Just when virtually every global carmaker has finally started making stretch versions for the China market – because the Chinese allegedly all have chauffeurs – comes surprising news from Rolls-Royce Motor Cars: more and more Chinese Rolls-Royce owners like to drive themselves.

Rolls China sales rose 600 per cent last year to bump China into second place ahead of the UK and behind the US for Rolls sales, so the company must know what customers want. “It is becoming cool in China to drive yourself, especially over the weekend,” Torsten Muller-Otvos, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO, told the Financial Times at the Shanghai auto show.

“The young ones like to drive themselves to the golf course,” he says, adding that 10 per cent of drivers of the Rolls-Royce Ghost (a smaller, cheaper Rolls) are women.