SHANGHAI AUTO SHOW: Behind the scenes

The China car market is slowing -- growth so far this year is 8 per cent compared to last year's growth of 33 per cent -- but 8 per cent of a lot of cars is still a lot of cars.

Part of the reason for the slight slowdown was a removal of government subsidies on small cars and farming vehicles. Despite this, the industry forecasts the Chinese vehicle market will be up by 15 per cent by the end of 2011, which should push it close to the 20 million mark.

The highest annual sales volume the North American car market achieved was 17 million a couple of times in the early 2000s (but has since settled to a sales rate of between 10 million and 13 million). The UK is poised to reach nearly 2 million sales this year and Australia about 1 million.

Luxury-car sales in China, however, are powering ahead. Growth is running at twice the rate of the industry -- and some brands are in triple-figure growth. Demand for luxury cars is so strong that Rolls-Royce (and others) had to install a credit card machine in the back offices at the Shanghai auto show. There were also large sums of cash being handed over. This explains the armoured vans appearing in the afternoons. RR was up 600 per cent in 2010 compared to 2011 and so far this year is up 170 per cent.

Meanwhile Aston Martin sold its entire China allocation of One-77 supercars on the first day of the show -- for the equivalent of $7 million each. As the name implies only 77 of the handbuilt V12 supercars will be made for the global market.

Several Australian vehicle importers were spotted on the ground in China. Neville Crichton and his team from Ateco (which distributes Great Wall and Chery motor vehicles in Australia) were walking the carpet and concrete that linked the 17 giant halls, as was Perth-based Geely importer John Hughes. Both were on the same mission: they want more cars. Both executives said they spotted other Australian dealers and distributors on the ground (possibly looking to import other Chinese brands) but declined to say who they were. Ateco's main man wished them luck. Ateco executives have been travelling to China for the past six years -- and visited 46 brands before settling on Great Wall and Chery.

Both vehicle importers said the Chinese were more responsive to running changes for quality improvements than any other brand they've dealt with.

"They really take it seriously, we're helping them lift their quality for other markets too," said one.

"We go over every car with a fine-tooth comb. Each shipment gets better," said another.

Early shipments saw 60 of 150 cars require attention for paint quality, panel gaps or transit damage, but recent shipments have seen just 20 out of 150 cars set aside because of quality issues or travel damage -- which our source says is the industry norm.

Another high profile Australian on the ground in Shanghai was former Holden executive Kevin Wale. He's been running General Motors in China for the past six years and overseen the boom time -- the China market has grown by 600 per cent over the past 10 years from 2.5 million in 2001 to 18.3 million in 2010.

Wale is constantly bemused by questions from Australian media asking when he is coming back to work at Holden. When interviewing Wale you can tell Holden is dear to his heart but you get the sense that, after running GM's biggest market, Holden would seem like a boutique car maker. He did say, however, that his global appointments are bringing him closer to Australia each time. Wale has been on global assignment for GM for more than 10 years, having spent time in Europe before China.

General Motors head of global design Ed Welburn was in Shanghai to unveil GM's latest creation and global car -- the Chevrolet Malibu, which we will get in Australia as a replacement for the Epica mid-size sedan next year. His pride briefly turned to disappointment because the display only showed the Malibu's front three-quarter view. He wanted to show off the car's attractive, Camaro-inspired rear end. During an interview with the Carsales Network he pointed out that every car at the show -- not just on the GM stand -- highlighted a front three-quarter view. Even the billboards from rival brands were the same: big picture of the front-three-quarter view of the car on a white background.

Feeding the thousands of journos from around the world wasn't easy at the Shanghai show. There were a couple of McDonald's outlets on site and there was one very satisfactory Italian pizza joint -- but you certainly paid a premium to dine at the only two places that served western food. The cost of a meal for two at either joint was equivalent to one night in a humble hotel room. The smart tip was the GM media hospitality area where fresh water and snacks were on offer. Nothing like safe food in a foreign land to get journos to literally eat out of your hand.

Carsales contributor Joshua Dowling and a journalist from another outlet funded -- and navigated -- their own way to the Shanghai motor show. They quickly realised how easy they have it when travelling as a guest of a car maker on other trips, where you're chaperoned and fed from start to finish every day.

Finding their own way to and from the hotel and the show in taxis with drivers that did not speak English (hotel business cards and motor show maps helped) was the easy part. The hard part was getting a taxi in the first place. Having waited in the official taxi queue outside the show for more than an hour -- for some reason taxis couldn't find the rank -- the two journos eventually wandered 50 metres to the main road and were nearly bowled over by the dozens of empty cabs looking for the rank. It was a mixed blessing: they were finally mobile but lost an hour of writing time while trapped in a queue fending off people trying to sell them knock-off watches.

Dowling and co quickly figured out which taxis had seatbelts and which ones didn't. Not only did the old VW Santana sedans not have seatbelts, they often had metal bars -- presumably to protect the driver from being attacked. However, their jagged, sharp edges at back-seat-passenger head-height ensured they were a taxi of last resort (they were dubbed Death Cab for not-so Cuties, a nod to the rock band of a similar name). The newer, box-shaped VW Golf Plus-style taxis were much safer and more accommodating.

The Shanghai hotel staff were amazingly helpful and courteous -- but none spoke English (which is more of a reflection of Dowling's hotel budget than Shanghai's development as a global city). The hotel had 24-hour room service available. You could have whatever you wanted as long as it was fried rice -- even for breakfast. Dowling didn't see this as a bad thing. He did however avoid another local delicacy: fried scorpions on a skewer, some of them still wriggling.

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