McLaren Sees China Crackdown On Luxury Goods Continuing, Porsche & Koenigsegg Not Scared Off

Though makers of all sorts of luxury goods had been flocking to China to take advantage of a growing affluent class there, last year the Communist Party started cracking down on what it called extravagant and conspicuous consumption. McLaren Automotive's regional director for China said that the British maker of supercars hasn't seen any recovery yet. "The visibility that used to be an asset — we used to be okay just a few years ago — now it's not really a plus," Mirko Bordiga, said at the recent Guangzhou auto show. "There are many issues that are in the market that doesn't really let us hope that the market is growing that much."

Lamborghini, Ferrari and Rolls-Royce have all expressed concerns for the past year or so that China is not driving economic growth as it had been three years ago. Still McLaren joined Bentley in deciding to have a display this year at the Guangzhou auto show instead of the Tokyo Motor Show, which was scheduled simultaneously. McLaren is also adding another 8 dealers in China bring the total to 12 by the end of next year and will be using it's Formula One racing team to promote its brand in the country.

Porsche is also apparently not scared off by the government's crackdown on luxury goods from the fact that they chose to display their most expensive production vehicle, the 918 Spyder, at the Guangzhou show. With a price tag of 13.4 million yuan ($2.2 million) the hybrid supercar will cost Chinese consumers about double what it costs in the west. Porsche also showed the brand new Macan crossover and introduced the 911 Turbo S at Guangzhou. Deesch Papke, Porsche's China head, expressed confidence in the brand's performance there. "We have the expectation of exceeding our volumes of last year and next year is going to be even better for us," Papke said.

Koenigsegg Automotive AB, whose cars start at $1.4 million, also sees China as a significant source of sales, though the Swedish specialist car maker only sells about 15 cars a year in total. Andreas Petre, who heads sales for the company, said that Koenigsegg has already booked four Chinese orders for 2014 and will probably get "another one or two." "The growth has been enormous over the, let's say, last five years in China," said Petre. "It's still going to grow, but not as steep."

from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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