Gulf News

It’s time to ditch the old rules in selling supercars

Dealership­s find they have to go more than the extra mile for a compelling vision

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romance alive with longtime Here’s how they do it.

Understand the new market

At Bugatti’s showroom in Greenwich, Connecticu­t, dealers have long known that the typical individual who places an order for the $2.5 million Chiron (wait list: six months) already owns Bugatti’s previous multi-million-dollar stunner, the Veyron. Those owners are also acutely attuned to social media and are well under the age of 50.

Three thousand miles west, at the opening of the Newport Beach Pagani dealership last month in California, company founder Horacio Pagani himself told me the average age of his customers is “more toward 30 or 35 years old — even in the 20s, in some cases.” “Our customer has changed,” he said simply.

“We have to understand the idea that the people who are buying these vehicles are very diverse across the globe,” said Rebecca Lindland, the executive analyst for Kelley Blue Book. “We have to think about, “What does that Chinese billionair­e want? Or the wealthy daughter of a Chinese billionair­e.”

Follow the fashion world

clients.

Smart dealers see their business as pure luxury retail, closer to selling a brand identity than a device — like hawking a Birkin bag or Gucci shoes.

“You’re dealing with wealthy people, and they’re rich for a good reason: They understand that, like clothing, by and large the car is a depreciati­ng asset,” said Tom O’Gara, Bentley’s dealer in Beverly Hills, California. So automotive brands must sell the story behind the asset and the lifestyle that goes with it. The best place to do that is on social media.

The most exclusive fashion brands post avidly on social media. If they can do it, so can the fellas down at the dealership. They just have to retrain their focus. “It’s the rules for antimarket­ing. We are now in a completely different world.”

Bring the car to the client — or the client to the car

Aston Martin takes its atelier, as it were, directly to the customers, with personal exclusive “fittings” of its $3 million Valkyrie for the 150 individual­s who merit the right to purchase one.

Pagani will do the same but in reverse, flying customers to company headquarte­rs over the two to three years it takes to develop a car that it tailors the vehicle to the owner like a suit, down to sizing the car for torso length and shoulder width.

“You can’t go sell cars — you have to offer an experience,” O’Gara said. “Especially with the young millennial­s, that is what everyone is looking for.”

Foster community in real life

O’Gara’s team hosts meet-ups every Sunday on Sunset Boulevard. More than 350 supercars of all varieties attend, with owners parking them on display in California’s morning sunshine. The time is one for selfies, gladhandin­g, and bro-ing out with likeminded car lovers.

“Showing that [event] on Instagram is how people like to shop — that’s way better than people getting a picture of a car in the mail,” O’Gara said. “Instead, it’s like, here’s a fun thing to go do and see. That really brings people out. They can look at the cars in real life and get to talk to owners.”

In Miami, David has been known to source and help sell such assets as rare vintage mechanical watches for prized clients, as a favour of sorts. He hosts extravagan­t dinners with Armand de Brignac champagne and partners with private yacht and jet companies to allow guests full “land, air, and sea” service. He throws an annual Halloween group drive in which participan­ts wear full costumes through Miami.

Last year David and his friends dressed like the characters from the fantastica­l action film Suicide Squad — the party lasted deep into the night. while they rally

Be fast and easy — and let the customer lead the conversati­on

These days, most of the people who come into dealership­s have already done hours of research online and on social media and talked with friends who share their tax bracket about exactly what brand, model, and colour scheme of car they want.

Any good dealer knows he won’t be able to surprise the customer who already owns 10 supercars. Many clients know more about the car they want than the salesman at the shop does — and that’s OK. The job here is to deliver.

“It’s not about the guy who wants to do a zero-to-60-mph time,” David said. “We have guys who have the cars for four months, five months, then want something else. It’s not that they need the latest and greatest. It’s that they now want something they didn’t previously know existed.”

What’s more, while many high-end buyers actually do drive their cars on a daily basis, at least down the driveway — after all, they’ve got to get their Instagram shot for the day — others barely touch them. In this day and age, it doesn’t really matter.

What does matter is speed: Dealers must be able to source the chosen car quickly, even offering to wrap it in a new colour if the existing one isn’t right. If they can’t get an exact match, they’d better have something close.

More than anything, buyers today don’t want to wait.

“It’s about having the right curation of cars in the showroom,” David said. Many of the cars currently on show at Prestige Imports are not actually owned by David at all — they’re offered on consignmen­t, while others are privately owned outright and just kept in his space. But it’s important to keep the show floor full and the options for sale (in theory at least) high.

“I’ll have a guy walk in and point and say, ‘I need that one for this weekend, that one for my wife, and I want that one shipped back to my other house in New York or LA’,” David said. “Knowing which cars to carry is a risk.”

Play hard to get

The other facet of cultivatin­g the modern luxury buyer is fostering a sense of ultra exclusivit­y, both on the automaker level and on the dealer level. Production numbers must remain low — one-off models, ideally. Like red-carpet starlets in haute couture, the modern wealthy car enthusiast would never be so crude as to be seen in the same car as someone else.

“These cars are always instantly judged by their performanc­e credential­s, price tag, and ultimately, exclusivit­y,” explained Jonathan Klinger, the spokesman for Hagerty, which insures blue-chip collectibl­e cars. “These exotic brands are basically sold and spoken for before the first production one is even ready, so that you have instant pent-up demand.”

Bugatti will make fewer than 500 cars this year, Koenigsegg fewer than 40. Pagani will make just a little more than 40.

Only half will go to the US, even though the company could sell all its inventory there if it wanted to, Horacio Pagani said. That’s by design. He wants even the ultra-rich to dream about his cars.

“The most important thing for all the human beings is to evoke a feeling,” Pagani said. “I don’t make any difference­s between a customer, someone who will eventually own the car, or someone else who can just dream about it. We are selling cars, but at the same time we want to give our fans the car of their dreams.”

 ?? Bloomberg ?? The Bugatti Veyron at the recent New York Internatio­nal Auto Show. The other facet of cultivatin­g the modern luxury buyer is fostering a sense of ultra exclusivit­y, both on the automaker level and on the dealer level. Production numbers must remain...
Bloomberg The Bugatti Veyron at the recent New York Internatio­nal Auto Show. The other facet of cultivatin­g the modern luxury buyer is fostering a sense of ultra exclusivit­y, both on the automaker level and on the dealer level. Production numbers must remain...

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