Heifeng had read the room perfectly. Every executive circle in China was holding its breath for Audi's response, waiting to see whether the new challenger would speak up or slink away. If Audi so much as cleared its throat, the rival camps—BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche—were primed to unleash their next volley: prewritten statements, friendly media takes, and showroom scripts meant to chip away at Audi's budding prestige until ordinary buyers lost faith and drifted back to the familiar German triad. But the day passed in silence. No press release, no executive interview, not even a corporate post on social media. The stillness felt less like surrender and more like the pause before a storm, which made certain people in the industry uneasy.
One of them was Steve Enn, head of a major regional office for BMW in China. He sat in a dim office after hours, frowning at the city lights beyond the window. "Something's off," he muttered. "Why do I have a bad feeling?" He knew from experience: the quieter a dangerous opponent became, the more likely you were to wake up under a toppled chessboard. Yet online, the silence was read as capitulation, and the usual trolls had a field day. "See? That settles it," they crowed. "People cheering Audi on the internet are lining up at BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche dealerships in real life!" "Audi's A6 is a joke; German brands own this segment!" "Domestic upstarts should learn their place!" "Only a fool buys an Audi!" The glee was performative and smug, and it grated on Audi's supporters—who had little to fight back with besides patience and anger.
The bitter truth was that Audi lacked a single halo car—one icon that could overwhelm vanity and cement the brand in the public imagination. Without that, the rivals' gray-zone tactics worked: whisper campaigns in showrooms, questionable "market comparisons," and finance packages dangled like candy. That evening, sales told a stark story. The A6 moved a bit over a thousand units—respectable for most marques on an ordinary day, but not enough to keep pace with BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche when they were in coordinated overdrive. In coffee chats and WeChat groups, the narrative hardened: Audi had made noise, then stumbled; the establishment remained the establishment.
Across town, Junko Toyota let herself into her apartment, exhaustion hanging from her shoulders like a damp coat. As Toyota's top executive in China, she could not pretend the Audi fight was somebody else's problem. The ripple effects of every price announcement, every ad, every viral rumor ran straight through her P\&L. The moment Audi had published the A6 price, a prickling intuition told her trouble was coming. She was right. The next day, sales for Lexus—Toyota's luxury arm—hit an ugly wall. Lexus had never enjoyed the name recognition of the German trio, and with all of its models imported, pricing power was fragile. Slowly, through service quality and word of mouth, Lexus had carved out a sliver of loyal buyers. Then Audi arrived last year and began bleeding that sliver away: thousands of monthly sales shrank to hundreds, then tens. After the A6's new sticker, Lexus suffered its first true nightmare—on a day with traffic footfall and multiple models on offer, not a single car left the showroom.
"Feng-jun," she murmured wearily, thinking of Heifeng by the more intimate honorific she used in private, "you've handed me quite the problem." She understood her own precarious position. A year of body blows from Audi had bruised Toyota's results, and were she not the chairman's granddaughter, the board might already have found a polite exit for her. Yet even under pressure, she could see the board: Toyota wasn't the one bleeding worst. Volkswagen was.
It made sense. Toyota's strength was the A-class and SUV segments. Volkswagen in China, however, leaned on its B- and C-class sedans—cars now priced only a few thousand yuan above Audi's B-class A4 and C-class A6 (¥3,000–¥5,000, roughly \$420–\$700). Audi's brand still didn't match BMW or Mercedes in prestige, but it was undeniably a luxury badge; Volkswagen, in Chinese eyes, was the dependable "civilian" brand, big on history, small on aura. After Audi entered the ring, Volkswagen's 4S stores saw traffic crater by sixty percent. The last two days were worst of all: not one C-class sedan had sold. Somewhere in a high-ceilinged villa, Arthur—the head of Volkswagen Group's China operations—was raging.
"Damn Audi," he barked at no one, pacing barefoot across marble. "Drop a C-class price bomb and wreck the entire segment? Are you trying to burn the market down?" He had spent the past year studying Heifeng's playbook and didn't like the conclusions. The man didn't play by the book. He hit first, hit again, and rarely bothered to pick up the rulebook afterward. He was also unforgiving. "And that bastard Steve," Arthur snarled, thinking of BMW's man. "You lot grab the chance to cash in while I bleed, then have the nerve to flaunt it?" He paused. "Fine. I hope Heifeng smashes you next, so you get a taste of this pain." Even then, he couldn't help scoffing at Audi's weakness: for all the disruption, their influence still wasn't enough.
His phone trilled. Assistant. "Yes?"
"Mr. Arthur, bad news—Audi's about to surge."
"What are you on about? Speak clearly."
"Check the link I sent—it's from tonight's national evening news."
He stabbed the video open, eyes narrowed. His Chinese was serviceable, and the broadcast format was familiar: the anchor's even cadence, the crisp cuts, the irrefutable tone that turned business into public interest. As the clip rolled, a slow grin unspooled on Arthur's face, the first in days. "Well now… Steve, aren't you unlucky." He chuckled, then laughed outright. "Let's see how cocky you look tomorrow."
Out on the forums, the tone shifted more subtly. The trolls were still jeering, but an undercurrent of wait-and-see threaded through the threads. People who'd taken delivery of A6s in the last week were posting careful, factual reviews: fuel economy measured over full tanks, cabin rattles that didn't exist, adaptive cruise that worked as advertised even in mixed traffic. A few neutral auto bloggers—folks who liked their data clean and their rumors quarantined—began quoting early reliability numbers from dealer service bays. Meanwhile, finance-savvy commenters took a scalpel to the "deals" floating around at rival showrooms, pointing out balloon payments and hidden fees dressed up as "premium care." None of this went viral yet. It rarely does—until something official gives it a push.
Heifeng stayed quiet, which was the loudest tell of all. People who worked with him knew: he didn't waste words when leverage was building. His style was to arrange the pieces, set the timing, then let momentum speak. That evening, somewhere inside Audi's campus, a handful of managers were likely staring at embargoed talking points and legal sign-offs, waiting for a clock to hit the top of the hour. The national news had its own slot; Audi would not step on it. But they would certainly step after it.
Steve Enn, back in his office, watched the same broadcast with a growing tightness in his jaw. He couldn't pinpoint the threat, only feel it—a sense that the ground had shifted under his shoes. On paper, BMW's day had been excellent. Sales were up, chatter was favorable, and Audi had looked small by comparison. And yet the silence, the broadcast, the sober tone of it… It reminded him of the pressure front before a thunderstorm: no wind, the smell of rain, and then the first drop splashing on your hand. He told himself not to overreact; he told himself a dozen reasonable things. Then he opened his laptop and began reshuffling the next week's media buys anyway.
Junko Toyota, finished with the news, stood at her window for a long time. Her reflection floated over the city—tired eyes, an executive's practiced composure, a young woman holding up the sky because the family expected it. She didn't root for Audi. But she respected a clean fight, and she could tell one was coming. If Audi landed it, the market would not return to normal for a long while. If they missed, this would be remembered as the night the air went out of the balloon. She pressed her palms to the cool glass, then turned off the lights. Tomorrow would be noisy. Tonight, it was enough to sleep.
Arthur's laughter echoed one last time in his villa, then faded into a pleased hum. Whatever the news had revealed, it had not favored BMW and friends. He poured himself a small drink—just this once—and raised it to the empty room. "To bad luck," he said, thinking of Steve. "May it visit the deserving." Somewhere else, Heifeng's phone vibrated against a tabletop. He didn't pick it up. The hour hand ticked forward. The quiet stretched, taut as a drawn bow. And then, at last, the string began to sing.