Automakers Hasten to Woo the Newly Wealthy in China

sddz

Automakers Hasten to Woo the Newly Wealthy in China
《纽约时报》：汽车商“加大马力”迎合中国新贵阶层



(中文大意)

　　中国27岁的高尔夫球场经营商詹姆士-王，成为Maybach 62豪华车的头两名中国买主之一。在北京汽车展的开幕当天，王先生缓步走上展台，与4位戴姆勒-克莱斯勒公司的高管并肩，并接过汽车钥匙的水晶模型。

　　在对王先生的简短采访中，王表示他买这辆车，税后总共支付了745万元(合90万美元)。他很喜欢这辆车的操控性能和后排座椅舒适性。他说，\"可放倒的座椅让人感觉好像在客机里的头等舱。\"

　　王先生没有解释为什么他能够支付相当于1200名中国普通工人年工资的价格来购买这辆超豪华轿车。王先生是中国经济腾飞，中国大城市推行财富价值观的缩影。他的购买行为凸现了一个现象，即为什么一些中国家庭能积累起令人乍舌的财富。

　　豪华车型，如奥迪、法拉利最近都准备在中国增加代理商。宝马最昂贵的车型760Li在中国税后要卖210万元( 合25万美元)，宝马称去年760在全球的总销量内中国就占1/3。


Wearing a white car-racing T-shirt, black plastic cargo pants and silver Nike running shoes, James Wang, a 27-year-old developer of golf courses and luxury homes, stepped forward on Wednesday as one of China's first two buyers of the Maybach 62, a 20-foot ultraluxury sedan marketed as \"the private jet of the road.\"

At the opening day of the Beijing auto show, Mr. Wang ambled onto a stage with four much older DaimlerChrysler executives in dark suits to accept a crystal model of the keys to a silver Maybach that had already been delivered to his home.

In a brief interview before the ceremony, Mr. Wang said that he had bought the car for the equivalent of $900,000, including taxes, and had chosen it because he liked both the driving performance and the comfort of the rear seats.

\"The reclining seat is like first class in an airplane,\" he said.

In a country that is still officially Communist, Mr. Wang was vague about how he could afford a car that costs the equivalent of 1,200 years' wages for a typical Chinese factory worker. He said that he was a Chinese citizen who grew up in Beijing, and that his parents had sent him to San Francisco State University, where he owned and drove a succession of Mercedes cars, always silver.

Mr. Wang's riches are one sign of the powerful economic boom that has gripped China, pushing up property values in many major cities. His purchase also highlights how a few Chinese families have accumulated extraordinary wealth, which has led to some nervousness among the rich themselves and some concern among China's leaders about the potential for a political backlash over sharply widening inequality.

Indeed, even as Mr. Wang accepted his Maybach key in person from Peter Honegg, the president of Mercedes-Benz China, the buyer of the second Maybach sent a crisply dressed young man who refused to identify his employer.

Sales of luxury cars have taken off even though China has some of the world's highest car prices. Beyond the basic cost, buyers here pay a 17 percent value-added tax, an additional consumption tax of up to 8 percent and, for imported models, a 32 percent tariff.

And while Mr. Wang may not be the typical car buyer in China these days, he is just the kind of newly minted multimillionaire that the world's luxury auto manufacturers are all eagerly chasing.

About 40 yards from the Maybach exhibit, Werner Mischke, the chairman of Automobili Lamborghini Holding, a subsidiary of Volkswagen's Audi unit, was standing between a black $350,000 Lamborghini Gallardo and a yellow $460,000 Murcielago.

He described signing papers this week to open dealerships in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

\"Chinese people love brands and have a good feeling about luxury, about extreme luxury,\" he said.

Ferrari announced last Saturday that it would open a string of dealerships across China. Aston Martin, the Ford Motor subsidiary that has supplied cars for many of the James Bond movies, said on Wednesday that it would enter the Chinese market next year.

Near the Lamborghini exhibit, it displayed an Aston Martin Vanquish with fake machine guns and rockets mounted on the front; the sports car is expected to go on sale here for more than $400,000 - spy gear not included.

In another hall stood the 760Li, BMW's most expensive model, which costs $250,000 here, including taxes. China accounted for more than a third of worldwide sales of the model last year, far more than any other country, said Andreas Kunz of BMW, the chief Beijing representative of the German automaker.

Many of the buyers of such cars are making fortunes in real estate. Construction cranes have punctuated the skylines of Chinese cities for two decades, but in recent months they have become even more numerous, lining major highways even in second-tier cities like Nanjing.

A variety of jests circulate here these days about how every other Chinese adult seems to be a real estate agent, or that property speculators with pocket calculators have supplanted the blue-collar toilers celebrated in Mao's era as the nation's model workers.

Mr. Wang fits the bill. After graduating from college, he returned to Beijing and became a developer, a skill, he said in English, that \"I learned from my dad.\"

He declined to discuss his family in detail, saying that he only wanted to talk about his love of cars. He owns a Porsche 911 and a Subaru with an engine powered up to more than 500 horsepower.

Asked why a young driver with a taste for fast cars would spend nearly $1 million for a boulevard cruiser bigger than many American limousines, Mr. Wang replied that his chauffeur would drive the Maybach and that he planned to share the car with his family.

After the ceremony, faced with a crush of Chinese reporters with lots of questions, Mr. Wang fled up a staircase with the help of Maybach employees.

For all the wealth apparent here now, however, there are hints that the boom may not last. Alarmed by a recent acceleration of inflation, Chinese regulators have begun urging banks to lend more cautiously, especially for real estate, and have imposed land-use restrictions.

Heavy bank lending has helped sustain the boom so far, even though actual property prices and rents have been falling. Jones Lang LaSalle, a big real estate consulting firm, calculates that rents and prices for luxury apartments in Beijing fell about 8 percent in the 12 months through April.

More than a quarter of these apartments are vacant. Yet as projects under way are completed, the total number of luxury apartments here is expected to rise to 27,000 by the end of next year, up from 17,000 now.

A few auto executives are starting to become nervous.

\"The real estate side is definitely slowing down, and that will affect everybody,\" said Bill Begg, the general manager of Ford Motor's Land Rover and Jaguar subsidiaries in China.

Li Ying, the president of a BMW dealership in Beijing, said that quite a few potential customers had become nervous about their businesses in the last month, making them more reluctant to buy.

\"Some people say May is black May,\" she said.

But Mr. Wang, echoing the bullishness of many business executives here after two decades of almost continuous rapid economic growth, said that, \"in Beijing, it's still a growth market for real estate.\"

For Mr. Wang, the purchase of a Maybach is the fulfillment of a dream that began four years ago, when he started reading in automotive magazines that DaimlerChrysler had set out to design the most luxurious car the world had ever seen. After test driving the Maybach, Mr. Wang said, he concluded the company had met its goal and that he had to own one.

Behind the stage minutes before the ceremony, Karin Hoo, a Maybach \"personal liaison manager\" from Hong Kong, fussed over Mr. Wang, whose shirt was decorated with three Nissan race cars and a prominent Nissan racing logo.

Ms. Hoo said with a sigh that she wished she had brought a T-shirt with a Maybach logo for him to wear.

\"It's famous,\" Mr. Wang said, slouching in a leather chair.

\"And personally, I like this car better than a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce.\"