Word of mouth had long curdled against certain foreign-branded dealerships in China, the kind that stacked on "financial service fees," demanded markups for quick delivery, and forced overpriced accessories as the price of driving a new car off the lot. When something went wrong, those same shops hid behind fine print and finger-pointing, and BMW's China-region head Steve Zeen knew it. He shrugged at Yasefu's complaint—he wasn't pretending ignorance, only impotence. Even headquarters struggled to rein in franchise stores once they tasted easy money. Then his phone rang. He listened, said two clipped acknowledgments, and stared as if the line had just told him the sky was green. What, the others pressed, could rattle him like that? "Audi just announced the A6 price," he said. Guesses flew—¥600,000? ¥500,000? Steve shook his head, half sneer, half relief. "If it were ¥600,000, I wouldn't be surprised. They started at ¥388,000—about ~$55,400." Laughter burst around the table. A so-called C-class luxury sedan at a mass-market sticker? To them, it felt like Audi had blinked first. Cutting the rice was the only trick if the brand couldn't support a premium. They had been bracing for a clash; instead, they convinced themselves Audi had disarmed itself.
At the launch, Heifeng was still on stage, calm and unhurried as he finished the A6 segment. Where the A4 wore its sportiness openly, the A6 leaned stately and composed, the sort of car you could drive to a board meeting at noon and a wedding banquet by dusk. Inside Audi's roadmap, those two—A4 and A6—would be the pillars carrying sales. That's why he had framed their pricing as an invitation: let ordinary buyers afford what used to be cordoned off as "luxury." The crowd's buzz said the message had landed.
But the second half of the show belonged to a different animal entirely. Under the lights, a red coupe waited like a smile someone hadn't quite suppressed. "Audi TT," the screen read, and the room tilted toward it. In the weeks before the event, Audi quietly polled fans online: which model they most wanted, and what they thought it should cost. The internal team expected the dignified A6 to win—China's market loves status wrapped in comfort—but the results came back lopsided for the TT, again and again. Heifeng had ordered a second survey run just to be sure—same answer. For young buyers, the dream of a sports car carried a gravitational pull that numbers alone couldn't explain.
That shape was a big part of it. The TT was compact without feeling toy-like, "cute" like a pocket rocket, which is cute—low, taut, and coiled. It didn't need to shout. The lines did the talking, and both men and women seemed to hear it the same way. Online viewers flooded the live chat when Heifeng walked over to the car: finally, the TT; please don't price me out; my brother works at the plant and swears it does 0–100 km/h in 3.9 seconds; is that for real? Envy, teasing, disbelief—it all braided into a single bright thread of anticipation.
Heifeng leaned into that energy with a grin. "I'm guessing many of you are here for this little guy." The scream of "Yes!" that answered was half stadium, half schoolyard. Someone in the audience yelled the kind of cheeky line only a live crowd can supply—choose between the TT and President Heifeng? "President Heifeng!" two girls chimed, and he laughed outright, acknowledging the compliment with an easy bow of the head. He wasn't playing untouchable mogul today; he hosted her, and everyone knew what they wanted to see.
Then he re-centered the room. The TT, he said, was an entry-level sports coupe designed for young people in China. The phrase "entry-level" mattered: it nodded to the reality that authentic supercars live behind velvet ropes. Most people don't even step on that carpet, let alone cross the line. If you can't move the rope, you move the gate—that was the thinking. Give the market something that looks and feels like the car they daydream about, but at a number they can chase without selling an organ. The TT would be that bridge, the first rung on a ladder that, for most buyers, had never had a bottom step.
The lines about rogue dealers earlier in the chapter make a sharper contrast. Those stores squeeze every yuan they can from a customer already at the counter; Heifeng's strategy does the opposite, lowering the bar for entry so there are many more counters tomorrow than today. That's why the A6's ¥388,000 (~$55,400) opening shot unnerved the old guard. Price isn't just arithmetic—it's a story about who a car is for. If a C-class luxury sedan can begin below what rivals call "dignified," the story changes. A manager who could only dream of a badge last year might place an order this year and talk three friends into following.
To the Steve Zeens watching from across town, it looked like weakness. To the fans on the stream, it looked like permission. Those two perceptions can co-exist for a while, each feeding the other. Rivals reassure themselves: cheapening the brand will catch up to them. Enthusiasts reply with wallets: sure, remind us again how your "pure" premium lineup is doing while ours ships a hundred thousand units. In that tension sits the TT, a test of whether aspiration at scale beats exclusivity on principle.
Although the broadcast chat threw around numbers like 3.9 seconds to 100 km/h, Heifeng didn't wave spec sheets like a sword. He talked about feeling—the thrum in the chest when the tach climbs, the way a tight chassis tucks into a curve, the lift you get when the light turns green, and the engine answers like it was put on earth for that exact moment. The TT, he said, is small because cities are not racetracks and parking lots do not forgive bloat. It's fierce because youth often is. And it's "cute"—a word he wore without embarrassment—because not every thrill needs teeth bared.
What he didn't say out loud—but the subtext carried clearly—was that Audi had been studying its audience. The A6 pitch spoke to status with sanity; the TT pitch spoke to joy with reach. Between them, he proposed a new definition of "luxury": not the privilege to overpay, but the freedom to choose the kind of smile you want at a price that doesn't punish you for enjoying it. If that sounded like heresy to the old premium guard, so be it. The cheers in the hall suggested a different gospel taking hold.
Even the cheap shots from rivals—"a luxury badge at a civilian price"—gave Audi something to work with. The phrase "civilian" can be a slur in a press room but a compliment on a sales floor. The girl in row five doesn't care whether BMW's dealers approve of the TT. She cares whether she can afford one without turning the next three years into penance. If tonight's reveal makes her think, "maybe," then the strategy will work exactly as designed.
By the time Heifeng reached for the last beats of his TT introduction, the hall had settled into that warm hum every product person recognizes—the collective lean-in that means the idea has landed. He promised to keep the dream within reach, reminded viewers that supercar pricing is a door most people never open, and positioned the TT as the doorknob. It wasn't saber-rattling. It was simpler: a promise that the feeling people wanted was no longer reserved for someone else.