Luxury carmakers try to create 'Chinese Dream'

The world's top names in luxury cars are racing to establish their brands at Shanghai's auto show as the best China's new rich can buy.

Defying the gloom of the economic crisis that has seen many other carmakers focus on budget models, Porsche, Ferrari and Rolls Royce are showing off cars that will set aspirational Chinese back hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Taking into account high Chinese taxes, Rolls-Royce's signature Phantom that is on display in Shanghai this week starts at six million yuan ($882,000), and there are a growing number of people who can afford it.

"We've gone from a very small number of cars here in 2003... to it being a very substantial part of our business, number three worldwide," Tom Purves, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars chief executive officer, told AFP.

China is home to 51,000 people worth more than 100 million yuan ($14.7 million), according to a study published last week by wealth trackers at Shanghai's Hurun Report magazine. With sales of more than 100 cars last year, China was Rolls-Royce's third largest national market after the United States and Britain.

Its Beijing showroom was also number three in sales after Abu Dhabi and Dubai, ahead of Beverly Hills and London, Purves said. The company, which has seven showrooms in mainland China, is also planning a new dealership in the eastern city of Ningbo and to expand its showroom in southern Guangzhou.

"This is a very new market and therefore we need to be willing to present our products in places we would never normally think of doing so," Purves said. In addition to the major auto shows in Beijing and Shanghai, Rolls-Royce's strategy involves exhibiting at local events - not necessarily to sell cars but to give Chinese consumers a glimpse of the brand, Purves said.

"Many have never seen one because there is no history as there is, for example, in India, where we've had cars since 1906," he said, adding wherever they went, competitors such as Maserati and Lamborghini also showed up.

Ferrari is equally optimistic about the Chinese market and this week launched its latest sports car, the retro-inspired California, at the Shanghai show in a slick event that included a film by Hollywood director Michael Mann. The California's Chinese price tag is 3.4 million yuan, including tax.

Ferrari spokesman Stefano Lai said his company had been surprised by the young age of its average Chinese customer, in contrast to older people in other parts of the world who are partly attracted by ties to the racing world. "We're talking around 30-years-old and the astonishing thing is 25 per cent are women - much higher than anywhere else," Lai told AFP.

"They perceive the value of exclusivity, the value of made in Italy, the value of being something really precious," Lai said. "It's also a result of the women in the Chinese society, who have exactly the same level of opportunity as men."

Lai said that after five years in China, Ferrari has 46 per cent of the sports car market and sales rose 20 per cent last year to 212 cars sold - a number he said would have been higher if buyers were not put on a waiting list.

Porsche also chose Shanghai for a high-profile global launch this week. Its new Panamera, a four-door sports car whose turbo version will cost about 2.5 million yuan including taxes in China, has attracted much attention in the Chinese media.