Disconnect
The disconnect between manufacturers and dealers seems to be the weakest link in the sales chain. Nowhere is this more evident than in Los Angeles. I read time and time again about how the manufacturers are asking dealers to build new, modern facilities and to have a separate store for each brand. Volkswagen tried it before the Phaeton and Touareg were introduced. Subaru is doing it now as part of a corporate push to more upscale cars with the introduction of the new Legacy sedan and Outback wagon. Mercedes-Benz tried to get its dealers to build a special "area" to sell the bloated Maybach. BMW demanded (and got) separate MINI dealers when the brand was introduced to the US market.
I keep seeing all these articles in Automotive News about the manufacture hoping to get franchisees to upgrade the facilities to try and make them more appealing and modern. Apparently, in the rest of the country, there is a high the rate of dealers who comply with the new standards and make a substantial investment in the dealership. The manufacturers also help the dealers with low/no interest loans, signage, architectural assistance, etc. Apparently, these new dealer upgrades don't apply to dealers in the Metropolitan Los Angeles Area. The real estate is just too expensive and the dealers are too cheap to make an investment in their facilities.
I want to talk about some of the numerous glaring examples of the lack of investment in LA.
If you've ever been to Culver City Nissan/Mazda you know that it is a tiny physical location that hasn't been upgraded in 30 or 40 years. A few years ago, it dropped its Subaru franchise leaving "more room" for the other two better selling brands. The sales area is the same as it was when the first car was (whatever brand was being sold from that location in 1968). The linoleum floor looks old and dirty. It has sales cubicles where they still drag out the same "deal sheets" used in the Stone Age. They have inventory scattered all over the local area because it's physically impossible to squeeze a fair inventory representing a broad cross range of the three brands in the same old area. Since it is the only Mazda and Nissan shop west of the two dealers in Santa Monica, I guess the owners don't feel they need to make an investment. It has no competition.
Subaru is feeling a little under-represented in this area too. Last time I took my WRX into the Santa Monica dealer, I felt like I had stepped into a time warp. The ancient, ugly dealership was still primarily a Lincoln/Mercury dealer and the surveys weren't kidding about the average age of a Lincoln owner was something like 70. My little Subie was there among gigantic Lincoln Town Cars and Mercury Marquis sedans. I looked completely out of place in this dirty waiting area that was almost open directly to the service bays.
The next closest Subaru dealer is Big Valley Subaru in Van Nuys. It has become a big Subaru dealer now; but it was primarily a Dodge truck dealership for most of its very long life. The popularity of the WRX and other more recent Subaru products have given them a smug, screw the customer attitude, because they are the only Subaru dealer for most of the Hollywood-Beverly Hills corridor as well as almost all of the San Fernando Valley. I was unable to make a deal with Big Valley because another local Subaru dealer in Monrovia refused to do a dealer trade with them! Why invest when you have no competition? It's not like you will lose sales and who cares what the customers think, right?
One of the most fractured and insulting dealers is Beverly Hills Porsche Audi. There is the tiny sales location on Wilshire Blvd in an historic old building. The service department is located much further away in three different locations on Santa Monica Blvd, just east of the 405 freeway. If you know LA, then you know that that stretch of Santa Monica is always busy and ingress/egress is almost impossible from any of those locations, particularly in the most narrow areas where there not even room for street parking in front of the buildings. The inventory is kept in different secure parking garages all over Beverly Hills. The sales staff takes arrogance to a new level. I'd recommend dressing in Prada or Helmut Lang before you even thinking about stepping foot onto their sales lot. If you aren't, you may be ushered out of the premises as a bum. I think that both Porsche Cars North America (uh, shouldn't that be cars and trucks?) and Audi USA would love to have a different franchisee and a much more modern sales/service store in the area, but the local franchisee isn't about to change its modus operandi anytime soon.
To find another Audi dealer, you have to go to Van Nuys, Santa Monica, Pasadena or Downtown LA to get better sales/service than the crap you get from the Beverly Hills dealer. Believe me, if you don't live or work in Santa Monica or Van Nuys, you might get stuck trying to get service from the Beverly Hills dealer with its service in West LA!
As far as Porsche goes, even though Porsche must sell a boatload of cars in the West LA/Beverly Hills area, the next closest dealers are in either Woodland Hills or Downtown LA. These are terrible choices considering the number of Turbo 911s, Boxters and Cayennes I see running around here.
Cadillac is another brand desperately trying to put out new products, attract younger buyers and bring its dealers past their last updates in 1972. Lou Ehlers Cadillac on Wilshire in the Miracle Mile district is still putting special large grills, gold packages and fake convertible vinyl tops on its Cadillacs. The problem with that model is that there are very few people left to buy those cars. Last I checked, most of the Holocaust survivors, their primary customers for many years ago, are very old and frail. Granted, many of the Jews in the Fairfax/Beverly area still won't buy a German car, but these people aren't buying the same car their father or grandfather drove. The dealership needs to stay with the times. The architecture is painfully dated with no update in sight. Younger customers are almost afraid to step foot on the lot! It's an embarrassment to GM.
And another Cadillac dealer, Martin Cadillac/GMC/Pontiac in West LA is also painfully dated with its tacky, early/mid 1970s, architecture. Martin owns a pretty good piece of real estate at Olympic and Bundy, but it desperately needs to update the sweeping circular staircase with red carpet inside its showroom and stop mixing a Cadillac XLR with a Pontiac Aztek in the same showroom. It may have been fine when there was no distinction between one GM product and another, but GM, primarily its Cadillac division, is really shooting for a new generation of buyers. When I bought my Aztek there, I literally saw a lady, in her late 70s, being helped from the seat of her 2-year old Sedan de Ville to the seat of her new Sedan de Ville (now called DTS). It's fine to have seniors among your buyers, but when she represented the average buyer, that could spell death to a brand. You need to attract buyers of all ages. Can't GM force these dealers to update?
Chrysler doesn't get a good grade on dealerships either. In town, either La Brea Chrysler/Jeep, which got a mild facelift about 12 years ago and Buerge Chrysler/Jeep in West LA, again very dated, are your only two choices in town. Your next choices are either Center in Sherman Oaks or Star in Glendale. Chrysler has had pretty good success with its move upmarket starting with the Crossfire and continuing with the fat Pacifica station wagon and 300C sedan, but what happens if your upscale customers want service and can't find it locally? The La Brea dealership has inventory scattered up and down La Brea Avenue; but parking is primarily on-street and you have to walk for blocks to find the car you are interested in (if they admit to having it). I haven't been to their service department, but I'd bet its flooded with PT Cruisers, Neons, Minivans and all sorts of Chrysler products from the entire area.
When researching this article, I stopped by Buerge in West LA (just east of the City of Santa Monica on Santa Monica Blvd.) to check out the 300C. I pulled up in my S320 and was completely ignored. I walked around and looked into the windows of the three (yes three) 300Cs they had on the lot and still no one bothered me. Did I forget to mention that there were unbusy salesmen walking all around me? One person had just gotten back from his test drive (he had his kid with him) and they left the car open. I got in and fiddled with the gadgets, opened the hood, the trunk, sat in the back seat, front passenger seat and driver seat. The three bored salesmen in the old showroom just stood there gossiping and looking fat. They saw me. This dealership is in serious need of a makeover and in serious need of a motivated sales staff. The marketing boys at DaimlerChrysler's HQ in Auburn Hills, Michigan are probably slashing their wrists knowing that not only do they have a sales staff that can't figure out how to sell new product (I heard the one salesman tell the guy who just drove the 300C three times that he didn't know the answers to the customer's questions), but the stores in very key areas where they want upscale buyers don't exist or don't care and few around definitely aren't updated!
Toyota doesn't get great marks for its local dealers either. The Hollywood Toyota dealership is Toyota's first dealership in the US, let alone Los Angeles. It has some pretty good real estate on Hollywood Blvd.; but the sales building is the same crappy building it has been since it opened in the 1960s. They supplement office space with "temporary" buildings that have been there for years. I guess they sell so many cars it doesn't matter; but doesn't even Toyota, Soulless Japanese God of Sales, at least want to spruce up the original shop, even if the owners don't care? Just like the other dealers in the area, there isn't much competition. You have to go to the much nicer and newer Toyota shop in Culver City or Toyota of Santa Monica to find another dealer on this side of town. The other choice it to go to Keys Van Nuys or try and not slip and fall when you walk into the slimy North Hollywood store.
As you probably already know, the story of old, smelly, outdated dealerships in LA is endless. But here is my suggestion to the sales/service vs. cost of real estate and investment problem. The concept of satellite service and/or sales nodes has been floated out there before. I think the idea was perfect for a large sprawling city like LA. It wouldn't hurt sales if the Beverly Hills Mercedes, BMW or Porsche dealer ran several smaller sales/service locations through out the areas they serve. It's one hell of a sales tool if you can have service closer to your customers. It also wouldn't be too bad if you could sit down in a smaller setting with a salesperson to talk about a car's options, prices, etc. and then the salesperson would take you for a test drive by calling ahead to either the flagship dealer or the hidden inventory parking lot to test drive the car you're looking for.
It would also be a friendlier method serving the ever-diverse ethnic neighborhoods that are traditionally underserved. For example, there could be more Russian or Armenian sales staff in places like East West Hollywood or Little Armenia. Let's face facts. Most of these dealers are too small to properly service their locations. They already have inventory scattered all over parking facilities in their communities. VW Santa Monica must have 3 parking lots filled with inventory. Beverly Hills BMW has inventory all over the area. It's the same thing for the Mercedes, Lexus and Ford dealers in Beverly Hills. Why not lease some space in more strategic locations as extensions of, at least, the service function. As it is, you can't get your car serviced without an appointment a month in advance at the Beverly Hills Mercedes dealer. Hell, I've even been told that the Beverly Hills Ford dealer has to schedule appointments in advance because there is just no place to expand. There are lots of crappy mini malls built during the 1980s and early 1990s that are just right for a make over and repurposing.
The weakest link in car sales in LA is the crappy dealers, both sales and service workforce. The disconnect is getting worse as traffic and population increases to the point there is gridlock all day and night. Can't we, for once, have something like the satellite concept in Los Angeles? Isn't it our turn to be a test market for something really cool and useful?
