2008 Beijing Auto Show: The good, the bad, and the ugly from China's booming auto industry
"Man," said GM design boss Ed Welburn, "this is the most exciting auto show I've been to in a long time. It's the wild, wild east." Welburn was on the Geely stand at the 2008 Beijing Auto Show, checking out the half-dozen or so concepts and all-new models rolled out just for this show by China's second largest domestic automaker. "They don't know what the rules are," he said, referring to some of the weirder designs, "but that's okay. There's a lot of creativity here."
Welburn, whose Buick Invicta concept, jointly designed in GM's Chinese and Detroit studios, is one of the star cars of Beijing, wasn't the only senior designer prowling the eight crowded, chaotic halls of the giant China International Exhibition Center - Ford's Martin Smith, Volvo's Steve Mattin and Audi's Walter de Silva were all spotted checking out the good, the bad, and the ugly from China's booming auto industry.
Booming? You bet. No fewer than 25 international brands are manufactured in China, including Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, as well as Toyota and Honda, Buick and Cadillac, Hyundai and Peugeot. In addition, there are at least 24 Chinese domestic brands, including Chery, Geely, Brilliance, BYD, Great Wall and FAW. Pure imports include all the top end luxury brands, including Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, Maserati, and Lamborghini. Sales of cars and SUVs in China last year reached 8.1 million vehicles, and will probably top 9.2 million this year, a growth rate of 14 percent. First quarter sales are up 21 percent compared with the same period in 2007.
No wonder automakers regard Beijing (and Shanghai - each is held in alternate years) as a "tier one" auto show, on par with Detroit, Geneva, Paris, Frankfurt, and Tokyo. This year's show featured 890 new cars and SUVs, spread over 180,000 square meters of display area. And it's a show that really does sell cars -- one VIP, a young Chinese entrepreneur, signed a contract to purchase the first Veyron to be sold in the country on the Bugatti stand Sunday morning. All three cars on the Bentley stand - a purple Continental GT Speed, a chestnut brown Continental Flying Spur, and a violet over black Arnage RL -- were sold even before the show opened.
World premieres at Beijing included Audi's Q5 SUV, which is expected to be a strong seller in China alongside the Q7. Nissan revealed a small 1.6-liter crossover, the Livina C-Gear, which is related to the Versa, and the production version of the Teana concept shown at Tokyo last year. The Teana, Nissan's flagship car in China, and shares the same architecture as the new Maxima. The top of the range version gets a 3.5-liter V-6 under the hood and a CVT transmission.
Volkswagen revealed two new Chinese-built sedans, Bora and Lavida, built on the PQ35 architecture (as used for Golf and Jetta). Why two remarkably similar Jetta-sized four doors, both powered by four cylinder engines and available with a six-speed Tiptronic automatic? The answer is the Bora is from the Shanghai Volkswagen joint venture company, while the Lavida is from the FAW Volkswagen joint venture company.
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