“I talked to countless visitors,” he said. “People have growing enthusiasm for luxury brands such as Mercedes-Benz and BMW AG.”

The high level of purchasing power of some consumers in China’s western provinces is giving hope to makers of luxury cars who have been otherwise experiencing challenges, in the form of low sales growth and obstacles to their “Go West” strategy.

Cao said many luxury brands have launched more models with lower prices, ranging between 250,000 yuan and 350,000 yuan. A growing number of young people are considering buying a Mercedes-Benz, a BMW or an Audi as their first car, to make their dreams come true.

“Thanks to the special discounts during the auto show, you could have bought an Audi A1 with around 150,000 yuan, which is far from ‘luxury’ as per our definition, but it is happening,” Cao said.

According to the expo organizers, the seven-day Xi’an auto show attracted 418,000 visitors and helped sell 14,219 cars for more than 4 billion yuan, 1 billion yuan more than the sales revenue from a similar exhibition last July.

Clearly, West China loves luxury cars. Of course, the location of Xi’an at the heart of West China helped attract visitors from neighboring provinces and autonomous regions such as Sichuan, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia.

Record sales at Xi’an came in spite of another auto show being held at the same time in the northwestern city of Yinchuan in Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

According to the organizers of the four-day Yinchuan show, there were 220,000 visitors, and 2,309 vehicles were sold for 345 million yuan.
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