Morgan Motor, the boutique British manufacturer of hand-made, vintage-styled luxury cars, is going onto business in China.
A family-owned company that has been making cars at the same location in Malvern Link, England since 1909, Morgan last month appointed its first mainland car dealers in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as a Hong Kong dealer for its new tri-wheel, motorcycle-engine-powered throwback to the early days of motor racing, the Morgan 3 Wheeler.
The company is betting 1930s styling and peppy performance will help set its cars apart from other top-end British makers in the already crowded and competitive mainland luxury market, where its cars will retail for up to 4.2 million yuan (HK$5.1 million).
'For the likes of Rolls-Royce, Bentley or Aston-Martin, all of the press is about how the downturn in the rest of the world has basically been swallowed up by an upturn in China,' Morgan Motor operations director Steve Morris says.
'Morgan is slightly different ... The market is in its infancy for us but we see it as a great opportunity to get some nice organic growth.'
Luxury car sales on the mainland rose 30 per cent last year to almost 600,000, and are projected to continue double-digit growth this year, according to industry consultants LMC Automotive. That compares with overall passenger car sales growth of 5.2 per cent, according to official data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.
The boom in luxury sales saw the mainland become the top global market for the first time last year at companies including Rolls-Royce, Audi and Lamborghini.