Maybe the tip off was the sheer number of young women in evening gowns decorating the cars, or maybe it was the fact Porsche chose China to unveil its latest dream machine, but there really was no missing the point: the Chinese car market is hot.
The biennial Shanghai Auto Show used to be a minor league exhibition, but not any more. Auto sales in China rose 10 per cent last month, surpassing U.S. sales for the third month in a row. A total of 2.7 million vehicles were sold in the first quarter compared to 2.2 million in the U.S., making China the world's biggest auto market - for the moment, anyway. When the U.S. eventually bounces back from its woes, many auto analysts expect the markets to re-align.

In the meantime, however, in these hard times the Shanghai show has proven to be a powerful magnet for depressed carmakers from around the world.

Some 1,500 foreign and homegrown automakers set up tents for the weeklong show that is expected to attract 600,000 visitors.

Thirteen new car models were unveiled, several by local Chinese companies, but also by the likes of Porsche, BMW and Mercedes Benz.

``This is a clear signal that we count on these markets and have full confidence in their future economic potential,'' Wendelin Wiedeking, Porsche chief executive, said.

Wang Xia, a director at the Chinese Council for the Promotion of International Trade, told Shanghai Daily: ``The high enthusiasm of international carmakers reflects their confidence towards China's auto industry as well as their expectations of future market potential.''

The potential Wang spoke of is enormous. Back in the 1980s, middle class Chinese aspired to own a bicycle. A decade or so on, that changed to dreams of a motorbike. Now, it's a car at the top of every wish list.

At the end of 2008, China's National Bureau of Statistics reported 24.3 million cars in ``civilian use,'' across the country, up 24.5 per cent from the year before. Of them, 19.47 million were privately owned, up 28 per cent from 2007. The lion's share of the rest were government or company cars.

The explosive growth in car ownership is likely to slow this year, just as China's GDP is doing, but it is unlikely to come anywhere near flattening out.

The March figures, for instance, show car sales up five per cent from March 2008.

Toyota president Katsuaki Watanabe told a news conference at the Shanghai show that ``even as other markets shrink due to the global crisis, China has taken appropriate and timely policy steps to secure stable economic and car market growth.''

For the worldwide auto industry, this kind of optimism signals opportunity as well as a need for change.

For instance, analysts are already pointing out that China has no ``soccer moms'' to go tooling about in gas guzzling SUVs. Instead, it has a steel-fisted government that is working tirelessly to lessen the country's dependence on imported oil. Hence, the myriad of hybrid and electric cars prominently on display in Shanghai and also the increasing number of high-efficiency smaller cars, suited to single-child families.

At the other end of the scale, China also has a quickly growing population of newly wealthy entrepreneurs who enticed the luxury carmakers to make the trek to Shanghai to show off their wares. Porsche and Mercedes Benz are making serious inroads among them, but BMW is still the car of choice for affluent Chinese. It sold 16,580 cars on the Mainland between January and March.

There are many obvious reasons for its appeal, but in a recently released report international market research company McKinsey & Company maintained some of BMW's success can be chalked up to how shrewdly it has adapted to the Chinese market, where gridlock traffic and cheap labour mean lots of business executives prefer not to drive themselves.

The report noted that BMW has ``developed a long wheelbase version of its 5 Series with more space and amenities in the rear seats to cater for growing demand for chauffeur-driven cars. In other markets, BMW has promoted `driver- focused' cars.''