DongfengEQ140

01

Origins

Dongfeng's EQ140 of 1978 was infrastructure disguised as a product: the 'Second Auto Works' five-tonne truck that became one of reform-era China's universal machines — hauling for the army, the communes, the new construction boom and everything the planned-to-market transition required moved. Built in Hubei's purpose-founded truck city of Shiyan in enormous numbers through the 1980s, it established Dongfeng as one of the nation's twin truck pillars beside FAW's Jiefang. Mechanical simplicity enabled provincial maintenance; ubiquity made it a period symbol. The EQ140 belongs among the vehicles that built modern China — not metaphorically but by the load, decade after decade. Its descendants still roll out of Shiyan; the debt modern China owes the original is simply assumed.