was in reasonable shape, with some rust and a few busts. The front hub cab was missing.
Yuejin Automobile (跃进汽车) was, and still is, a subsidiary of Nanjing Automobile, itself a subsidiary of SAIC. The logo is still in use today on Yuejin’s trucks. The Nanjing NJ6400 was a rebadged and slightly reworked Mk1 Seat Ibiza. Yuejin Automobile bought the production line from Seat in 1997, shipped everything to China, and restarted production in 1999.
The Chinese designation was NJ6400GHR. The Chinese name was 英格尔, Yīnggé’er, which has no real meaning. The English name was Encore. There were 3 trim levels: Basic, Luxury, and Sports. The car that I saw is a Basic. In 2001, the Encore received an update, and production ended in 2004.
The front-wheel drive Nanjing Encore Basic was powered by a 1.5 liter (1.461) carburated four-cylinder gasoline engine. The output was 60 kW and 110 Nm. The top speed was 130 km/h, and fuel consumption was 6.0 liters per 100 kilometers. The motor was mated to a five-speed manual transmission. The pre-update Encore did not have power steering. Size: 3746/1610/1394, 2443, with a 920 kg curb weight.
The Encore name is in classical-style handwriting. The character ‘尔’ is missing from the name. The UAA sticker is cool. The United Automobile Association was a Chinese online automobile services site established in March 2005 and headquartered in Beijing. Members of the site got this sticker to put on their cars.
The UAA was foreign-funded, which was rare for this kind of company then. Its business model was based on the American Automobile Association (AAA). The UAA was outcompeted by local brands like BitAuto and went under in the early 2010s. It should not be confused with the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), which is a government-backed industry organization.
The characters are: 中国 南京, Zhōngguó Nánjīng, China Nanjing. In those days, car makers commonly put ‘China’ in front of their brand names. Geely and FAW, to name just two, did it too. Nowadays only FAW does it with the Hongqi brand. It is still today on commercial vehicle brands.
The Yuejin Encore was a beautiful and basic vehicle, perfect for China at the time. It was cheap to buy and cheap to run. In those days, the Chinese car market was much more geographically divided than now, mainly by province, with cars made by local manufacturers dominating the streets. The Encore was therefore quite rare in Beijing, but down in the southeast, it was quite common. Nowadays it is super rare everywhere.