This Isn’t A Jeep Gladiator

The Chinese car and truck industry is ramping up its exports, but it’s the home market vehicles that seem to be the most interesting. Next to 100-500 slightly different aerodynamically shaped, electrified sedans, my eyes are drawn to the BAW 212 truck.

Take a look at it! It’s like they took every cool truck ever made and put something from each of them onto the BAW 212. From the side and the rear, it kind of looks like a Jeep Gladiator, but then it’s got this FJ40 Land Cruiser thing going on with the front end. The cab also heavily resembles a Land Rover Series or Defender, with a little Ineos Grenadier thrown in for good measure.

The Original Chinese Army Trucks

The thing is, the BAW 212’s design isn’t really a homage to all of these aforementioned trucks so much as a hat-tip to BAW’s own manufacturing history. Chinese companies have been making trucks like these for decades, and that’s the heritage BAW’s pulling from.

Way back in the early 1960s, production of the Chinese Beijing BJ212 started. The 1964 original was heavily based on Soviet 4×4 technology, and looking at it, you can see how much it lifted from the UAZ 469, which also dates back to the early ‘60s.

The BJ212 utilized the chassis, axles, and suspension from the Soviet GAZ-69, itself a decade older than the UAZ and also built at the UAZ factory, but the locally made engine for the BJ212 came from a Chinese GAZ-21 knock-off called the Dongfanghong BJ760. That ZMZ engine was originally from the GAZ-21 and produced 70 horsepower.

The BJ212 became the ubiquitous army jeep in China, with military officials also riding in open-topped ones in parades.

Looking at the original BJ212, the front-end design is clearly reinterpreted on the BAW 212, which also got its name from the Beijing-built 4×4. Of course, the J40 series Land Cruiser had hit the market in 1960, early enough to influence the design.

Put short, the BAW212 isn’t really a copy of the FJ40 Land Cruiser, but a copy of a copy of it, and also the UAZ. It sort of makes sense, especially after reading this excellent Tycho de Feijter article on this site about Beijing Jeep history.

Beijing Jeep’s Roots

BAW, or the Beijing Auto Works, was formed in the 1950s. By 1984, Beijing Jeep was formed as a joint venture between BAW, which had become the Beijing Auto Industry Corporation (BAIC), and American Motors, to start producing the Jeep Cherokee XJ in China. This was the era of Western carmakers rolling into China to start up local car production, and around that time, Volkswagen also set up shop with SAIC Motor to form Shanghai Volkswagen.

To compete with the Dongfanghong BJ760 that gave its engine to the BJ212, Shanghai had been building the Mercedes-Benz Ponton-based Shanghai SH760, a curious-looking car that had the center section of the Ponton but front and rear ends that were inspired by 1950s Packards, similarly to the GAZ Chaika. A Shanghai SH760 was gifted to Volkswagen chairman Carl Hahn and ended up in a museum in Wolfsburg; it used VW Santana parts, including the taillights, and reportedly had to have a custom steering wheel boss made to replace the one with a counterfeit VW badge to avoid upsetting the VW boss. The museum auctioned the car a couple of years ago, and it’s now in the hands of an enthusiast, who has made it road legal.

In the 1980s, Beijing Jeep built the XJ Cherokee as well as the BJ212L. The BJ212 chassis and engine were also sold to other Chinese carmakers, which would then fit their own bodies on them. In the 1990s, some companies devised XJ copies to fit on the chassis, effectively making body-on-frame versions of the XJ Cherokee, which is famously a unibody truck. Tycho’s article goes far to list all possible XJ copies, which makes for fascinating reading.

These days, Beijing Jeep is actually Beijing Benz, a joint venture between BAIC, Mercedes-Benz Group, and Mercedes-Benz China, explained by the purchase of AMC by Chrysler and the DaimlerChrysler merger of equals. XJ Cherokee and BJ212 production at Beijing Jeep ended in 2005, and BAIC sold BAW in 2020.

BAW spun off 212 as its own off-road vehicle brand in 2024, and it now offers vehicles that are visually and conceptually comparable to both the Wrangler and the Gladiator.

The classic BJ212, China’s UAZ, is still being built after 60 years, powered by different Chinese developments of Isuzu, Toyota, and Mitsubishi engines. Over the years, it has been modernized similarly to the UAZs, and like the UAZ-469, it’s one of the oldest vehicles still in production.

European Sales

The new 2020s BAW trucks are more than a home-market oddity, as they are being exported to Europe and are already on sale there. BAIC’s German representatives sell a variety of BAIC Motor’s brands, from Beijing’s crossovers to BJ40-badged Wrangleresque SUVs, from Bestunes to Forthings, as well as DFSK and Dongfeng.

On the neuwagen.team website of Indimo, the importer, the 212 wagon and pickup are priced on both sides of 40,000 Euros ($46,5k), and the 212 pickup starts from 41,995 Euros. Several are available on the Autoscout car sales site, and it seems BAIC Motor’s German dealer network consists of Ford and Mazda dealers supplementing their offerings with Chinese brands.

A variety of colors are available, including desert yellow, and the engine choices are a two-liter turbodiesel with 166 horsepower or a larger 2.3-liter turbodiesel with 190 horsepower. The bigger-engined variant is priced at around $50,000.

The cabin is a generic-modern truck interior with a chunky dash and decent-looking physical buttons and the inevitable touchscreen; the transmission is always an 8-speed automatic.

The complete export market for the BAW 212 is unclear at the time of writing, and these will obviously not be brought to the United States, but German customers can get one at short notice.

It would be very interesting to compare a BAW 212 to the Ineos Grenadier, for instance, as the Grenadier is tens of thousands more expensive. Granted, their BMW engines produce more power than the BAW’s turbodiesels.

As for the rest of the 4×4 truck market, the Toyota Land Cruiser costs more than $100,000 in Germany as its cheapest, and the BAW’s clearest competitor, the Wrangler Sahara is 70,900 Euros, or $82,500 – the Gladiator is not sold in Germany. Finally, the South African-built Ford Ranger pickup starts from around 55,000 Euros if you spec it with four doors and a 2.3-liter gasoline PHEV with 280 horsepower, and the Toyota Hilux is priced around 10k less, but for that money, you only get a 150-horsepower 2.4-liter turbodiesel.

For absolute durability, the Hilux is likely the best bet, and only time will tell how the BAW 212 fares long-term. Despite a decades-long history of building similar-looking army trucks, the BAW brand is new to Europe, and depreciation can hit it hard. Perhaps these will make an interesting used buys in a few years, as long as parts availability is good.

Photos: BAW unless otherwise noted