China's Jiangling Motors Corporation (JMC), 32% owned by Ford, has launched a new Dadao brand, under which it intends to produce high-tech pickups, SUVs and light commercial vehicles.
JMC already produces a fairly wide range of pickups under its own brand, but they have, let's say, a worker-peasant image, which is why urban fashionistas do not favor the JMC brand . At the beginning of 2020, the Chinese authorities lifted the ban on the entry of pickups into major cities, after which a boom of lifestyle pickups began in them, stylish, fashionable and at the same time practical — such pickups are now made by Great Wall (Poer sub-brand), Changan (Lantop model), Geely (Radar brand) and other Chinese manufacturers.
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JMC rushed into a new niche with some delay and introduced a new brand Dadao this week, which will be positioned higher than the parent JMC. Translated from the Latinized Chinese, Dadao means «avenue», while each letter encodes the values of the new brand — discover, active, diverse, acme, optimistic (can be translated as «adventure, active, diverse, perfect, optimistic»). For the first model — a mid-size pickup truck, which does not even have its own name yet — JMC creatives came up with a new vehicle designation: they say, this is not just a pickup truck, but a PUV, which stands for Possibility Unique Vehicle and is translated into Russian as «Unique Opportunity Vehicle» .
Meanwhile, behind all this verbiage lies quite an ordinary mid-size pickup truck, in terms of the aggregate part, it is largely unified with the latest generation Ford Ranger. The overall length of the Dadao pickup varies from 4800 to 5700 mm, the wheelbase is from 2700 to 3500 mm. As part of the premiere, only versions with a two-row cab were shown, but in three versions — utilitarian (white car), luxury (black car) and off-road (red car).
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The frame platform underlying Dadao is designed for almost any type of power plant, including hybrid, electric and hydrogen, but the truck debuted with traditional Ford-designed «hydrocarbon» engines — a gasoline 2.3-liter «turbo-four» EcoBoost (258 liters .s., 450 Nm) and a Puma turbodiesel of the same volume (177 hp, 450 Nm), both available in tandem with manual or automatic transmission, rear-wheel or all-wheel drive.
1/2 2/2Dadao's four-wheel drive is very progressive, with an automatic take-off clutch on the front axle and a reduction gear in the transfer case. The clutch can be forcibly blocked, off-road versions also have forced blocking of both cross-axle differentials. All versions have independent front suspension and a solid rear axle. The simple versions have a spring rear suspension, the advanced ones have a spring and supplemented with a Watt stabilizing mechanism.
1/8 2/8 3/8 4/8 5/8 6/8 7/8 8/8 < p> The interior design also depends on the performance: the “workhorses” have old-fashioned pointer instruments, the usual “poker” of the parking brake and a fixed center console, while the “mods” have a fully electronic instrument panel without a visor, an electromechanical “handbrake”, movable 12 1-inch multimedia tablet in the center and a much more refined finish. The off-road version has bright contrasting inserts in the cabin, and on the outside it differs from the others with trimmed bumpers, “toothy” tires, a protective plastic body kit, a snorkel, a winch and other adventure ammunition.
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Dadao pickups will appear on the Chinese market in April, prices have not yet been announced, and nothing is known about export prospects either.