The Audi A6 has achieved unexpected success in the Chinese market, and the impression that Audi is an official car is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the A6 Audi alone has established itself as a supremacy in China's mid-to-high-end car market.

In order to maintain its advantage in the Chinese market, Audi announced that it will launch the A4 sedan in China, which is positioned significantly lower than the A6.

Audi was too successful in building its brand in China, and FAW Audi was very optimistic about the sales of the A4, but due to the drag of the localization process, the production capacity of the Audi A4 in China in 2003 was only 8,000 units.

However, in terms of publicity, FAW Audi claims that the A4 is comparable to the A6 and belongs to the same level of models with a sporty personality.

As a direct competitor to the BMW 3 Series, the A4 entered China but pulled itself to the same level as the A6, wanting to use the A6 to stand for the A4, and also capable of overpowering the BMW 3 Series by half a position.

Due to the limited production capacity and the consideration of raising the brand image, the A4 is ready to be listed at a high price, and does not care about sales but only wants to make the first wave of profits.

However, this move of the Audi A4 was met with strong sniping from China BMW.

At present, the BMW 3 Series is the main sales force, accounting for nearly 8% of the total sales share, and the A4 is very obvious to be the main opponent of the 3 Series in the future.

In response to the A4's frequent release through the media before its launch, saying that he and A6 belong to products with different routes and styles on the same platform, and also saying that he wants to redefine a young luxury brand, Han Hao saw at a glance that FAW Audi was cautious.

In China, a market with poor car culture, many consumers do not understand the history and culture of the world's models, and basically passively accept all kinds of knowledge from foreign joint venture brands.

It's like Buick is a second-tier brand in the United States, but when it comes to China, it is packaged as a first-tier brand; and Kaiyue belongs to the Korean gene, but you will never hear this word in the propaganda, only know that it is the product of General Motors' global resource integration; Toyota's newly listed Vios is obviously only a small car, but Toyota has forced it to sell it in the ranks of middle-class cars; there are also Ford Fiesta that is special for India, Volkswagen Gower that is for Brazil, and Nissan Bluebird is actually a second-hand improvement product in Taiwan, and all kinds of truths are deeply buried in the fog。

These are the results of marketing, celebrities need to be glamorous to package, and the same is true for car brands.

A4 wanted to go up in the Chinese market, but Han Hao directly dragged it down.

"The BMW 3 Series is not afraid of the threat from its direct rival, the A4. ”

"The A4 is priced at a lower price than the BMW 3 Series in Europe, and was formerly known as the Audi 80. ”

"The all-new BMW 3 Series Anniversary Extended will soon be available and will be unveiled after the price of the A4 is announced. ”

......

Since Audi is secretive and refuses to lift the hood, then BMW will shout for it to announce its life history.

China BMW spends money on advertising for Audi A4 in domestic media, of course, they are all public relations advertorials, and it seems that there is a common purpose behind the popular science articles, which is to let the Chinese people recognize the real market positioning of the A4 as soon as possible - A4 and BMW 3 Series belong to the same kind of products.

A company like BMW spends a lot of money on media publicity every year, and in addition to promoting its own BMW brand, it will also secretly suppress the image of competitors, which are all business rules that industry insiders know well.

This is the turn of FAW Audi to be embarrassed, virtually the price of Audi A4 has been delineated around the pricing of the 3 series, if it continues to be listed at a high price, as a product that is benchmarked against the 3 series, it is easy to be cold if it exceeds the psychological price of consumers.

Since the A4 uses many imported parts, the cost cannot be reduced for a while. If it is listed at a low price, it will also face sniping from the BMW 3 Series Extended Model that is not on the market.

The elongated BMW 3 Series is a special car for China, and under the guidance of the Chinese people's preference for large space and the importance of purchasing in the rear, especially the success of the A6 in China, the Germans have seen the benefits of lengthening.

FAW Audi originally planned to sell the A4 1.8T model at 379,000 yuan and the 3.0 model at 559,000 yuan, but it did not expect to be sniped by China BMW and had to redetermine its market strategy.

You must know that the official guide price of A6 domestic automatic transmission 1.8T is 378,000, and the actual transaction price will be reduced by 10,000, and the original listing price of A4 is 379,000 is really unkind.

As a last resort, the two models of the A4 were launched at 349,000 and 499,000 respectively, which was 10% cheaper than the original price. This time, the pricing bites the price of the Zhonghua BMW 3 Series, and the two products are in the same grade by default.

After the price of the A4 was announced, the Zhonghua BMW 3 Series Extended Edition was subsequently announced to be on the market, which was deliberately 10,000 yuan cheaper than the A4 when pricing, just to fight in the ring with the other party.

In FAW Audi's wishful thinking, the A6 will focus on the official market, while the A4 will be responsible for opening up the commercial market.

Now the A4 and BMW 3 Series are grabbing the business market, but they are being sniped by each other.

Han Hao admitted that the position of Audi A6 in the bus market cannot be shaken, and the A6 can sell 50,000 units in China a year and create an output value of 200 billion. The BMW 5 Series is more recognizable, but it's by no means the car that low-key officials like to choose.

BMW can only compete for customers in the business and family markets, so China BMW has always been extremely vigilant about the arrival of the A4.

When BMW and Audi went to war, Mercedes-Benz, which is also a fellow German luxury car veteran, finally couldn't hold back and began to fight in person.

Although Hyundai tried its best to block the joint venture between Shouqi and Mercedes-Benz, because Hyundai wanted to monopolize Shouqi's car resources. If Mercedes-Benz comes in, Hyundai will inevitably decline in the volume of Shouqi, and anyone with a discerning eye knows that Mercedes-Benz is much more noble than the Hyundai brand.

Although Hyundai allowed Mercedes-Benz to take a 10% stake in the Asian economic crisis, Mercedes-Benz has not been able to effectively integrate the Hyundai Group. Especially after the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan, Hyundai began to expand globally, and it did not want Mercedes-Benz to dictate to itself.

It stands to reason that Mercedes-Benz, as the second largest shareholder of Hyundai Group, is a matter of course for everyone to enter the Shouqi joint venture together.

However, Hyundai head Zheng Mengjiu does not see it this way, because in the future, Hyundai Motor will introduce high-end Accos models, which is bound to compete directly with Mercedes-Benz. Moreover, Shouqi's choice of two foreign partners clearly violates the original agreement between Shouqi and Hyundai for the exclusive joint venture production of passenger cars.

"We are very disappointed with our Chinese partner because the exclusivity agreement was written into the original joint venture contract. We hope that Shouqi can terminate the contract with Mercedes-Benz and not have a negative impact on the cooperation between the two sides. ”

A spokesman for Hyundai Group took the initiative to tell reporters.

To this end, the Hyundai Group also pressured Mercedes-Benz to withdraw from the Chinese project. Otherwise, the cooperation on the joint research and development of the truck project and the engine negotiated with Mercedes-Benz will be cancelled.

The joint venture between Shouqi and Hyundai has made a very good start, and the Sonata and Elantra are both hot-selling models in the same field in China. However, if you give up cooperation with Mercedes-Benz for the sake of these, then the people of Shouqi are really brainless.

Seeing that Audi and BMW can flourish in the Chinese market, Mercedes-Benz will naturally not be far behind.

"The two partners can restrain each other, you see that the Koreans just earned a little money and their tails went to the sky, and they regarded themselves as the saviors of Shouqi. If you really want to think about it, we had a joint venture agreement with Chrysler in the 80s, and now Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler merge and are strictly the same company.

Our joint venture with Mercedes-Benz is a matter of course, and there is no violation of the exclusive agreement signed with Hyundai Motor. Even if Mercedes-Benz is a latecomer, do we still have to listen to the Koreans when we choose who we want to do and who we don't have joint ventures with on Chinese soil?

During the SARS epidemic, he was appointed as the mayor of the capital, Wang Xuewu, who is known for his iron-fisted methods, said so.

Undeterred by the pressure from the South Korean side, Mercedes-Benz was determined to ignore Hyundai's protests, and the Shouqi-Benz joint venture project finally took root, making Mercedes-Benz the last well-known automobile company to enter the joint venture in China.

The combination of Shouqi Benz has also become the last straw that overwhelms the cooperation between Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai Motor.

Originally, the Koreans were worried that Mercedes-Benz would fight for control of the company, after all, Mercedes-Benz intends to continue to increase its stake in Hyundai Group, and now it is just the opportunity to plan to break up with Mercedes-Benz.

Hyundai Motor invested in the repurchase of shares in the truck company established with Mercedes-Benz, and Mercedes-Benz withdrew 10% of Hyundai Group's shares at the market price, and the two companies no longer have any relationship.

"Mercedes-Benz finally came in, but by the time their new cars came on the market, the market had already been occupied by us and Audi. ”

Mercedes-Benz plans to start production of the Mercedes-Benz E-Class in China in the fourth quarter of 2005, and this slow pace has long been left behind by BMW and Audi.

Han Hao is not very worried about the arrival of Mercedes-Benz, and now Audi is the biggest competitor. Compared with Audi's sales of 50,000 units, China BMW only achieved the target of 17,000 units last year, and there is a certain gap between the two.

The main reason is that Audi monopolizes the official car market, and BMW can only exert its strength in the commercial car and family car market. In order to make up for this shortcoming, Han Hao hopes to stagger the competition with Audi, and the BMW X3 is about to be launched overseas, and he hopes to introduce SUVs like the X3 into China.

The luxury SUV market is still blank, except for the Toyota Overlord and Land Cruiser, there are no road-class luxury SUV products in China.

SUVs, a new field outside of sedans, have a very strong room for growth. The success of the Chinese "Tang" allowed Han Hao to find a new focus.

However, in order to convince BMW headquarters, the capacity of the Chinese market is not enough at present, and the entire Asian market must be added.

Han Hao hopes to cooperate with BMW to build a manufacturing base for the entire Asian market, radiating from China to the whole of Asia. In the future, BMW will enter the Japanese and South Korean markets, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Southeast Asian markets, and all of them can be shipped from BMW bases in China.

Of course, this is also in line with our country's most desired need to export cars to earn foreign exchange, so far only GM has achieved a small-scale export of GL8 vehicles to the outside world. The participation of BMW China will give the relevant state departments the green light to pass this plan.