Ford is to take its premium Lincoln brand to China with an eye on buyers who currently choose Audi, BMW and Mercedes.

The automaker plans by 2016 to sell five US-made Lincoln models through 60 dealerships in 50 cities in China, where the brand currently lacks a formal presence, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Local assembly is seen in the longer term.

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“Clearly over time as we sell more and more Lincolns here we will gradually localise them,” Ford chief executive Alan Mulally said at a media event ahead of this weekend’s Beijing International Automotive Exhibition.

The brand will launch this autumn with the MKZ midsize sedan to compete against Audi’s A4 and Mercedes C-Class, and the MKC small SUV. A midsize SUV, a large sedan and a version of the large Navigator SUV will follow, the WSJ said.

The brand is already available on grey market forecourts, the report noted, but is relatively unknown in China.

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“If you want to get on premium buyers’ radar screen you need critical mass in terms of on-the-road presence, and that requires localisation,” Johan De Nysschen, local head of Infiniti, told the Wall Street Journal in Shanghai.

But Ford China chief executive John Lawler said Lincolns would be “competitively priced” with locally made rivals.

A special ’boutique feel’ is planned for dealerships.

China is “strategically important because of the size of the market,” Matt VanDyke, director of Global Lincoln, told the WSJ.

“We expect it to be a very substantial piece of our global sales.”