One you don’t see every day: a Besturn B90 sedan, seen parked on the pavement in Beijing in the summer of 2018. The good Besturn was in a good shape, fresh from a wash it seemed, painted in white with its big grille shiny in the sun.
Besturn is/was a brand under First Auto Works (FAW). The brand was founded in 2006 and is based in Changchun, capital of Jilin Province. The Chinese name is 奔腾 (Bēnténg). In 2018 the English name changed from Besturn to Bestune, but the Chinese name remained the same.
The Besturn B90 was launched in 2012 and produced until 2017 with a facelift in 2014. Our white car is an original pre-facelift example. The B90 was the flagship sedan of the brand, and remains the longest sedan ever produced under the Besturn/Bestune brand until today.
The B90 was based on the platform of the second generation Mazda 6, which was made in China by the FAW-Mazda joint venture. At the time, FAW used platforms from its various joint ventures for cars of its various own brands. Nowadays, FAW makes its own platforms.
The interior was luxurious, with leather seats and classy trim. The instrument panel had two sporty dials with a gray edge. It had an infotainment system with a complicated control pad.
Lots of space for the legs in the rear compartment. The B90 was a big car: 4860/1812/1472, with a 2780 wheelbase. The pre-facelift B90 was available with two engines: a 146 hp 2.0 and a 160 hp 2.3. Price started at 139.800 yuan.
Lots of stuff going on here! Let’s break it down:
In the middle the ‘1’ logo for First Auto Works. The characters write 红旗 (Hóngqí), another brand under FAW. At the time, Besturn dealers offered these badges as an official factory option.
This is 奔腾 (Bēnténg) B90.
These characters write 中国一汽 (Zhōngguó Yīqì, China First Auto). First Auto is an abbreviation of First Auto Works. In the past, many Chinese brands added ‘China’ in front of their brand names, but nowadays it is very rare.
The Besturn B90 made quite an impression when it debuted; an affordable yet luxurious sedan manufactured by a homegrown brand. Sadly it didn’t find too many buyers, there was just too much competition by Western-branded cars made by the joint ventures, including by FAW’s own JVs.
The B90 didn’t get a successor. But the Bestune brand is on a roll today, with ever more great looking cars on self-developed platforms, so an all-new B90 is certainly a possibility in the foreseeable future.