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SHANGHAI (AFP) – The world's newest cars are on display at the Shanghai machine show, but Xu Xingen came for a artist that is perhaps equated with success and power in China more than some other -- the Audi A6.

Half of the Audi A6s in the concern are oversubscribed in China, according to research concern Dunne & Co., where black versions with windows tinted darker than welding glass are the automobile of pick for polity officials and company bosses.

"Many Asiatic grouping same the Audi automobile a lot," Xu said, after testing the backwards seat, where the 50-year-old bourgeois plans to mate most of the time. "It looks rattling beautiful, magnificent. I am feat to acquire a black one."

Boosted by A6 sales, Audi posted a achievement prototypal lodge in China with income up 18.2 percent and 51,951 cars sold. CEO Rupert Stadler said at the Shanghai machine show that China was ordered to embellish Audi's maximal mart this year.

"In China, Audi is thoughtful to be officials? favourite car," added 50-something Asiatic executive said after his office manager snapped a photo of him behind the wheel of the A6.

"The streamlining, the design, the expanse are every rattling good so Asiatic officials started to intend this automobile rattling early. I am feat to acquire one," he said. He declined to provide his name, but said he was "from a Fortune 500 company".

The Audi stand's A6 was silver, but he said that would not do: "Black looks more grown and sedate. Usually officials every intend black cars."

The car's position is such that in Beijing, the grandness of polity meetings crapper sometimes be gauged by reckoning how some A6s are parked outside.

Whistleblower Lu Jianfu, who has gained a following on China's cyberspace by using his video camera to grownup polity officials abusing their authority, credits a black Audi with launching a plaything that has led to at small 10 officials existence fired or punished.

In 2007, Lu saw an Audi fair a experience personnel light, dynamical against reciprocation on a one-way street. When personnel told the programme to backwards up, he said the automobile "didn't hit a alter gear", Lu told the China Daily.

Lu effort a video of the environs and posted it online. The Audi driver, an official for the bicentric municipality of Zhengzhou, was sacked as a result.

A production reporter in the Federal municipality of Xian borrowed an Audi A6 terminal assemblage to test theories circulating on the cyberspace that by just movement in an A6, women would spontaneously communicate you for rides.

His conclusion: the claims were a myth.

The A6's position comes down to Audi existence digit of the prototypal payment manufacturers to start China, said Klaus Paur, nous of Synovate Motoresearch for Greater China and Korea.

Initially, it was a popular polity car, but then entrepreneurs started purchase them too.

"A aggregation of grouping bought these A6s only because it was, socially speaking, acceptable," Paur said. "People would not say 'you are showing off' because it was also endorsed by the government."

But Audi A6s run the risk of becoming likewise common in China and losing their luxury status, compared to competition brands same BMW, Paur said. As a result, the company is trying to encourage cars same its newborn Q3 auto sports programme vehicle.

Audi's CEO is confident the brand crapper embellish modify more ubiquitous.

"It took us 23 eld to sell our prototypal million vehicles in China," Stadler said. "We aim to deliver our ordinal million customers in just threesome years."

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