This is a Beijing-Jeep Cherokee XJ City Special, seen in the Dongzhimen area in central Beijing in January 2012. The Jeep was a bit dusty but that was normal in the cold winters in the Chinese capital. The car was loaded to the max with factory accessories.
The Jeep Cherokee XJ was manufactured in China by the Beijing-Jeep joint venture from 1984 until 2009 in countless versions and variants. I had one too! It was such a fantastic car for China at the time. It’ll go on any sort of road and could be repaired at any sort of shop.
The City Special was a basic rear-wheel drive trim level. Everything was controlled manually. It had a 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine under the hood, with a five-speed manual gearbox. The 2.5-liter four-cylinder petrol engine was produced locally by Beijing-Jeep. The designation was C498QA1. It had an output of 135 hp and a top speed of 145 kilometers per hour.
Beijing-Jeep sold all sorts of dealer accessories. These were very popular and you rarely saw an XJ without any extra stuff. But Jeep owners could also drive to any car market where they would find dozens of shops selling trillions of additional accessories, including cheap copies of the dealer stuff.
This car seems to have a mix of both. Dealer: bumper extensions, decals on the side and back, window wind deflectors, extra right-side mirror, rear-window Jeep sticker, sidebars, and mudflaps. From the market: Transformer decals, the ladder, the entire roof rack, lights on the roof rack, Chrysler logo sticker, Chrysler hood ornament.
The alloy wheels are from another Beijing-Jeep Cherokee model, fitted with extra wide tires.
Note the Jenny Lou’s sign on the building. That was a popular shop for imported products, including a nice selection of beer and frozen pizzas. For a long long time, there were just two Jenny Lou’s in Beijing; in Lido and in Sanlitun. But in 2012 they opened a third store in the Dongzhimen area, just a few hundred meters from my home.
The winter sun in Beijing always does fuzzy things with the lens of a camera. At that time, much of the wiring for electricity and telephone still ran above ground, as seen in the background above the roof of the Cherokee. These days, most of it has gone underground. The XJ is painted in a light shade of white, a factory color, matching nicely with the color of the box truck parked on the sidewalk.