A Fulu Junma tricycle, seen in the great city of Nandaihe in China in 2011. It was standing in front of a touristy place and was for hire as a taxi. It looked really cool in red with shiny mirrors and big headlights.
This vehicle’s brand is 骏马 (Jùnmǎ), best translated as ‘Steed’, like the brown orange horse on the sticker. The Junma brand was produced by a company called Fulu Motor (福路汽车) from the great city of Dezhou in Shandong Province Province.
Sadly, the company doesn’t seem to be around anymore today. They were quite big in the 2000’s and 2010’s. In beginning the company made mainly gasoline powered vehicles, both with 3 wheels and 4. Later on they did some EVs as well. Happily, parts are still readily available. The car that I saw is a very early gasoline powered example, likely made around 2000-2005.
They always did something fuzzy with their decals. So on the left side, it was like this: 福路 骏马: Fulu Junma. But on the right it looked different:
The characters had the opposite order. But they weren’t mirrored. Just the order reversed, totally. 马骏 路福, majun lufu. The meaning makes no sense. And even the steed is on the other side! I have noticed this odd sticker situation on many other Fulu cars too, and never really got why they did that. I asked some Chinese friends. They just shrugged and said like “who cars, just crazy Shandong people”. Right! That’s it.
Fulu made a lot of different variants of these Junma tricycles. This one is a long-wheelbase variant, with a third-side window. Fulu spiced u the she side with a black piece of trim over the doors. Power came from a 3 hp 3-cylinder gasoline engine mated to a 4-speed manual. The usually had a top speed of 50-60 km/h. They were very cheap, with a base price of around 7000 yuan.
The steed logo on the nose in gray on a black background. The windshield is vast with two long wipers. This kind of vehicles were all over smaller Chinese cities in the 2000’s. These days they are mostly replaced with electric cars with more coherent design. But the old Junma’s were the coolest!