#ChineseSales

Last month, General Motors announced a plan to introduce more than 20 new and refreshed models in China in 2019 to “maintain its growth momentum in the world’s largest vehicle market” and pump EVs into what is probably the most electric-friendly region on the planet.

GM appears to love China and not without good reason. As the automaker’s largest retail sales market since 2012, GM hasn’t been afraid to fully embrace it — at the expensive of looking like it’s playing favorites and putting its homeland in the doghouse. But is that what’s really happening, or does it just feel that way when an iconic American company starts playing patty cake with a foreign entity?

While both Buick and Cadillac have a healthy lead over Lincoln in terms of domestic deliveries, the space between them is far more pronounced in China. At home, Ford moved 111,159 examples of its premium marque in 2017 against Cadillac’s 156,440. However, China’s Caddy sales clocked in at 175,489 last year — a number Lincoln could only muse about in its wildest fantasies.

That’s because Ford exports all of its luxury vehicles to China, while GM tends to build them locally. But the Lincoln brand shows a lot of promise in Asia. Ford moved roughly 80,000 vehicles in the People’s Republic in 2017 and 54,124 of those models wore the Lincoln cross. In theory, if Ford could localize and bolster its product lineup within the country, a higher volume would be all but assured. It’s a theory the automaker intends to test, too.