CAPAS Chengdu brings Messe Frankfurt’s automotive parts and aftermarket format to southwest China, and the floor is arranged around the working life of a vehicle rather than as a parts catalogue. Components and electronics set the base, the equipment a workshop runs on sits beside them — diagnostics, repair gear, lubricants, fluid systems — and the commercial side of the trade runs through it all: dealership and workshop management, training, digital marketing and e-commerce.

Sichuan and Chongqing hold a dense concentration of vocational colleges and automotive training programmes, and the fair sets aside a place for that, with a section where schools and employers meet over new-energy vehicle skills. The result is an audience that mixes buyers from vehicle plants with distributors, workshop owners, fleet operators and aftermarket chains. Tyres and wheels, bodywork and refinishing, and alternative energy with storage and charging run as separate blocks, the last of them the fastest-moving part of the trade as powertrains change.