The Dongfeng Huashen Tianlai is a 4-door panel van / 6-door van / 2-door pickup truck from Dongfeng, built from 2017 to 2020, as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market. Under the bonnet: Yuchai YC4FA130-50 Diesel 3.0L inline-4.
The story
The Dongfeng Huashen Tianlai (东风华神天来) is a range of full-size vans produced by the Chinese automaker Dongfeng Automobile Company under the Vasol or Huashen (华神) brand. The Tianlai was introduced for the 2017 model year and later listed under the Vasol brand introduced in 2018. The Tianlai was produced as a cargo van, passenger van, minibus and cutaway van chassis.
What is underneath
Power comes from Yuchai YC4FA130-50 Diesel 3.0L inline-4. It weighs 4.495 tons. It shifts through a 5-speed manual. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. The wheelbase is 3600 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Shiyan, Hubei, China. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Tesla Model 3, the Chevrolet Bolt, the Ford Escort — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Dongfeng catalogue sit the Dongfeng Fengshen L7 and the Front Drive Motor.