Smoke and mirrors: Decoding the 2008 Beijing Auto Show

by Rob Walker | April 25, 2008 at 09:57 am

384 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

The Beijing International Automotive Exhibition is in full swing this week into next as car companies, marketers and designers showcase the latest and greatest in automotive engineering.

Thousands of attendees are expected at the China International Exhibition Center from April 22 to the 28, when the show will be open to the general public and trade visitors.

There is some controversy as the exhibition is hosted by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, which is a body of the Chinese government. Not that it's very surprising, as most major events and corporations in China are backed by the government.

The site can be found here:

So what are we to make of the aggressive display by the Chinese automakers at the 2008 Beijing Auto Show? Did we see a wake-up call for the west as a sleeping giant explodes into life? Or was it, to paraphrase Shakespeare, merely "sound and fury, signifying nothing"?

"Automakers wage war for market share," reads the headline over at China Daily. The current battlefront of that war can be viewed at the 2008 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition, which runs through April 28th. With 890 vehicles on display in the 1.9m square foot arena, the nine-day event is expected to attract more than 600k visitors. The spoils of war can be lucrative, too, with Chinese vehicle sales up 21.4 percent year-over-year, which translates to 2.58m cars sold in the first quarter.

The neatest thing I've seen is a keyless entry wristwatch to start and unlock your car.

230408, Beijing Autoshow. An honestly great invention of BYD Automotive: a Keyless Entry Wristwatch. This exclusive piece of brilliant engineering is only available for the BYD F8.

I found out about this thing after I started reading the tons of brochures I got from 3 days running around at the show. The watch can do anything a normal key0less entry card can do: keyless entry and keyless startup.

The watch is kinetic so here is no risk you can't enter your car because it is out of battery, and a long as you wear it you won't easily loose it.

I scanned the picture from the brochure, here BYD explaines about the watch:

Geely plans to formally unveil a new minicar dubbed Panda in mid-April at the upcoming 2008 Beijing Auto Show. The Panda, known internally as LC-1, will compete directly with the popular Chery QQ and is expected to be priced from around $4,200.
Geely also plans to introduce a new five-door edition of its compact King Kong sedan, as well as an updated version of the Beauty Leopard coupe, called the Chinese Dragon. Sister brand Maple will pull the wraps off its new Haiyue hatchback.

As one of the fastest-growing carmakers on the planet, the Chinese automotive industry has taken an unusual approach to staging international auto shows. Like Geneva and Detroit, it has a major exhibition every year, but like the biennial events in places like Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo, China alternates its big one between Shanghai and Beijing. This year it's Beijing's turn.

And let's not forget the auto show babes.

We’re pretty certain that very few readers will be interested in the fact that Maserati chose the Beijing Auto Salon for the Asian debut of the 440 Hp GranTurismo S, so we decided to concentrate on the Italian sports carmaker’s show stand that was adorned with succulent (though a bit overdressed for our tastes), babes. Image gallery after the jump.