CarBrandLogos archive · Brilliance · 2006

BrillianceBS4

The BS4 — Brilliance's Italian-styled bid for sedan respectability.

Photo: Navigator84 · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Brilliance history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Brilliance BS4, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Brilliance's BS4 — the Junjie, launched 2006 — carried the Shenyang company's mainstream hopes: a compact saloon with Italian design-house styling, Mitsubishi-derived and own-family engines, and pricing aimed at China's swelling first-time sedan buyers. Export ambition followed quickly and painfully: European crash tests of Brilliance's sedans produced infamous results, wounding the brand's German adventure and schooling a generation of Chinese exporters in homologation reality. At home the BS4 sold usefully alongside the BMW joint venture that funded the group's independence. Its legacy is the lesson: styling could be commissioned, but structure had to be engineered — a truth China's industry absorbed with remarkable, market-conquering speed. The BS4 sold on at home regardless, its buyers untroubled by tests conducted continents away.

Zhonghua · Thomas doerfer · CC BY-SA 3.0

At a glance

The facts that define it.

Produced

2006–2014

Engine

1.6&nbsp

Designer

Pininfarina

Body

4-door sedan

Technical specification

The BS4, in detail.

Production: 2006–2014
Class: Compact car (C)
Body style: 4-door sedan; 5-door wagon
Layout: Front-engine, front-wheel-drive
Engine: 1.6 L BL16L I4; 1.6 L 4G18 I4; 1.8 L BL18T turbo I4; 1.8 L 4G93 I4; 2.0 L 4G63 I4
Transmission: 6-speed manual; 5-speed manual; 5-speed automatic; 4-speed automatic
Designer: Pininfarina
Assembly: Shenyang, Liaoning, China; 6th of October City, Egypt (BAG)
Manufacturer: Brilliance Auto