您正在看的时事英语是:汽车制造商“加大马力”迎合中国新贵。 usly, especially for real estate, and have imposed land-use restrictions.

Heavy bank lending has helped sustain the boom so far, even though actual property prices and rents have been falling. Jones Lang LaSalle, a big real estate consulting firm, calculates that rents and prices for luxury apartments in Beijing fell about 8 percent in the 12 months through April.

More than a quarter of these apartments are vacant. Yet as projects under way are completed, the total number of luxury apartments here is eXPected to rise to 27,000 by the end of next year, up from 17,000 now.

A few auto executives are starting to become nervous.

"The real estate side is definitely slowing down, and that will affect everybody," said Bill Begg, the general manager of Ford Motor's Land Rover and Jaguar subsidiaries in China.

Li Ying, the president of a BMW dealership in Beijing, said that quite a few potential customers had become nervous about their businesses in the last month, making them more reluctant to buy.

"Some people say May is black May," she said.

But Mr. Wang, echoing the bullishness of many business executives here after two decades of almost continuous rapid economic growth, said that, "in Beijing, it's still a growth market for real estate."

For Mr. Wang, the purchase of a Maybach is the fulfillment of a dream that began four years ago, when he started reading in automotive magazines that DaimlerChrysler had set out to design the most luxurious car the world had ever seen. After test driving the Maybach, Mr. Wang said, he concluded the company had met its goal and that he had to own one.

Behind the stage minutes before the ceremony, Karin Hoo, a Maybach "personal liaison manager" from Hong Kong, fussed over Mr. Wang, whose shirt was decorated with three Nissan race cars and a prominent Nissan racing logo.

Ms. Hoo said with a sigh that she wished she had brought a T-shirt with a Maybach logo for him to wear.

"It's famous," Mr. Wang said, slouching in a leather chair.

"And personally, I like this car better than a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce."