Undercoating Extra
link Rolls-Royce Seeks China Sales Surge for $990,000 Cars Update1 – Bloomberg.com.
The age old shell game of selling cars has come to China but has morphed into a grotesque Frankenstein. Shrewdly pricing the cars at under a million dollars, the Rolls-Royce company seeks to capture the value conscious Chinese buyer for their products. After all who wants to be seen as stupid enough to pay a million dollars for a car? It’s a matter of catering to the legendary shrewd Chinese purchasers.
You would expect that in paying this lofty amount for basic transportation, all components would be top of the line and mechanically superior. I wouldn’t bet on it. Things wear out, grease needs to be applied and accessories age. Naturally, for such high ticket engines, oil must be of a special type. Specifically, it must be derived from petroleum sources in which the old dinosaurs were determined to be virgins. Of course this is very rare and expensive to source accounting for the $24, 899 dollar cost for an oil change….every 6000 miles. If you are unfortunate to live in a neighborhood occupied by one of the megamillionaires able to spend such money, then keeping up with the Wangs will be very problematic.
It is rumored that these cars don’t even have glass on the windshields, instead, people are posted to tell the occupants what the view is outside. Well that’s preposterous. You’d need different language translators if someone didn’t speak Chinese.
While there are no pictures of this car, it is likely that there are upstairs and downstairs levels to accommodate larger Chinese families. Kitchens would be an optional extra. According to this article, China has experienced a surge in millionaires last year, amounting to over 875,000 at last estimate. Of course, those who would aspire to acquire one of these coveted status symbols would need to have net worths well north of a million dollars. Pretty good for country that only a few years ago operated on the premise that everyone is equal. In fact, according to 2009 estimates, the average income for city dwellers is about $2700. This is a somewhat meaningless statistic in a nation of 1.3 billion people whose constituents range from farmers to industrialists. Nevertheless, it is a clue that the transition from a purely communist state to a capitalist inspired, but still communist controlled one is very rocky and not every one has benefited. The biggest trick is to be more equal than others. At the risk of being repetitive, George Orwell’s Animal Farm satire leaps out at us once again.
In a country of over 1.3 billion people, 875,000 millionaires is not a lot, but certainly enough to keep the Rolls Royce showrooms open. Like all cars though, canny shoppers would be wise to wait a model year. By this time next year, the newer models will have come out which are roomier, with bigger engines and even more luxury. The older ones can then be snapped up at the used lots for only 600 to 700 thousand, a huge savings.