Dealership of the future adds tech, comfort and cuts time

There's value in the traditional brick-and-mortar dealership showroom, industry experts say -- but it must evolve.

The physical showroom will have to tie more closely to the dealership's increasingly important digital presence, incorporating technology and other features to facilitate a faster transaction time and a more customer-friendly environment, they say.

"The new consumer, the one who is educated on the Internet, doesn't want to spend much time in the dealership. They want in and out, whether it's sales or service," said Forrest McConnell, outgoing chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association.

For this reason, future dealerships do not "need to be palatial," McConnell said.

"It must be neat, clean and orderly," he said. "It serves a function, but it isn't the grandiose thing we saw 10, 20 or 30 years ago."

What should a dealership look like in the next five to 10 years? Dealers who are building new stores or renovating existing ones are grappling with that question today. Here are some of their answers.

The business development center at most dealerships is tucked behind closed doors. That will change.

"We don't want the closed doors because no one wants to work in that environment," said Bruce Qvale, president of Qvale Auto Group. "That's something we thought about right off the bat."

Qvale is building a four-story, 158,000-square-foot Audi dealership in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that will be completed in August. The Qvale group, of West Palm Beach, Fla., owns 18 dealerships selling 13 brands in California, Texas and Florida. At the new store, the BDC will be open and located on the mezzanine, overlooking the showroom.

"When people come upstairs, they'll see people busy and on the phone" Qvale said. "It creates excitement."

Dealer Dave Kelleher hopes an open BDC will improve the sales process at his new store.

He put his BDC in the middle of his showroom as part of a nearly $3 million renovation of his dealership, David Auto (Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram) in Glen Mills, Pa. The BDC used to be in an upstairs office. In early January, he told Automotive News that he was aiming for a grand opening in early March.

The BDC alerts the sales staff to customers coming in and their needs, Kelleher said. A sales consultant is ready to greet and service each customer the minute he or she arrives. It streamlines the process, he said.

"There was a disconnect," he said, "with the girls upstairs making an appointment, then the salesman is downstairs greeting the customer -- and the customer has to explain all over again what they want."

The idea of a public BDC has not yet caught on widely, said William Hartman, principal of architectural firm Gensler in Detroit and a fellow in the American Institute of Architects. Typically, he said, most automakers do not want the BDC visible or in contact with customer areas.

But Qvale and Kelleher were willing to challenge convention and their automakers' recommendations.

For example, Audi wanted 14 sales desks lined up in a specific area, Qvale said.

"We felt that was fairly crowded. Customers, we thought, didn't have the privacy to talk to salespeople," Qvale said.

So Qvale and his architectural firm, Spring Engineering Inc., asked Audi to allow for 10 desks and for Qvale to break up the showroom into zones. Audi agreed. Qvale will divide the sales area into three zones. Only one zone will have desks; the other two will have furnished seating areas.

"There's no sales desk between the customer and the salesperson," Qvale said. "It can be far more relaxed. It smoothes out the sales process where it's not all in one area where you've got 28 people there talking to each other."

Signage is a component of showrooms that automakers lately have sought to standardize in their pursuit of a consistent brand identity. But flat video screens offer new alternatives to the traditional sign, and that could affect not only what the sign says, but the wall it hangs on.

For example, architect Hartman said future dealerships will have higher ceilings to accommodate larger video screens.

Now, Kelleher's dealership will. And he talked Chrysler into waiving its recommended conventional signage so he could take advantage of those screens.

"I was very concerned that all of my investment in brick-and-mortar expansion would leave me appearing exactly like my competition with no noticeable differentiation," he said.

His store has what he calls a "brand parlor" for each of its brands.

Kelleher put two, back-to-back 48-inch TVs in each brand parlor with special sound systems that funnel the audio into each parlor. The screens display the brand logo and then spin into commercials, brand-driven images and current events.

An 80-inch TV in the most prominent place in the showroom plays what he calls "all-brand" videos and ones that promote the David Auto dealership.

To fit the TVs, Kelleher had to build 22-foot-high ceilings in the newer showroom addition, in sharp contrast to the 10-foot-high ceiling in the older section.

One design feature that will not change is the layout of the finance and insurance offices. Most dealers said F&I should stay in private offices to protect customer privacy.

But in cramped urban markets, F&I might, along with service and used-car departments, have to move upstairs -- or even downstairs.

Qvale's Fort Lauderdale dealership has to be four stories because it is landlocked. It sits on 1.7 acres and backs up against an apartment building. Most dealerships his size would require 5 acres, he said.

Service and sales are on the main floor, while F&I and the new-car delivery area are on the second floor. New- and used-car inventory are stored on the upper levels.

Similarly, Ourisman Automotive Group will move Ourisman Volkswagen of Bethesda (Md.) into a 7,000-square-foot space in the spring.

The dealership will occupy the ground floor of a residential building in the business district, said Neil Kopit, Ourisman's integrated strategic marketing director. Ourisman has 19 stores and sells 18 brands in Virginia and Maryland.

The store's service department will be 3 miles from the dealership and its used cars stored in a 250-spot underground garage 2 miles away.

The days of walking the lot in search of a car are over, Kopit said. "People are on the Web. They've already identified the car and the deal is done. If someone wants to browse, we get in a car and do a nice little underground tour."

Dealer Gary Flom owns Jaguar Land Rover Manhattan, Bay Ridge Ford, White Plains Nissan and Kings County Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram, all in metro New York.

Most of Flom's service departments are underground or up high. At his Manhattan store, the service department is on the fourth floor.

Flom has limited parking, so he picks up and delivers cars for service. That satisfies customers and limits his loaner-car expenses, too.

Now, Flom is starting to rethink a part of the brick-and-mortar dealership experience that isn't actually at the dealership: the test drive.

He envisions a day when he can provide "driving simulators." Customers could do a test drive on the simulators and avoid having to fight New York traffic. There are prototypes of such simulators being developed in London, he says, but nothing available and suitable for a dealership -- yet.