兰博基尼推出SUV，迎合中国市场

    今夏早些时候，年销量只有几千辆，但单品价格高达几十万美元的意大利超级跑车品牌兰博基尼宣布将推出一款运动型多用途车。这款看上去棱角分明的概念车叫做Urus，曾于2012年在北京首次亮相。它的外形拥有兰博基尼汽车固有的花花公子风格：锐利的线条、加宽的轮圈、赛车的美感。其规格让一众博客大为惊叹：它拥有600马力引擎，尽管车高不够突出（还不到6英尺），离地净高却相当可观。

    在20世纪80年代，兰博基尼曾经尝试过推出一款流行的SUV，即类似于悍马的LM002，不过最终失败了。这一次兰博基尼卷土重来，显得信心满满。

    公司表示，SUV的销量将会促使兰博基尼的销量在一夜之间翻番，达到一年6000辆，并让这家以品种单调著称的公司变得多元化。他们认为：那些拥有兰博基尼超级跑车，可能会在需要更多空间时驾驶其他公司豪华SUV的客户，现在可以把SUV升级成为拥有同样意大利风格的兰博基尼产品。

    2018年开售后，大量Urus可能会出现在曼哈顿、洛杉矶或莫斯科的街头。不过，这款SUV最大的潜在市场还是中国。中国消费者的鉴赏力正在以前所未有的方式推动，甚至影响奢侈品制造商的决策，汽车制造商更是首当其冲。

    寄望中国推动业绩增长

    尽管中国经济已经开始放缓，但透过这款兰博基尼SUV，我们有机会一窥那些依赖中国提升业绩的行业的真实状况。唱衰中国经济的人没有注意到的是，中国消费者的支出正在提高，这就是为什么出现在报刊头条的中国GDP增长速度其实并没有表面上那么糟。例如，中国国家统计局的数据显示，今年上半年消费者服务行业增长了近8.5%，而工业产值只增长了6.1%。如今，服务业占中国50%的GDP，虽然低于美国的80%，却仍有增长之势。中国消费者的购买力正在变得更加强劲。

    正是出于这一背景，跨国公司纷纷开始迎合中国消费者的品味，从电子产品（苹果公司首席执行官蒂姆•库克承认，中国是苹果推出金色款iPhone和金色款苹果手表的重要原因 ）到食品（可口可乐在中国推出的美汁源果粒橙迅速引起轰动，可能将走出中国市场），再到汽车，不一而足。

    兰博基尼表示，该公司推出这款SUV的原因很简单，那就是SUV目前太火爆了。该公司首席执行官史蒂芬•温克尔曼在本月接受汽车新闻网站Autoblog采访时表示：“在全球范围内，SUV领域仍在快速发展。”

    现在提问：全球最大的汽车市场是哪里？答案是中国。那么中国发展最快的汽车领域是什么？答案是SUV。

    所以温克尔曼可以更直接地说：“中国是我们继美国之后的第二大市场，他们爱上了SUV，我们不敢错失这个机会。”

    中国喜爱SUV及其代表的一切——马路上的崇高地位，掌控力量的感觉，驶出城市、爬上山坡的无拘无束。在今年第一季度，中国几乎一半的新上牌车辆都是SUV。中国如今是全球最大的SUV市场。中国汽车工业协会的数据显示，去年全国的SUV销量增长近30%，而轿车销量只增长了约10%。有趣的是，也有传闻称，豪华SUV不如豪华轿车那样招摇——中国政府轰轰烈烈的反腐运动也给SUV营造了发展良机。

    保时捷就是这种新思维的典范。在北京和上海的富有社区，保时捷卡宴随处可见。去年，保时捷卡宴在华销量几乎占其总销量的三分之一，中国轻松地成为这款豪华SUV的最大市场。卡宴的热销也推动保时捷在中国的整体销量提升了25%。2010年至今，保时捷在中国的销量增至三倍，去年中国的整体销量只比美国少了不到100辆。

    在中国，保时捷卡宴的销售取得了巨大的成功。不过随着中国富豪数不断增长，中国政府持续推进针对炫耀性消费的反腐运动，保时捷推出了另一种更廉价的选择。2014年，保时捷推出了Macan SUV，装备了可供选择的四缸发动机，这是保时捷20年来第一次这么做。Macan在中国的售价几乎只有卡宴的一半，部分原因是降低了汽车排量的税费。研究机构IHS表示，Macan上市不到一年就在中国卖出了9374辆，超过了其他任何国家。IHS还预计该款车型在2015年的销量会增至三倍，达到2.9376万辆。

    保时捷并非唯一调整产品线以符合中国需求的汽车制造商。宝马和梅赛德斯-奔驰也纷纷推出更小款式的SUV。与此同时，重新设计船型林肯大陆SUV时，福特一心想的是中国市场。在今年接受《洛杉矶时报》采访时，一位福特副总裁表示：“这不是为美国市场开发的车型，我们会看看它在中国的表现。汽车的后排座椅设计优先考虑了中国消费者的需求。”

    到目前为止，福特这种明确为中国设计车型的行为只是个别案例，还谈不上行业潮流。香港汽车咨询公司Dunne Automotive的首席执行官迈克尔•邓恩在邮件中表示：“兰博基尼和其他汽车制造商正在讨好中国消费者，但仍然紧紧遵循着自身的传统和品牌特色。”

    不过已经有证据证实，兰博基尼这样的汽车制造商在决策时会充分考虑中国因素。

    兰博基尼和保时捷一样，都由大众汽车集团所有。该集团是毛泽东逝世，中国改革开放以后第一家进入中国的汽车制造商。如今，中国是这家公司的最大市场，他们有适合所有消费者的品牌：奥迪（政府官员喜爱的车型）、斯柯达（普通百姓品牌）、大众（普通百姓的升级品牌）、保时捷（新贵人群）、兰博基尼（年轻奔放的有钱人）和宾利（富豪人群）。

    这样的品牌广度让大众汽车获得了规模经济效益，大众正在开发新的兰博基尼和宾利SUV，架构类似于新的保时捷卡宴。IHS Automotive上海办公室的高级顾问萨博尼表示：“小投资却能带来大收益——这也许是大众集团推出兰博基尼SUV带来的最大影响。我们确实认为这款SUV会推动兰博基尼在中国的销量。”

    兰博基尼发言人刘娜（音译）表示：“显然，新车会利用大众集团提供的协同效应。然而它会是拥有我们品牌传统的真正的兰博基尼车型。”以下事实证明了她的观点：兰博基尼、保时捷和宾利的SUV都会在欧洲本地工厂生产——这对中国消费者来说，也是荣誉感的一部分。

    许多人指出，兰博基尼几年前选择在北京发布这款SUV的概念车型绝非巧合。Urus理应在全球最火爆的SUV市场揭开面纱。

    接下来唯一的问题就是中国消费者是否会喜欢它了。（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    审校：任文科

    Earlier this summer, Lamborghini, the Italian supercar brand that counts annual car sales in the thousands but price tags in the hundreds of thousands, announced it was building a sport utility vehicle. The angular-looking concept version called Urus, unveiled for the first time in Beijing in 2012, had the same built-for-playboys appearance as Lamborghini’s cars: sharp lines, wide rims, race-car aesthetics. Blogs marveled at the specs: it houses a 600-horsepower engine and sports ample ground clearance despite its relatively modest height (just shy of six feet).

    Lamborghini already tried and failed once to market a popular SUV in the 1980s, with what became the Hummer-like LM002. This time Lamborghini is more confident.

    It says SUV sales will double total Lamborghini sales practically overnight, to 6,000 vehicles a year, and diversify a famously un-diverse company. The idea: Customers who own its supercars, but drive another company’s luxury SUV when they need more space beyond a tiny front-trunk, would upgrade to a Lambo SUV with the same Italian styling.

    After Lamborghini starts selling the Urus in 2018, many may pop up in Manhattan or Los Angeles. Probably many in Moscow, too. But the biggest potential market for the SUV is located in China, where Chinese tastes are boosting and even influencing luxury goods makers more than ever, and automakers most of all.

    Looking to China for growth

    Lamborghini’s SUV provides a window into what’s happening at several industries relying on China for growth even as its economy slows. Lost amid the talk about China’s sputtering economic engine is that the rise in consumer spending is a big reason why the headline GDP growth figures aren’t worse than they are. In the first half of the year, for instance, consumer services grew almost 8.5%, while industrial output lagged behind at 6.1% growth, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics. Services are now 50% of GDP, trailing the U.S.’s 80% figure, but still growing. Chinese consumers are ever more powerful.

    Multinationals, in turn, play to Chinese tastes in everything from electronics (the Chinese were a big reason for gold iPhones and

gold Apple watches, Apple CEO Tim Cook has said) to food (Coke’s Chinese hit, a milky orange drink, may expand abroad) to cars.

    Lamborghini said it is offering an SUV because SUVs are a hot seller in general. “The SUV segment is still fast growing worldwide,” Lamborghini’s CEO Stephan Winkelmann told Autoblog this month.

    Now ask: What’s the world’s largest automotive market? The answer is China. And what’s the fastest growing auto segment in China? SUVs.

    So Winkelmann could have said, more directly, ‘China, our second biggest market after the U.S., is falling in love with SUVs and we don’t dare miss that.’

    China loves SUVs and all they stand for—elevated status on the road, a sense of power, the freedom to take a hard right out of city traffic and scale the nearest mountain. In the first quarter almost half of new vehicle registrations in China were for SUVs. China is now the largest SUV market in the world. SUV sales rose more than 30% in the country last year while passenger cars sales climbed only around 10%, says China’s Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Anecdotally, you also hear that luxury SUVs are less ostentatious than luxury sedans—good at a time when there’s an anti-corruption movement underway in the central government.

    Porsche is the exemplar of this new automotive thinking. In the wealthy areas of Beijing and Shanghai, Porsche Cayenne SUVs appear to be parked on every corner. Last year Porsche shipped almost one-third its total Cayenne production to China, easily the SUV’s largest market, helping Porsche’s overall China sales increase by 25%. Since 2010, Porsche has almost tripled its sales in China, where its sales trailed the U.S. last year by fewer than 100 vehicles.

    Porsche has had remarkable success selling the large Cayenne there. But as the numbers of China’s rich expand and the country’s anti-corruption campaign continues targeting conspicuous consumption, Porsche has offered another, cheaper option. The Macan SUV was released in 2014, equipped with an optional four-cylinder engine, Porsche’s first in two decades, and sold for almost 50% less than the Cayenne in China partly because of reduced taxes on engine size. The Macan sold more vehicles in China— 9,374— than any other country in its abbreviated first year, says researcher IHS, which estimates China sales of the model to triple to 29,376 in 2015.

    Porsche isn’t the only automaker changing its lineup in ways that align with Chinese demand. BMW and Mercedes Benz have also offered smaller versions of their SUVs. Ford, meanwhile, is re-introducing the boat-sized Lincoln Continental with China squarely in mind. “This is not a vehicle we developed for the U.S. and then said, ‘We will see how it does in China,'” a Ford group vice president told the Los Angeles Times this year. “The rear seat was designed for the Chinese customer first and foremost.”

    For now, Ford designing explicitly for China remains the exception, not the rule. “Lamborghini and others are building for Chinese buyers but keeping tightly faithful to their original heritage and brand cues,” Michael Dunne, CEO of Hong Kong-based auto consultant Dunne Automotive, wrote in an email.

    But there’s evidence automakers like Lamborghini are making decisions with China close in mind.

    Lamborghini, like Porsche, is ultimately owned by Volkswagen Group, which was the first automaker to break into China as the country opened to world following Mao Zedong’s death. Today China is the German company’s largest market, and VW has brands for everyone: Audi (government officials’ preferred cars), Skoda (ordinary folks), VW (ordinary folks’ upgraded ride), Porsche (nouveau riche), Lamborghini (young, rich, wild), and Bentley (just rich).

    That breadth gives Volkswagen economies of scale, and the company is developing new Lamborghini and Bentley SUVs on the same architecture as the next Porsche Cayenne. “Small investment but big profit return—that maybe the biggest influence for VW group to roll out” Lamborghini’s SUV, says Boni Sa, senior consultant at IHS Automotive in Shanghai. “We do expect the Lamborghini SUV to incentive the sales of Lambo in China.”

    “Of course the new car will make use of the synergies the Volkswagen Group offers,” says Lamborghini spokeswoman Liu Na. “Nevertheless it will be a true Lamborghini in line with our brand DNA.” Bolstering her point: Lamborghini, Porsche, and Bentley’s SUVs will be built at home in European factories—which, for Chinese consumers, is a big part of the prestige of buying one.

    Many have pointed out that Lamborghini picking Beijing to unveil the concept version of its SUV several years ago was no accident. The Urus should be released in the world’s hottest market for SUVs.

    Now the only question is if Chinese buyers will like it.