Auto China — the Beijing car exhibition that ended yesterday — is the rock star of Chinese business exhibitions, attracting a phenomenal amount of media coverage and frenzied attention from the car-obsessed public.

China is currently third largest auto market in the world and will become second in 2005 (according an AP report in The Beijing News, June 14). Thanks to media attention and public interest, auto shows have become an extremely important communication channel for automobile manufacturers.

In this year's Auto China, the limelight fell on luxury cars: more than 30 cars with price tags exceeding one million yuan were sold during the exhibition, including two Bentleys and two Maybachs -- a super luxury brand now produced by Mercedes-Benz. A Bentley 728 went for 9.8 million yuan. Other luxury brands at the show included Bentley, Spyker and Rolls-Royce. According to the Beijing Daily Messenger (June 14), most of the people who bought luxury cars at the show were 'bosses', CEOs, real estate developers, movie stars and singers.

The Ford Group had the largest display of the car show, taking up two large halls of Beijing International Exhibition Centre for a Ford family party attended by all members of the group: Ford, Mazda, Jaguar, Lincoln, Volvo, Aston Martin and Land Rover. The show included live artistic gymnastics, computer games for visitors to play, and an auction of new cars.
Mercedes-Benz had the most impressive display at the show. Taking up an entire hall and spread across three floors, the display presented a range of Benz products from bicycles (price tag: 30,000 yuan) to the super-luxury Maybach (price tag: more than 6 million yuan). The exhibition also included panels displaying the company's history, cars, and mini Mercedes for kids to drive around in. Mercedes also used this opportunity to gather consumer information at a counter manned by researchers asking people questions and entering their data into a computer.

According to Dr. Joachim Schmidt, the executive vice president of Mercedes-Benz China, the budget and scale of this exhibition stand was the second largest in the group's history, second only to this years Frankfurt auto show (Beijing News, June 12).

Changchun-based FAW (First Auto Works) is well-known for its homegrown limousine -- the Red Flag, which is the car of choice for patriotic government officials. For the 35th and 50th National Day ceremonies in 1984 and 1999, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zeming both reviewed troops at Tian'anmen Square from Red Flag stretch limousines. The newest model of Red Flag's stretch limo was FAW's major exhibit at this year's Auto China.

by Ben Marcom