Ford focuses on China after Fiesta's success

But in a week when it was confirmed that China overtook the US as the world's largest consumer of cars for the first time, where better for Ford's new president of Asia Pacific and Africa to be to attest to the company's fortunes in the Asian super-power than the city's North American International Auto Show.

Although only in his new job for six weeks – he was parachuted into the crucially important role on December 1, having previously run Ford's worldwide manufacturing base – he is well versed in the challenges that face him.

Ford saw its Chinese sales rise by 44pc last year – to a record 440,619 vehicles – but it still lagged behind rival General Motors, which sold 1.83m vehicles in China in 2009, an increase of 67pc. None of this should come as a surprise to Mr Hinrichs, however, who was sponsored through college by and had his first job at GM, which he left for a spell in private equity before taking a succession of increasingly senior management roles at Ford since joining in 2000.

He appears to be aware of the job in hand, however, and stresses the "advantage that we have is that the blue oval is recognisable there", with reference to Ford's iconic logo, something which his domestic US rivals cannot probably claim.

For now, demand is keeping pace with supply, and the focus for Mr Hinrichs is what is known in the US market as the "c-segment" – essentially the compact, family-sized car category.

"There's a lot of potential for us to serve the Chinese market," he admits, pointing to the benefits of chief executive Alan Mulally's One Ford programme, which essentially strips away different platforms for different parts of the world.

The first fully-fledged example of this is the new Ford Focus which was previously built on three separate platforms around the world, but from later this year will be rolled out to 122 countries, and will be almost identical in each.

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