A Beijing Auto Beijing BJ20 Off-Road Edition, seen in Beijing in 2018. The vehicle looked brand new and was perfectly clean inside and out. The Beijing Auto BJ20 was conceived in a night of madness and debuted in standard form in 2016, featuring a polarizing design that didn’t look like anything else in the Beijing Auto lineup.
The most interesting part of the design was the front. It had a fake air intake atop the bonnet, main headlights with blue lenses, and another set of LED lights just under the bonnet.
The BJ20 Off-Road Edition added even more madness. It arrived in 2017 as a special-edition trim level. Everything you see on this car was factory standard: the matte black paint, the orange wheel arches, the black alloys, the side boards, the darkened windows, the roof rack, and the search lights atop the rack.
It was a crazy version of a crazy car, odd yet oddly cool. Beijing Auto aimed it at a young audience, which normally wasn’t very much attracted to Beijing Auto’s old-school SUVs.
The rear wasn’t as spacial as the front, but it was close. The bumper that runs over and under the license plate is very interesting. The BJ20 Off-Road Edition got orange BEIJING lettering and an orange lower bumper.
Orange detailing continued inside, with orange edges around the center stack and air vents. The dash had a faux-carbon trim. The owner of this particular car had it sexed up with Hello Kitty seat covers and a Hello Kitty steering wheel cover. Perhaps the owner though the BJ20 Off-Road Edition was a bit too manly.
Power came from a 1.5 liter turbocharged four-cylinder ‘4A91T’ petrol engine sourced from Shenyang-Mitsubishi. Output was 150 hp and 210 Nm. The motor was mated to a CVT, sending horses to the front wheels. Top speed was 180 km/h and fuel consumption a decent 7.3 liters per 100 kilometers.
More Hello Kitty in the back and a pack of wet tissues on the bench.
The naming situation is always a bit complicated with Beijing products, various brand have similar but different names. With the BJ20, the company name is Beijing Auto (北京汽车). The brand name is Beijing (北京), and the type name BJ20.
Price for the Beijing BJ20 Off-Road Edition was 129.800 yuan in 2017, which was a pretty good deal for such a pretty car. Sadly, the Chinese car market wasn’t quite ready for the BJ20 in general, and probably even less so for the Off-Road Edition, I have only ever seen one on the road, and that was this one.
Production of the BJ20 ended in 2019 and we thought that was the end of it. But is wasn’t. In early 2021 Beijing Auto launched the Beijing BJ30, basically an updated variant of the BJ20 with a sanitized design. The BJ30 sells much better than the BJ20 but it isn’t as cool, and there ain’t no crazy Off-Road Edition yet.