Rolls rides high as local sales rocket

Source: Global Times
[02:11 April 26 2010]
Comments

By Li Woke

BMW's luxury marque Rolls- Royce received nine orders in the first day of the 2010 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition. "We expect very strong sales growth in China," CEO Torsten Muller-Otvos said Friday.

"On the worldwide level, we can say even to double our volume at the end of this year," Muller-Otvos told the Global Times on the sidelines of the show.

Rolls-Royce sales in 2009 slightly dropped to 1,002 cars worldwide compared with 1,212 units in 2008 and 1,010 vehicles in 2007.

"Sales of Rolls-Royce in China had a strong recovery in the first quarter of 2010, up more than 30 percent, after a 17 percent drop due to the economic crisis," sales and marketing director Jolyon Nash said.

China is currently the world's third largest market after North America and the United Kingdom, and "we expect China will be the second largest market this year," Jolyon said. Rolls-Royces range in price from 3.99 million yuan ($584,495) to 9 million yuan ($1.32 million).

The company has established dealerships in the municipalities of Beijing and Shanghai, as well as Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, Hangzhou and Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang Province.

The BMW Group, which owns BMW, Rolls-Royce and Mini, saw a sales decline of 10 percent in many countries in 2009. But sales of the BMW and Rolls-Royce brands increased 37 percent in the Chinese market last year.

Although BMW and other groups are in heated competition in the Chinese market, China's luxury car market has seen promising growth in recent years.