"Top Scorer's European Automotive Industry Tour", two top scorers personally experience European car life.
The "Top Scorer's European Automotive Industry Tour" event, jointly launched by our newspaper and Shenrong Automobile, came to an end over the weekend. During a week-long trip across Europe, the two top scorers Lan Yunke and Xiang Haotian traveled through Paris, France, Strasbourg, Swabian Alb, Munich, Stuttgart, Heidelberg in Germany, finally reaching Frankfurt. Throughout their journey across these European cities, the two top scorers witnessed and deeply felt the similarities and differences between European car lifestyle and that of China.
No highway sign advertisements
Paris roads in France are complex, with its radiating old streets, unpredictable one-way roads, which can be dizzying, and traffic lights at intersections often leave people confused. Several European cities have the habit of making full use of "traffic police cameras," and also because it is often impossible to determine whether the violator is the owner themselves, so they only send out penalty notices without deducting points from the driver, which seems more reasonable than in China.
However, from Strasbourg to Swabian Alb, the expressway was covered with "patches." The two top scorers were somewhat puzzled about this, but when the guide told them that it was a highway built in 1964, they understood its dilapidation, as China's first highway was not officially completed until 1988. The biggest feature of this expressway here is the absence of any billboard advertisements. Compared to Chinese highways filled with various advertisements, the scenery along the highways here is much better.
4S stores decorated exactly like Chengdu
Before this trip, many people said there are no 4S stores abroad, but the two top scorers did not think so. In Germany and France, the only automobile sales method they saw was indeed 4S, and each store was not small in scale, all looking fresh and shiny, becoming special landmarks at various highway intersections.
Interestingly, all these manufacturers' 4S stores without exception follow global unified standards. In the Volkswagen 4S store in Germany, the top scorers saw that even the chairs for customers to sit on and the desks used by sales managers were exactly the same as those in Chengdu's 4S stores.
Europeans love to buy "domestic brands"
After a few days of travel, the most common sight on European roads was various small-displacement cars and classic cars, rarely seeing high fuel consumption SUVs... This is completely opposite to the popularity of SUVs in China.
In France, many classic cars are still in active use: decades-old MINIs, Beetles are quite common, while in China, such cars should be in museums. Of course, more cars are old Renaults, Peugeots, Opels... The car colors are mostly gray, blue, white, black. It must be said that in terms of automobiles, Paris does not live up to the title of the fashion capital.
Germany, as the father of world automobiles, naturally has plenty of good cars here: BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Opel are mainstream... As mass-produced luxury cars, the visibility of Porsche is also very high. However, both countries share a common characteristic, which is the limited number of car models. It is estimated that the number of models is only about 30% of the number of models running on China's roads. In terms of car model and color selection, Germans and French people are slightly more conservative, whereas Chinese people, known for being moderate and conservative, have become enthusiastic adopters of new models and new colors.
Automobile sales sell more culture
What left a deep impression on the two top scorers was that automobile sales in Germany are not just selling a machine, but also promoting a kind of culture. Although domestic automakers have started paying attention to automobile culture construction in recent years, they obviously do not match the birthplace of automobiles with a hundred-year history.
"Chinese automobiles currently emphasize technology and price, but this is clearly not enough. Cultural branding should also be an important aspect. Technology and price can certainly increase sales volume, but with five thousand years of Chinese civilization, if it could be applied in automobile marketing, it might make automobile brands more favored." Although Xiang Haotian is still a student, he is very knowledgeable about China's automobile industry.