Let me tell you about a truck. This truck weighs 8,796 pounds, has a ground clearance of over 13 inches, rides on meaty 35-inch mud tires, and is powered by a legendary 6.7-liter Cummins straight-six diesel making a mighty 314 HP. This sounds like something straight out of Texas, right? Somehow, the truck I’m talking about here isn’t the latest heavy-duty pickup truck from Michigan, but one from China. This is the Dongfeng Warrior MS600, and it’s China’s replacement for the Hummer. If your head isn’t spinning yet, you need to know that these things cost around $70,000 and rise well past $90,000 like a true red, white, and blue oil burner.
Our lovely contributor who covers all things automotive in China, Tycho de Feijter, wrote a fascinating retrospective covering the history of Chinese pickup trucks. A lot of China’s new pickup trucks are of the smaller variety, but there are a few mind-boggling exceptions.
One truck that stood out to me in Tycho’s piece was the Dongfeng Warrior MS600. He dedicated a few paragraphs to this truck, and what stood out to me was just how American it was from the spec sheet down to the engine.
Cummins And Dongfeng Hook Up
According to the Shiyan city government website, the Dongfeng Motor Corporation was created in response to a need. It was the Korean War, and the People’s Volunteer Army had suffered heavy losses to its fleet of vehicles. General Peng Dehuai sent a letter to Chairman Mao Zedong asking for more military vehicles. In 1953, China’s Ministry of Machinery called for the construction of the Second Automobile Factory, which was to build military trucks inspired by the Soviet GAZ-51. Plans for Second Automobile were canned, revived, and then blown up again.
Fast-forward to the mid-1960s, and China found itself in conflict with the Soviet Union and India. This exposed a big problem, Shiyan city writes, because China’s industries were largely located in areas that were easily vulnerable to attacks. Vehicles were also seen as a necessary component for economic growth and for the military. Second Automobile Works was greenlit once more, and this time, government officials chose the small, remote town of Shiyan as the location for the venture.
In 1969, Second Automobile Works was founded and later began producing military trucks. The company’s first civilian truck was built in 1978, and in 1992, Second Automobile Works was renamed to the Dongfeng Motor Corporation. Shiyan grew around the company, evolving from a secluded town to the major city that it is today.
Dongfeng remains a state-owned corporation today, and it has forged some interesting joint ventures with other companies, including with Dana, Honda, Nissan, and Volvo. The joint venture that’s important here is the Dongfeng Cummins Engine Co. (DCEC). Back in 1986, Dongfeng signed a license with Cummins for B series diesel engines. This morphed into a joint venture in 1996.
DCEC largely repackages Cummins-designed engines and provides China with everything from the Cummins 4BT3.9 and 6BT5.9 to mills as powerful as 770 HP. The engine in the Dongfeng Warrior MS600 is the DCEC D6.7NS6B320, which is just an incredibly long way to say that it’s a Cummins B6.7.
The Chinese B6.7 is marketed as a bus engine and is rated for 314 HP and 774 lb-ft of torque. This power rating is less than what you’d get in a Cummins 6.7 in a Ram HD truck, but is toward the high end of the power scale for the Cummins B6.7 offered to the American medium-duty truck market. So, this is still a wildly capable engine!
China’s Heavy-Duty Pickups
This engine is going into a bit of a weirdo. Back in the mid-2000s, Dongfeng started building the EQ2050 for the government, a light utility vehicle based on the civilian Hummer H1. The first EQ2050s combined components imported from America with Dongfeng-Cummins engines. Later models are said to have all of their parts built in China, but may still use a Hummer H1-inspired frame.
Dongfeng has gotten a lot of use out of the EQ2050 platform, tweaking the truck into soft top and hard top SUVs, pickup trucks, and civilian off-road vehicles. These trucks were also known as the Mengshi (Warrior) line, a brand that Dongfeng slaps on a variety of different meaty trucks.
The Warrior MS600, which launched in 2023, has been reported to be one of multiple successors to the so-called “Chinese Hummer.” However, some Russian and Chinese car news sources say that it’s still using a Hummer-inspired frame underneath. Either way, this is pretty much China’s answer to civilian Hummers right now, which is wild.
This truck, which Tycho says is the largest of its kind in China right now, is said to be an extreme machine.
The trucks were subjected to a 1,056,331-mile testing regime and were designed to handle some real tough conditions. Reportedly, the trucks can run in -41.8-degree Fahrenheit conditions and use fuel heaters to combat diesel gelling. The MS600 also wades 31.5 inches of water and has a 33-degree approach angle, 36-degree departure angle, and 25-degree breakover angle.
As I said earlier, the darn thing also weighs 8,796 pounds, stands 13.3 inches above the ground, and rocks 35-inch mud tires. I feel like I’m listing off the features of some American adventure truck here. There’s also a permanent four-wheel-drive system, a two-speed transfer case, and a six-speed automatic transmission. Though something a little less American about the MS600 is its 86 mph top speed. That wouldn’t work in Texas.
The tech isn’t anything that impressive. Drivers get a 12.8-inch infotainment screen, the option for a level two driver-assistance system, and dual-zone climate control. Not bad!
Another spec sheet I’ve found states that the MS600 can carry a load of two tons, and the base configuration of the truck has it stretching out to 20 feet.
Everyone Loves Big Trucks, I Guess
The wild part is that while this truck will be used by police and other government entities, it’s also sold to the public. So even folks in China can live out their big rig dreams with a gigantic truck.
The base model costs $70,800, but that just gets you a regular cab bare chassis truck. If you want a pickup bed, the price scales up from there to prices exceeding $93,000, depending on options. That’s just for the pickup truck version. If you want the luxury SUV version or the motorhome, you’re expected to pay even more. So, not only is this bad boy like an American big truck, it’s also priced like one!
Of course, you shouldn’t expect to see something like this in America. I’m sure most American truck buyers wouldn’t care, either, since they could get the latest Ferd Fteenthousand for about the same price. But I’m still fascinated by this thing. It’s huge, ugly, expensive, and powered by a massive diesel engine just like American trucks. Maybe one day we’ll see one of these in that weird foamy mud bowl thing out there.
You used to see the old version on various sourcing websites for around $10k to $15k. They always look a little funny. I’ve seen them imported to Malaysia and Thailand. It was extra amusing back then because dongfeng was mainly known in the west for terrible little chopper bikes.
Yeah. They look awful. As in- they outdid Chevrolet.
This is the answer to a question that absolutely no one had asked.
Offer whatever length loans it takes to get the monthly payment on one of these under $1,000 and Trump voters will suddenly be pro Chinese cars!
Something tells me even a truck awesome enough to be named a Warrior wouldn’t sway them
96 month Stellantis-style deals for everyone!
This looks like if you took a Silverado 2500 and mixed it with the new Hummer…and then put it into GTA.
Canyonero!