28 April 2026 • Cars Now Brunei
Every year, the Beijing Auto Show gives you a read on where the global car industry is actually heading, not where it says it's heading. And the 2026 edition sent a message that's hard to ignore. Chinese brands came out swinging, with performance numbers, design ambition, and technology that would have sounded like marketing fiction just a few years ago.
Beijing Auto Show 2026
Lynk & Co showed up with a concept that genuinely stops you in your tracks. The Time to Shine GT is dramatic in the way a proper GT car should be: low, wide, and designed to make people turn around in a car park. The headline number is a claimed sub-2-second 0 to 100 km/h, which puts it in territory that very few production cars have ever touched. Whether those numbers hold up when it reaches production form remains to be seen, but as a statement of intent, this one lands hard.
Lynk & Co Time to Shine GT Concept
BYD's luxury arm Denza was already on our radar after the B8 arrived in Brunei, but the Z supercar is a completely different animal. Over 1,000 hp, wild styling that looks like it came straight off a motorsport concept board, and multiple body style options. It's the kind of car that signals a brand is serious about being taken seriously at the very top of the performance ladder. Denza is building a proper range, and the Z is the flagship that tells you where the whole brand wants to go.
Denza Z Electric Supercar
BYD's Fangchengbao sub-brand showed up with the Formula X and Formula S, both running tri-motor setups and serious power figures. If you've been watching BYD roll out the Sealion 8 and the Denza B8 and thinking that's as aggressive as they get, the Fangchengbao Formula lineup is a reminder that they have a performance arm that isn't messing around. This is BYD going after the enthusiast market with both hands.
BYD Fangchengbao Formula X and S
Not every story from Beijing is about supercar numbers. Leapmotor's B05 Ultra is interesting for a different reason: it's proof that you don't have to spend big to get a genuinely compelling EV. Sporty design, long range, and a price point that positions it squarely at global buyers who want something more than a basic commuter. Leapmotor has been expanding quickly into international markets, and the B05 Ultra looks like the car that could open a lot of new doors for them.
Leapmotor B05 Ultra
The Europeans weren't absent. Peugeot brought two concepts, the 6 and the 8, that preview a bold new design direction for the brand. Both are sleek, futuristic, and feel a step above where Peugeot has sat in the perception stakes recently. A sedan and an SUV, both leaning into a cleaner, more premium aesthetic. It's clearly a deliberate push to reposition the brand upward, and the concepts make a convincing case that it might actually work.
Peugeot 6 and 8 Concepts at Beijing Auto Show
If you've ever sat in a Range Rover and thought 'I want this, but with better tech and a lower price tag,' the Li Auto L9 is worth paying attention to. Li Auto's flagship SUV brings a properly luxurious, family-focused cabin packed with technology, and it does it at a price that makes the European competition look like it's been overcharging for decades. The L9 is one of those cars that makes you recalibrate your expectations of what Chinese brands can deliver at the top end.
Li Auto L9 Flagship SUV
And then there's this one. The BYD Seal 06GT Wukong is named after the Monkey King from Journey to the West, and the design leans fully into that energy. It's sportier, more aggressively styled, and adds a personality to BYD's EV lineup that the more restrained models don't quite have. In a show full of serious performance machines and luxury flagships, the Wukong stands out for being genuinely fun. Sometimes that's exactly what you need.
BYD Seal Wukong 06GT
Walk the floor of the 2026 Beijing Auto Show and one thing becomes obvious pretty quickly. The gap between Chinese brands and the traditional Western and Japanese players is closing fast, and in some areas it's already gone. The performance numbers, the technology, the design ambition, and the value proposition coming out of China right now are genuinely hard to argue with. For buyers in markets like Brunei where brands like BYD and Denza are already on the road, this show is a preview of what's coming next. And it's a lot.
