April 22, 2007	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 04, 1428

SHANGHAI, April 21: Global automakers roared into China this week unveiling their hottest new models and revving sales forecasts for what many believe will be the world's largest car market in the years ahead.

Enthusiasm for the Shanghai Auto Show, which opens to the public on Sunday, signals the importance of China's market after it overtook Japan last year to become the world's second largest vehicle market behind the United States.

Whether selling inexpensive subcompacts or million-dollar luxury models, auto firms have driven into China's financial hub en masse, eager to woo and consummate the nation's budding romance with the automobile.

Shanghai is clearly one of the biggest shows in the world, Kevin Wale, president and managing director of General Motors China group, told reporters in Shanghai Friday.

That's why we (have) got a whole range of GM seniors coming to China. This is really an important market and a really important show. GM, the globe's largest manufacturer, will display 41 models at its 4,500-square-metre (48,420-square-feet) stand here, and also premier two concept cars, the Buick Riviera coupe and the fuel-cell-powered Chevrolet Volt.

This year, we just want to grow faster than the market and continue to grow in reference of China, said Wale, who last year oversaw China sales of GM cars with its joint ventures of 876,747 units, up 31.8 per cent.

Volkswagen, the market share leader in China, will unveil here the ultra economical Polo BlueMotion, in what company vice president Winfried Vahland described Friday as a bid to reduce by 20 per cent fuel consumption and emissions from its cars in China by 2010.

Toyota vice president Yoshimi Inaba told a press briefing that he expects sales this year in the vibrant Chinese market to top the 400,000 mark, up from the 308,000 units sold last year.

About 1,300 companies have set up shop at the biennial exhibition, but the show is not just about the global giants but also the likes of Ferrari, Spyker and Bentley, hoping to tap China's growing rich set.

Refusing to be caught in the slow lane are China's hungry and increasingly prominent auto makers.

The largest firms such as SAIC, FAW, Geely and Chery have aggressive development plans and may soon challenge the dominance of Western and Japanese auto making.

Although many have foreign partners, they have made it clear that they are no longer going to take a back seat in their own market while also targeting overseas expansion in developed markets.

Without independent innovation, we cannot achieve sustainable development, SAIC chairman Hu Maoyuan said Thursday.

SAIC is brimming with confidence after completing its pledge to begin building its own brands by 2007, with the launch of the “Roewe 750,” a sporty sedan based on Rover 75 technology.

The Shanghai-based firm, which partners Volkswagen and GM, bought part of Britain's scrapped MG Rover Group last year, and aims to target the sporty sedan at what it calls China's middle-high class segment.

Hu said it had booked about 7,000 orders of the Roewe 750 so far.

Although Chinese brands have long been regarded as low-end, substandard products with poor reliability, that image is changing to the detriment of foreign car makers.

Chinese-brand sedans had a 25.7 per cent market share at home in 2006, up more than two percentage points from a year earlier, according to the semi-official China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

Domestic auto makers sold 982,800 sedans last year in a market that totalled 3.8 million cars and 7.2 million vehicles including trucks and buses.

The growth came after the rising awareness of local automakers and their better-designed automobiles, Jiang Lei, secretary general of the association was quoted Friday as saying in the Shanghai Daily.

Sales of Chinese-made vehicles in the first quarter of this year jumped 22.2pc from last year to 2.12m, with passenger car sales jumping 28.5pc to 1.25 million.

No other vehicle market is expected to experience the growth of China over the next decade, Wale was quoted as saying Wednesday in a state newspaper. —AFP