Transcription
I visited the factory that's remanufacturing A86 bodies. One of the Bronco bodies they manufactured recently sold for $400,000 at Barrett Jackson.
Last year, I saw some content come out of China showcasing the factory building brand new Toyota A86 Corolla bodies. I knew I had to check it out for myself. So, I went to Baoying, China, which is about a 3-hour train ride north of Shanghai to Jun Chen Manufacturing to see and document this process. I know I say this a lot, but it most definitely blew me away.
The prices for these brand new bodies start at $9,500 for both the A86 and the 240Z body. Their newest chassis is the 1967 Ford Mustang that costs around $16,000. Considering how much labor and man hours it takes to do something at this scale, it really is incredible. They are only able to achieve this because 95% of the process behind building these bodies is done in-house.
I'll get into the business, moral, and ethical side of building brand new classic cars. But I first want to show you how they build these step by step. To start the process, they have to get two unmodified as straight as possible chassis. One to take apart piece by piece and one to verify that the new stamp parts are actually up to factory standards. This is extremely difficult as none of the cars that they're building now were ever available in mainland China.
They take apart the chassis and 3D scan every single piece. They clean up the 3D data as much as possible and they make a stamping die for every single panel which we had a chance to see firsthand. Right now we are in the stamping die area where they make two different types of dies. We're going to check out the process and we're also going to check out some of the dies that they've made already.
This is an absolute monster of a building. There's so much going on here. We have a lot of CNC machines, but we also have a lot of workstations where these guys are hand polishing and hand working these dies. The first way that they create these dies is by CNCing these blanks. So these blanks are made out of steel HT300 high strength steel. For example, this die is going to be used to stamp the top door molding of a Mustang. So this entire row of CNC machines are basically just waiting to get loaded uh with these blanks. And this program on this machine is running for 40 hours just to make this one die. The intricate and more detailed parts of the vehicle that need to be stamped are made with these dies versus the sandcast ones. Jun Chan actually makes these blanks themselves at their own factory. It is further away, so we weren't able to check it out today.
This is the second way they can make the stamping dies. This is a '67 to '70 Mustang wheel well. This is sandcasted. It takes about 2 months for them to cast this at another factory. Once it arrives in this condition, they have to load it into their CNC machine to refine the cast. Once they refine the cast and then they hand polish it, that's when it becomes a stamping die. What you're looking at is a sandcasted piece that is refined by this CNC machine for them to get super fine details and to just to make it a lot more intricate. And then this is going to become a die for stamping. You look at something like this and it's obviously the front cowl. You can see the vents that are very detailed and you can even see where the windshield wipers would go into. But when you look at something like these, you wonder where the heck what part of the car is it? Well, they have different stamping dies that are used in conjunction with other ones in different steps to eventually make a complete stamped body part. To make something like this, it costs about 100,000 R&B, which comes out to about $15,000 with today's exchange rate.
"This is pretty much almost ready in terms of like the finish. And then this still needs to be finished. The surface still needs to be polished."
"Okay. They haven't started yet on that."
"Got it."
"When they're polishing the die after it comes out of the CNC machine, they have such a small margin in terms of how much they can take down. They can go from a 20th of a millimeter down to a tenth of a millimeter. Any more and they pretty much ruin the die."
This piece just came out of the CNC machine. You can see how rough it is. All the valleys, all of the marks. This all needs to be ground down by hand. It's going to take so long just to get this mirror smooth.
This entire area has sandcast dies. Just one of these dies weighs about 300 kg. And they use these huge cranes to move them around. They have another type of die here that they use. This one combines pieces of metal. Let's say it's the inner and outer door skin. They put them together and then they use this die to press them together.
What's maybe lost on camera is how big this piece is. This is a whole stamping die that they use for the inside of a hood. A die this big takes about 48 hours to CNC machine. And then on top of that, the workers have to polish it. And it takes about 6 or 7 hours for each one of these pieces.
They then put them in a test press to make sure the stamped part matches the 3D version of what they scanned. I asked them what if they make a mistake with the stamping die. Well, they actually have to test every single one here on site. It's in the same building. So, they just CNC them and get them polished and get them ready right here. And then they don't have to go very far to test it out.
So, they have a tailgate of a 2026 Toyota Hilux here. You're probably wondering why is this here in China? Well, they make the body replacement parts for a lot of those aftermarket places where let's say you get rear ended and they want to use an aftermarket part instead of an OEM part to replace the tailgate. Well, this is exactly what this is. And they just took it off of the CNC machines here and they're verifying to make sure that it's within spec. They already did a bunch of grinding on it to knock down some of the parts that were incorrect. Now they're test stamping a couple pieces and then they're going to scan it and compare it to the 3D data to make sure it's within spec. Up here you could see that is the negative and this is the positive.
Once they are ready to start producing panels, they move them to the next building where they actually stamp the body panels one by one, which is where we visited next. It was eerily quiet because everyone was on their lunch break. Holy crap, look at this. We have the Hilux entire rear bed. What a place. Look at this. Insane. Wait a minute. What the bros sleeping right next to 86. Dude, "dude, this is so cool."
What you're looking at is their fourth A86 body about a third of the way assembled. As soon as the workers got back from lunch, they went back into full swing utilizing the dies that we saw them make next door.
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This is insane. So, they have this crane system that they're using to move the stamping die for the 240Z roof. So, they're loading it all together and then they're going to stamp it for us. The 240Z and the A86 use 300 plus dies just to make one car. Just as this building and the next building, they have about 1,200 dies. And overall, they have thousands and thousands. They don't even know how many they have for all the cars that they make.
So, this is the 240Z firewall. And then right next to it, they got a bunch of A86 dies. So now the stamping die is all loaded. They're putting it all together, tightening everything up, and they're going to bring in the raw material for them to stamp it. I recognize that roof anywhere. That is so cool. So then that's the top side and then this is the bottom. Look at this. This guy is just moving the metal sheets.
"And they're making this to show us live how they make parts of the 240Z."
So, what's interesting to me is how floppy the metal sheet is. It is like a piece of paper when they're putting it in. It's easy to move. It's easy to mold and it's just like it's like super it just looks very flimsy, but as soon as the stamping is done and it becomes the shape of the 240Z hood, it is solid and it it holds together. It's just like obviously a completely different shape, but it's just so cool to see something transform that quick. It's unmistakable. I'm looking at this and it looks like I'm looking at the top of my car. I mean, you can imagine the rear hatch just go into this area. And then also in the front, you can imagine the front glass fitting right up to it.
This is such a labor-intensive process and as you saw, it was very difficult just to create the molds. This is why it's so much easier to make aftermarket body parts out of fiberglass and carbon fiber. It's not as expensive to make and not as labor-intensive. Each panel is loaded on by hand and stamped one by one. All the OEM manufacturers that we have visited have a similar process, but these panels are usually loaded in by robots.
Some of the stamping is more intricate than others, which means some have to go through multiple steps, like this 240Z fender or rear quarter panel, for example. It's already gone through a few stampings, but to finish it off, they have to load these in one by one for this final step. They also have a specific area where they stamp the smaller, more intricate parts where I had a chance to help just a little bit. That was so cool. So, I helped them build a little piece of the firewall for the 240Z. It's really something that you don't understand until you see them building it. I just had no idea there were so many little pieces that were needed to build a bare chassis. When you think about bare chassis, you think about something that has nothing on it. You know, it's bare. But the bare chassis itself is made up of hundreds and hundreds of parts.
I just want to show you this bin. This is all 240Z parts. A lot of these parts I recognize just from working on my own car, but behind it and on this entire shelf here are all the stamping dies for every one of these little pieces. It's kind of amazing to me how they can keep track of everything that they're making. Like they obviously know, okay, so we need this many of this part to build this car to build a full chassis. And everybody just has their own thing that they're doing.
Almost all the parts need further refinement as there are holes that need to be cut for assembly or due to the nature of the panel, the entire thing needs to be cut out by a robot plasma cutter. There is someone who programs each one of these moves. You can see there is such a huge human element to this even though a lot of it is still automated. This is part of the 240Z support. While so much of it is done by hand, there is stuff that's done by a machine. And funny thing is I recognize this part exactly. Dude, that is crazy. Wait, look at all the blanks where they cut it out. This whole area is just for plasma cutting.
Once the pieces are stamped, they have to be trimmed down of the excess metal. And what they do is they put it in these jigs and they start the program and this robot arm just cuts it down to size. So while most of the body and the processes are hand done, as you guys can see, there's some help from machines. It's just so much quicker and it's so much more efficient to use these robot arms to plasma cut these. Whereas before it would have to be done by hand. You can see this individual right here. He's programming it for the next thing that it needs to cut. That way they could just run the program with a click of a button.
Each stamped part gets electroplated and coated as well as primed. Junen electro-morsis line. "Dude, this is I wasn't ready for this products. Have no quality." These folks are unpackaging every single one of these uncoated raw steel body parts and they're just hanging them up for this process. Every single piece that comes out of this factory gets this treatment. I didn't understand it until now, but these folks are literally building brand new cars.
What you don't see is that they're making all of these parts, thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of parts for a lot of these Chinese OEM manufacturers. And they use the same process and the same machines and their knowledge and all of it to apply to these classic cars that they love. Here we just get deeper and deeper into the factory here. Oh my goodness. Oh, careful. Whoa. This is where the parts are getting washed. We're literally just walking underneath the line here, getting a little wet. No problem. Talk about a behind-the-scenes look. They literally have nothing to hide. They're showing us the entire process. This is unbelievable. What the hell? Wow. This is so cool. Heat. Heat.
Once the panels are finished, they store them as they collect every single part needed to make an entire chassis. Oh, they have so much storage. "area is all access." "Oh, careful." "Oh, this is the rear window." "Yeah." "This whole area." "Yeah." "All A86 parts." "Yes. There." "This is the transmission tunnel." "Yeah. Yeah. Yeah." "The uh floor panels." "Yeah. This is all A86 hoods." "Brand new."
This is interesting in that this is where we saw some of the stamping dies that actually folds it over to stamp the metal together. This is the rear floor pan of the A86. And then over here they have the roof. Oh my god, I recognize that rear quarter anywhere. Oh, that is so cool. Okay, that's incredible wall decoration right there. All of these panels are galvanized and then they also put a primer on them to prevent rust. The A86 when they were produced in the '80s were just primed and painted. They were not hot-dipped galvanized and that's what they do to the bodies here which makes it such a huge improvement from the original Toyota chassis which is also why the A86 was so prone to rust. The gauge of the steel used is exactly the same as the OEM but the quality of the metal is better. So the weight is very close to stock.
We then went back to the assembly area to watch them put together and weld each panel of this A86 together by hand. This process is now done by robots in all of the OEM factories we have visited. This is kind of where you could see that the entire vehicle is starting to take shape. You could see the whole front end is all put together and then they have the floor and then the two sides of the cars. It's unmistakable.
The classic body part of their business started a few years ago when the folks in the Land Rover Defender community asked them if they could stamp new panels to restore their cars. Because the quality was so high, as time went on, more and more folks from all over the world asked Junchen to stamp more and more pieces of the Defender. Eventually, they were close to having the entire car. The light bulb went off when they figured it would actually be easier just to sell the entire body with the floor and everything. They also realized that they tapped into something very special. They're filling a gap in the market and it's very fulfilling for the owner as well as many of the folks that work at Junen because they are true car enthusiasts. To continue the off-road theme, they eventually started building Bronco bodies and currently they have built over 600 of these to date. In order to grow this portion of their business even more, they wanted to tap into the sporty car market. So, they chose a car that holds a very special place in all of our hearts. The Toyota Corolla A86. For some reason, mainland China people love this car. It's odd because this was never available as a new vehicle in China, just like everything else they make. But because the Initial D movie was made by a Hong Kong studio with mostly Hong Kong and Chinese actors, the car was popularized in mainland China.
I think what's most impressive to me is the vastness of the space, but of course they need it to build these vehicles. As I'm walking through here, I'm thinking about a lot of moral consequences and just public perception when it comes to doing something like this. Because when does it become okay for you to make a reproduction? How old does the car have to be? There's really no right answer to that, right? Because when I think about it, a lot of people do make reproduction Mustangs as well as Camaro bodies and so many other classic American muscle cars. But beyond that, what else is there? Fiberglass bodies, SL300, Mercedes, um so many Cobra fiberglass bodies, and even metal bodies. Now, it really is based off of what the market dictates, what actually exists still that's from the original manufacturer all those years ago. But what's interesting to me is that these folks took the step to make more modern cars and some cars that may not have been loved when they were brand new. If you can imagine, back in 1986, this was just a normal economy car that was fun to drive. And it went on for many years being everybody's normal daily driver or even better a hand-me-down car that was pretty much worth nothing. There were so many cars at one point that were given away for free, junked, treated poorly. I remember test driving one when I was just out of high school back in the early 2000s when they were still about $500 before the manga got super popular in the US. Of course, gone are the days when these vehicles were affordable, but also you just cannot find a clean version of them even if you wanted to spend a lot of money because they were just so unloved as new cars. I can imagine at one point in time if you were handed down an A86 as your first car, if you didn't know anything about Initial D, you would think that it's ugly, it's boxy looking, it's loud, it's buzzy, but that's for a non-car enthusiast. For enthusiasts like us, we would absolutely love to have a car like that. And that's kind of what they're really tapping into, especially in Asia and Southeast Asia. They love these cars.
What I think is interesting is they're really taking the plunge when it comes to building these bodies. The A86 realistically hasn't gone up in price that much. There's still quite a bit left that are in okay condition, but it's getting harder and harder. And that's not to say ones are not selling for record prices. They are so expensive for a very good running condition, all original without rust. That's so hard to find. And that's why it made sense for them to build this to really tug on our heartstrings. Not just the '60s and '70s vehicles. Now they're getting into the '80s and '90s vehicles.
I know what a lot of you folks are thinking. Big Time and few other YouTube channels have purchased some of these bodies from Junchen from the SEMA show and they are having major issues with them. The holes don't line up or the welds are bad. So on and so forth. Even part of the A86 had OEM parts from their donor car. Well, you have to keep in mind that that was the prototype chassis, which was unfortunately rushed to make it in time for SEMA. I personally think it was a huge misstep on Jun Chen's part, but it's difficult for them as a Chinese manufacturer to actually understand how to break into this new market. These folks have never ever seen these cars for their entire lifetime. They don't know what it's like to work on them, drive them, and they've never even put one of these together as a running and driving vehicle with their own chassis. Big Time is the first to do so. Also, you have to keep in mind that they've refined the Bronco over 600 bodies, and now it's second nature for them to build those. Whereas we watched them assemble chassis number four A86 when we visited. It's kind of amazing that they've been able to get this close to OEM spec considering how complicated it is to actually hand build a car literally from scratch.
Their next body is going to be the Porsche 964 and there are rumors that they're potentially working on a 300SL Gullwing. Both will end up costing about $18,000 as they are much more intricate than the 240Z and the A86 to build and assemble.
This is the interesting thing about this entire business being in a gray area. They say that it's all right for them to do this because the vehicles they build are over 25 years old and they don't put the badges on the chassis. And technically, these are just for you to quote unquote restore your car. But when does it actually become a restoration versus slapping the VIN number of a destroyed car onto a new chassis? We featured so many restored companies in the past that do this very thing. Some of them just save the door handles of the donor vehicle, but then there are others like the FJ company in Colombia that go as far as to keep the firewall. When does it make it okay to call it a restoration? What if you just cut out the rectangle where the VIN number is on the firewall, which is similar to what Totem does for their Alfas? It's definitely a slippery slope either way you put it, but it's something that will need to be addressed as more and more companies like Jun Chan enter the market, especially as more enthusiasts get into JDM and European legacy neo-classic cars of the '80s and '90s. By the way, there are fewer and fewer enthusiast cars left. For example, most of the 240Zs are rusting away and they get destroyed way too often. The fact that you can restore your car with a brand new fender or quarter panel is incredible. This is how you keep these cars on the road. The new body thing is just an added possibility. Maybe you can build it into some wild race car or you can cut it up and put over fenders on it without feeling guilty that you destroyed a perfectly good chassis.
I asked about registering these new chassis, and out of all places, China would be the most difficult place to get any of these registered, especially because none of them were available in China in the first place. As of this filming, no country in the world will allow these bodies to be registered as new cars, but there are plenty of countries where it would be easy to register them as a restored using an existing VIN number. Of course, that is a very gray area. Hence, the FJ company using the donor firewall with the VIN number.
We took a short trip down the road to another facility where I swear parts of it looked like the US government warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is where they ship out full bodies all over the world as well as individual panels. Wow. It's endless. I've never seen so many body panels in my life. And I've been to so many factories. Dude, this is like straight up dystopian. What a scene. It's oddly beautiful. It doesn't even matter for me what car these are. It's just amazing to me that there's just so many body panels organized so well, but then you turn the corner and then there's like this FJ40 body just chilling right here or these Bronco tops. All of these Bronco bodies just getting prepped here. So, they're doing some filler, they're sanding, they're just getting it all put together right here. They do all of the seam sealing, all the body sealing, all of that in-house before paint. You can see some of the areas where they welded it together or the joints. All of that is filled and then smoothed out and then they paint it. They've made 600 of these Bronco bodies. For the past three years, they've sold 200 each year, and all of them pretty much go to the US. You know, it's serious when they break out the Chinese newspaper over here. So, they do have paint in-house here at this building, but uh it's a lot of it is for the Chinese brands. To keep up the quality, they have a completely different paint shop that is a little further away where they do all the A86s on Broncos.
We then stepped foot into their main facility where the majority of their operations take place. All of their processes for building classic parts came from their knowledge of building new cars. They already have the infrastructure, which is why the barrier of entry into this new industry was easier for them than starting from scratch.
"Oh my goodness." "Wow." "What do you mean?" "Now I get it. Now I get how they're able to do this with the price point that they have." This is literally a best-case scenario for doing their part to keep our hobby alive, to keep the cars that we absolutely love alive. Because you have to remember, they don't just do full chassis. They also just do quarter panels, doors, whatever piece you need to restore your 240Z or A86 or Porsche 964 or Bronco or FJ, whatever you want, whatever car that they're building. Yes, they are building the entire chassis. They're building the whole thing. If you choose to use brand new everything, but you can also choose to use individual pieces to make your car whole again.
This stamping die is for the F-150. So, we have a lot of modern car replacement parts here because not only are they building these body panels for new Chinese cars, they're also building replacement parts for cars that are maybe 5, 10 years old, 15 years old that the manufacturer doesn't support anymore. So, in order for you to get a new door or a new bedside for an F-150, if you can't find another one, or if you don't want to use a used one, you get a brand new one made by these folks.
Since I visited and posted about Jun Chan, so many people have been inquiring about getting their favorite car remade. The Nissan S chassis is a popular one. The thing that really is striking to me is that they chose the Toyota Corolla as the not-so-obvious choice. While these cars have gone up in price, it's actually not that hard still to find a chassis or a running driving model in good condition for around $10,000. The 240Z is similar. There are very nice and expensive running and driving versions of these, but often times you can still get a relatively okay version in the teens. The Porsche 964 is going to be a game changer because the chassis alone is worth more than $18,000 in a good condition.
Something also to think about is the gray area of it being a restored car, especially because it seems the market doesn't actually care if it's a body built in China. As we've seen recently in a Barrett Jackson auction, as soon as this Bronco passed the auction block, Mike at Junchen texted me proudly proclaiming that one of their cars sold at $400,000. He even showed me a photo of the actual chassis that was delivered to the builder in the US. I understand there's a certain stigma when it comes to Chinese-made products, especially in the automotive world. I'm going to leave my judgment at the door and see this for what it is at face value. These folks are manufacturing enthusiast-driven parts at a decent price and they're really filling a gap in the market because where else in the world do you think they could do this at this sort of cost or at this scale? There's no way you can restamp an entire A86 in Japan. It's going to be impossible. The fact that they have the will and the way to do it and it's sustainable is really incredible.