Selling luxury with luxury
Some call the latest trend in dealerships Taj Mahals. Dealers call it showing off the car
Dealers of the world’s best known luxury cars, including Porsche, Acura and Mercedes-Benz, have recently built what some call Taj Mahals — temples to our love affair with the car — along Vancouver’s Terminal Avenue.
The former heavy industrial area seems an unlikely place for dealers to spend an estimated $80 million in total on gleaming steel and glass edifices. The boulevard expressway running through the area is dominated by the concrete pillars of Skytrain’s Expo line and nondescript flea-market warehouses and carpet retail outlets. But this east-west connector also offers an economical alternative to the dealers’ former downtown locations, which are being bulldozed and replaced by increasingly more expensive condos.
Mercedes-Benz, described by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s most valuable automobile brands, was the first luxury dealer to arrive, opening its 175,000-square-foot complex last year on 2.76 acres, followed shortly after by Acura and Porche’s smaller but equally impressive facilities.
The Mercedes-Benz galleria-style showroom with its twostorey vaulted glass ceilings and frameless front wall allow natural light to flood into the 66,000 square foot facility, so that even Expo line commuters whizzing by overhead can see new highperformance sports coupes sharing space with SUVs and more sedate sedans on porcelain tile floors.
From the moment one drives into the well-appointed dealership, Mercedes is looking to “enhance the customer experience.” Valets instantly appear to whisk your vehicle away to parking or the service department while a host guides you to agents awaiting your arrival at computer stations inside.
Stephen Inberg, who oversaw construction of the building as the company’s former national manager, facilities and real estate, seeks to dispel the notion that this and nearby competing dealerships are luxury for luxury’s sake.
“They are not Taj Mahals,” he said in a telephone interview from Toronto. “They are there to show off the car. You don’t see marble on the floor, you don’t see a lot of excess in the building. It’s very functional. And it’s there to support the cars and the brand and to show off the cars, not to be a stand-alone building.”
The showroom, if not luxurious, at least makes the wellheeled clientele feel as much at home as they would in the first-class airport lounge. They are treated to conveniences like a cellphone charging station, a state-of-the-art custom latte machine, premium magazines and daily newspapers in both English and Chinese.
In nearby clear glass cases are displayed the tokens of Mercedes ownership: the branden-graved golf balls, key fobs, caps and even scale models of Mercedes’ sports coupes and The Sprinter, the standing height van favoured by Hollywood stars.
During an hour-long tour, General Sales Manager Mark Dubé points out time after time that function often trumps form in the facility.
“We used an open concept design here so the sales people are located on the floor right beside our cars,” he said.
With two sales managers available at desks strategically placed next to the new vehicles, the days of the salesman disappearing to “ask my manager” are long gone, Dubé said.
Instead, the process is much more transparent. When a customer is ready, they are guided to glass walled yet private offices where staff work out the financial details of the purchase.
High above the sales floor, the roof of the dealership doubles as open display space for up to 200 used Mercedes vehicles for customers to inspect. The roof also incorporates advanced building techniques such as a white topping on the concrete to reduce thermal gain and increase its reflectiveness.
In between are floors for parking customer vehicles in numbered slots, awaiting valet delivery to service bays or to a staging area for customer pickup. Service technicians work in cleaner and brighter environments than 20 years ago, says Dubé. Work benches are much more sophisticated affairs with a wide array of computerized diagnostic equipment on carts that can be moved as needed.
Dangling from the ceilings are easily retractable hoses that instantly bring a range of lubricants and more specialized fluids needed by today’s advanced cars.
When the service technicians, some of the most highly trained in the business, are finished with the vehicle, it is valet-driven to the staging area where customers can drive out sliding glass doors onto city streets.
Recently reported figures from Desrosiers Automotive Consultants explain why luxury car dealers have been paying close attention to British Columbia. Luxury car sales are 21.1 per cent above the national average here while super-expensive luxury car sales log in at 69.7 per cent above, and luxury sport utility vehicles sales are 50 per cent above the Canadian average.
Such brisk demand likely prompted Richmond Auto Mall, one of the largest auto malls in Canada with 14 dealerships, to recently announce a $120-million expansion in its 30th year of operation. The expansion includes the addition of BPL Auto Group’s Richmond Acura and new facilities to be built by Cowell Auto Group’s Audi and Jaguar Land Rover, both of Richmond, by fall 2016. A further $60-million investment is expected in the next three to five years.