An extra-long Rolls Royce and the fastest ever Ferrari road car made their debut in Beijing yesterday as dozens of luxury car makers lined up to woo super-rich consumers in the world's biggest market.
Rolls Royce sold two models - the more expensive of the two bearing a price tag of nine million yuan ($1.3 million) - in the first few hours of the Beijing Auto Show, where nearly 1,000 vehicles have gone on display.
"Chinese are hard-working and they like to reward themselves, and the pinnacle product to reward yourself with is a Rolls Royce," said Paul Harris, the carmaker's Asian regional director.
But rich Chinese will be disappointed if they had hoped to get their hands on one of the limited edition 599 GTO Ferraris at the show.
The legendary Italian sports car maker has made just 599 of the cars, which can reach 335 kilometres per hour - making it Ferrari's fastest consumer car.
All of the cars, whose price tag Ferrari will not publicly divulge, have already been sold, including 20 in China.
Luxury car sales in China have soared in recent years to become one of the fastest-growing segments of a market that sped past the United States in 2009 to become the world's biggest.
Automakers sold 13.64 million vehicles last year as increasingly well-off Chinese consumers continued to snap up cars, helped by government incentives such as lower taxes.
"A lot of people are getting rich very, very quickly and they are willing to spend on the most luxurious goods, whether that is watches or luxury cars," said Raymond Tsang.
China has the second-highest number of dollar billionaires in the world after the United States, according to Forbes magazine, and luxury carmakers say they expect strong sales growth in the years ahead.
British sports carmaker Aston Martin entered China in 2007 and said sales were so strong it would become its top market in Asia in 18 months.
"It's the fastest-growth market for us and it has the biggest potential," said Matthew Bennett, Aston Martin regional director.
"These are car enthusiasts who love to drive, which is a very select group of people in China. They love the car, they love the brand and they like to drive."
Rolls Royce, which has made an extra-long vehicle for the "chauffeur driven" Chinese market, said it expects sales to more than triple in 2010 to 300-400 cars, making China its number-two market in the world.
Its customers were "phenomenally successful" entrepreneurs who sometimes pay for the luxury cars in cash.
The Chinese market has been a saviour for foreign carmakers as sales in developed countries slumped during the financial crisis and remain sluggish.