7:12 am, July 28, 2024
If this year’s Goodwood Festival of Speed is anything to go by, the Chinese carmakers aren’t coming – they’ve seen, they’ve come and they’ve conquered.
Conquered certainly when it comes to hiring a patch of grass in front of the Duke of Richmond’s modest, detached two-up two-down.
Only a few years ago, the biggest names in the volume and premium markets battled it out for show supremacy.
The likes of Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Renault, Audi and Ford tried to out-do each other with ever-larger stands and ever-fancier tat to give away.
But this year the tables were very much turned.
BYD, fresh from its Euro 2024 marketing blitz, had constructed a box-like stand with a sort of mezzanine level – painted in black, it looked the part.
Round the back, its glitzy Yangwang brand – the 1,000bhp-plus U9 supercar that can drive with one wheel removed if necessary – was on show, as was the tank-like, floating-capable U8 super-SUV.
As a statement of what the Chinese can do, it clearly impressed the crowds as the area was packed for the whole weekend.
Luxury brand Hongqi was there, too, with its former Rolls-Royce designer-penned products, and seemingly laying the seed for its slated 2026 arrival in the UK.
Meanwhile, Chinese-owned British brands Lotus and MG had stands of impossibly large proportions. MG was even headline sponsor and spent its time during the four-day show laying on thick its sporting heritage.
Central to its show ‘story’ was that the current duke’s grandfather, Freddie, ran the first MG works racing team, taking victories at Goodwood, the Irish Grand Prix and the Tourist Trophy at Ulster in an MG C-type in the 1930s.
Festival of Speed headline sponsor MG proudly displayed its sporting heritage at this year’s show
It was well done, but at times appeared to be overshadowed by Red Bull Racing’s 20-year anniversary that took over one complete paddock and had its own crowd-drawing ‘moment’ outside Goodwood House every day.
It wasn’t a complete Chinese walkover, though.
Mini had a characteristically flamboyant stand and showed off its new Cooper, Countryman and Aceman, while BMW nearby revealed the new (heavy) M5.
JLR was there as usual with its impressively posh House of Brands stand, but it really only succeeded in showing how much Jaguar is currently on life support until its 2025 ‘reimagining’.
The Chinese conquered square-footage in the grounds of the country pile for sure, but did they conquer the customer? That’s less certain.
Arguably the new car star of the show was the Ford Capri, with the crowds all keen to take a look at the reinvented icon.
Whether or not it stole show-goers’ hearts wasn’t of interest to me – it was how Ford used the Festival of Speed to debut a new car and get everyone a little hot under the collar that fascinated me.
All of this from a stand that appeared to be just a couple of Capri-yellow-painted portable buildings welded together and in the shadow, quite literally, of the Chinese monoliths.
It was pure marketing genius – and exactly what you’d expect from a 120-year-old company.
None of the new wave of Chinese car firms, with their fancy stands and bags of cash, could match that.
This column appears in the current edition of Car Dealer – issue 197 – along with news, reviews, interviews, features and much more! Read and download it for FREE here!
