By night, message boards across China were thick with fresh "I bought a car today" posts, and the threads all bent the same way—buyers were lining up what they'd just paid against the fee sheet Audi had pinned to the wall of every 4S store. Once the add-ons at the German luxury counters were tallied—mysterious "service packs," financing surcharges, paint sealants that cost a small fortune—the truth stung. The eye-catching "up to ¥120,000 (~$16,700) off" banners shrank to nothing when you did the math; in too many cases, the final drive-away price was still tens of thousands higher than the original list. Audi's plain-English fee standard, by contrast, read like cool water. It felt honest. That contrast alone lit the fuse online.
The comments came in hot and contradictory, as they always do. Some shouted that Audi was the "national carmaker" and, at last, was doing right by ordinary buyers. Others swore the German trio—Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and the rest—were smeared by orchestrated "water armies." A few sneered that anyone defending Audi was just a poor keyboard warrior who couldn't afford a real luxury badge. And then there were the status-hungry fence-sitters: even if the fees were ugly, they'd still choose the big German marques, because an Audi A6 wasn't "high-end enough." The web argued with itself late into the night, and the argument did exactly what arguments do—it drew more eyes.
At dawn, in the quiet of the factory office, Heifeng paged through yesterday's sales. More than a thousand A6 sedans moved on day one. Not bad—better than "not bad," given what he knew was coming. When the other side issued that coordinated statement, he'd already pictured the immediate dip: their footprint in China's C- and D-class segments was deep, their dealer web dense, their instincts practiced. And yet, even under a blitz, the A6 still cleared four figures on its first day. He let himself enjoy the number for the length of a breath. Then he flipped to the following table, and the breath cooled. The Germans bragged they'd moved fifty thousand C-class cars in the same window—a sledgehammer of a number, and—given their promotional firepower—plausible.
"President Lu, they're mocking us again," Jianhua said as he slipped in, tablet ready. Heifeng took it, skimming the joint Weibo posts the three rival brands had pushed at breakfast time: "The so-called luxury A6 is a joke," "A brand with no heritage thinks it can beat us by cutting prices," "Only six days left—come buy a real luxury car." Within an hour, the repost counter ticked past a hundred thousand; comment threads piled up just as fast. Media accounts amplified; fan accounts piled on. It was an old maneuver, executed cleanly: bury your opponent's launch week under a blizzard of your messaging, then dare them to lash out so you can call them petty.
Across China, people were actually rooting for the upstart. They wanted to drag luxury prices back down to earth. That hunger is easy to underestimate until you stand in a showroom and watch a sales rep recite a fee list with a straight face. But wanting is not the same as buying. Face matters. Vanity matters. A car doubles as a moving business card; for many, the badge on the grille has to say something before the engine ever does. That's the gap Audi couldn't close in a day.
"Do we counterpunch?" Jianhua asked, the crease already dug between his brows. "We can't let them peacock like this."
"We could," Heifeng said, voice even, "and then we'd be dancing to their beat." He'd been a boss long enough to recognize a narrative trap when he saw one. If they wanted a fight in the square, they'd already staged the square—paid the drummers, rented the shouting crowd. Answer now, and Audi would be dragged into a news cycle designed to belittle it. Refuse, and the stunt would burn itself out while they kept throwing into the fire.
He called Ming from Marketing. Ming arrived still flushed from doomscrolling. "President Lu, give the word and we'll hit back. Their copy is disgusting."
"Hold," Heifeng said. "They're fishing for us. Bite, and they 'expose' us with whatever they've prepared next. Stay still, and they get nervous."
Ming's hands curled into fists. "It's infuriating, just watching them strut."
"Let them jump higher," Heifeng said, a small smile cutting the severity of his tone. "The higher they jump, the harder they'll land. Our time to answer is coming, but it's not when they whistle." He could see its shape already: a response that wasn't a post or a press release, a response you could test drive. If you believe in your product, truth-telling is a slow knife.
The tension in the room eased a notch. Jianhua nodded, thinking it through. Ming exhaled, still unwilling, but steadier. The plan—such as it was—was to do nothing performative, and keep doing the substantive: keep demo bays booked; keep inventory visible; keep the fee list taped at eye level; keep the sales teams trained to explain, patiently, how a headline "discount" can evaporate into "services" by the time a contract reaches the last page. Nothing looked more like weakness online than silence. Nothing built more strength in the showroom than clarity.
Meanwhile, the other side couldn't help themselves. Their posts strutted; their dealers boasted; their execs leaked selective figures; their "spontaneous" influencer tours all turned up in the same sequence of cities. It read like confidence, felt like crowdwork—and to Heifeng it smelled like fear. Yesterday, those brands could set any price and call it rational. Today, with one transparent price card pinned on a wall, everyone was arguing about money, not myth. That alone meant the ground had shifted.
He looked again at the number that had started the morning—a thousand A6s on day one—and pictured the next thousand, and the thousand after that. Marketing storms crest and break; a good car keeps showing up. That would be fine if the rivals wanted to make Weibo the arena. Audi would make the street the arena: test drives, owner referrals, service satisfaction, and a total ricochet-free receipt that matched the sticker. You don't out-shout a parade; you out-last it.
"Tell the teams one thing," he said at last. "No online spats. We answer with deliveries and with invoices that add up. When the dust settles, people will remember who treated them like adults."
Ming's shoulders loosened. "Understood."
Jianhua's crease softened into a smile. "Then we wait."
"We wait," Heifeng said, closing the tablet. "And we sell." Outside, the day's first customers were already crossing the forecourt, glancing from the big "limited-time" banners across the street to the plain price sheet by Audi's door. Vanity would win some of them. Value would win others. He could live with that split. The rivals had chosen the square. He'd chosen the road. And the road goes on, long after the noise fades.