Luxury cars in China: overdrive

2012-04-27 05:08:13 GMT2012-04-27 13:08:13(Beijing Time) SINA.com

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Despite a slowdown in the economy and the odd jitter about China-focused luxury brands, there is at least one area where the charts are all pointing up: premium autos.

Having experienced phenomenal growth in the past decade, the next few years look just as rosy for foreign brands making high-end wheels, like the gold Aston Martin shown at Auto China 2012.

Since 2001, the premium auto market in China has been in overdrive. In 2001, Chinese drivers bought just over 45,000 such vehicles. In 2012, that had jumped to 736,000, an increase of some 1,550 per cent according to IHS Automotive. There are now over 20 brands active in China, with dealerships spreading across the country, ranging from Audi to Rolls Royce and beyond.

IHS expects the market to keep on growing just as fast in the next three years, reaching unit sales of 1.7m in 2015.

For many luxury automakers, including Rolls Royce and Lamborghini, China is already the number one market. So what are they doing to stay ahead of the game?

For Lamborghini, the answer could be to do something it hasn’t done in decades – make an SUV. At the Beijing motor show this week, it unveiled the Urus concept car – a ferocious red beast of a machine, which stole many of the headlines from the show.

SUVs are increasingly popular in China, with imports growing around 15 per cent a year. For car manufacturers, they make a lot of sense, coming with higher margins than standard sedans. Small wonder then that Bentley, where China is the No.2 market, also unveiled a concept SUV.

But, some companies aren’t for turning. Rolls-Royce chief executive Torsten Müller-Ötvös told beyondbrics that it had no plans to introduce a new car to its range any time soon, and that it would never change the exterior of its vehicles to adapt to a new market.

“Design shouldn’t be catered to any specific country,” he said. Being a success in China requires luxury brands like Rolls to remain “truly authentic”.

That hasn’t prevented Rolls from adding the odd detail on the inside to help win over Chinese drivers, like its “starlight header”, a lighting system of fibre optics built into the interior roof to create the illusion of the night sky.

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