In recent years China has become the land of opportunity for nearly every major car and truck manufacturer on the face of the globe due to its surging automobile market and growing middle class. To gain access this lucrative market foreign manufacturers must form a joint partnership with an existing Chinese company. Sometimes new designs are developed from scratch other times existing models are tweaked to the meet the demands of the Chinese market. This could explain the odd looking Durastar clone below. I found this image while stumbling around the back pages of  a Google search the other day. All of the listing have this truck as a Dongfeng EQ4240. The information from various Chinese websites are spotty at best. Some list this truck as the joint venture fruit between Cummins and Dongfeng. Others simply provide contact information at a generic Yahoo account. To the best of my knowledge International only recently jumped into the Chinese market by forming a partnership with Jianghuai Automobile Co. Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out this truck is simply a poor copy of the Durastar, an all too common occurrence in China. Chinese Humvee anyone? How about an F-150?

Looking at the truck below I can spot a few quirks. First, the door handles are vertical while the American Durastar places them in a horizontal configuration. There also appears to be a sheetmetal bump on the door that is absent from the original model. The headlights are also different but I think I prefer that look. And of course the cab is slightly extended with a small window rear window on either side of the cab.

Dongfeng Durastar

International Durastar – Click to Enlarge

The global economy strikes again?