Tokyo: Nissan Motor Co.'s factory in central China is making cars almost 24 hours a day, yet Pan Xiaowei still waited three months for her new Tiida compact to arrive at the dealership.

"It wasn't like this a couple of years ago," Pan, 34, whose husband runs a property development company in Shandong province, said. "We used to buy and get a car straight away, and now you have to pre-order and wait."

China overtook the US last year as the world's largest automobile market, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Nissan, Ford Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. are running their Chinese factories at full capacity, with overtime and weekend shifts, and still can't deliver enough cars.

"Based on our current growth rate and planning assumptions, the capacity of our two facilities will not be able to accommodate the expected future demand for our products," Nigel Harris, general manager of Ford's venture with Chongqing Changan Automobile Co., said.

About 99.7 per cent of cars made in China through November last year were sold, the association said.

Foreign automakers are expanding assembly lines as buyers in secondary cities beyond Beijing and Shanghai benefit from government subsidies of at least five billion yuan (Dh2,694 million), a sales tax cut and 8.9 per cent economic growth.

Fuelled by demand

Car sales have been fuelled by demand in rural areas where the growth rate exceeded that of urban regions last year for the first time, Trade Minister Chen Deming said in a January 13 interview with state broadcaster CCTV.

"Spending power in the medium and small cities is rising, and demand there has surpassed those in bigger cities," Wei Tuo, a Henan province dealer for Nissan's joint venture with Wuhan-based Dongfeng Motor Group Co, said.

"Cars are no longer considered a luxury item but a standard consumer product." Wei's company has about 40 outlets in the central region selling several brands. About 55-60 per cent of sales come from middle- and small-sized cities, he said.

Nissan is the number one Japanese automaker in China, with last year's sales rising 39 per cent to 756,000, outselling Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda, according to the three companies. Nissan's top seller is the Teana.

Nissan is spending five billion yuan to expand its Hubei province plant to build up to 600,000 vehicles annually from the current 430,000, spokeswoman Kana Minamidate said.

That central China factory makes the Tiida compact and Livina series popular in secondary markets, she said.

"The plant was originally operating with two shifts but now we have three shifts to build cars almost 24 hours a day," Minamidate said, adding that customers still wait for deliveries.

Nissan also is spending one billion yuan on a light- commercial vehicle factory in the eastern city of Zhengzhou that will open this year and build up to 120,000 vehicles annually.

China requires overseas carmakers to work with local partners, who must own at least 50 per cent of joint ventures.

These ventures produced eight of the 10 best-selling cars last year, according to automobile association data.

Changan Ford Mazda Automobile Co. has plants in Chongqing and Nanjing building cars "at maximum allowable overtime and weekends," Harris said.

The company will open a $490 million factory in Chongqing in 2012 making up to 150,000 vehicles a year, boosting overall capacity to 600,000.