Status on Wheels : Upscale Buyers Pit Newport Rolls-Royce Agency Against Beverly Hills for Title of No. 1 in Nation
Inside the Newport Auto Center showroom, two dapper salesmen with English accents hung like fashion accessories on the woman in the white silk jump suit.
“They’re the most beautiful car made,” gushed Cerise Feeley, her diamond-laden fingers stroking a $183,500 Rolls-Royce convertible Corniche. “Period. End of statement.”
Outside, a tourist stalled in traffic on Coast Highway leaned from his taxi and snapped pictures of the $3-million Rolls-Royce and Bentley inventory on the Newport lot.
It is like that here at the country’s leading Rolls-Royce/Bentley dealership.
Well, not actually No. 1, although the Newport sales people would argue that issue. The dealership is tied with Gregg Motors Rolls-Royce of Beverly Hills, said Dave Zinsmeister, West Coast zone manager for Rolls-Royce.
Even in Sales
By the end of March, both dealers had peddled 27 of the ultimate rolling status symbols, Zinsmeister said.
Carriage House Motor Cars Ltd., on the upscale East Side of Manhattan, led the world in sales last year with 186 new motor cars.
“Beverly Hills always gives us a run and New York has come in strong the last couple of years,” said David Murphy, Newport’s top salesman. In 1987, he personally shooed 54 Rolls-Royces and Bentleys off the lot.
Last year, the Newport Auto Center’s Rolls-Royce and Bentley department sold 75 new cars and “30 used ones, uhhh, I mean previously owned,” Murphy said. Bentley is a Rolls-Royce car targeted at younger buyers interested in a sportier look.
The dealership was purchased in 1987 from Sterling Motors Ltd. for a reported $9 million by Steven Bren, son of Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren.
For those with less tony tastes, and this is a relative measure, the auto center also features Porsche, Audi and Chevrolet--only the racy Corvette kind, to be sure.
But it is the sale of upscale Rolls-Royces and Bentleys that account for at least half of the Auto Center’s annual revenues, the firm said. While the privately held dealership declined to release sales or profit figures, 105 new and previously owned Rolls-Royces should bring in about $8 million in revenues.
The lowliest Rolls-Royce, a stripped-down Silver Spirit, goes for $117,000. That is without such options as radar on the rear bumper that squeals in alarm as a curb is approached. A top-of-the-line Corniche with all the extras, including automatically emptying ashtrays, can cost more than $200,000.
The English luxury cars are big business in Southern California, explained Reg Abiss, spokesman for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Inc.
“About a third of our cars sold in the U.S. go to your area,” Abiss said, speaking from New Jersey. Last year the company sold a record 1,208 automobiles in the United States.
Texas Soft Now
“Californians have money, and we’re seeing very strong sales in the Beverly Hills and Newport Beach area,” he said. “Texas used to be strong, but it’s been very soft in recent years, as you can imagine.”
Rolls-Royces and Bentleys continued to roll briskly off showroom floors after the stock market crash last October, Abiss said. Indeed, a mere 508-point free-fall in stock prices only challenges a Rolls-Royce customer.
November sales were even up 10% over the same month in 1986.
The recession in the early 1980s, however, hurt Rolls-Royce badly. Worldwide output plummeted from 3,018 cars in 1980 to almost half of that three years later.
“It took a long time for the recession to bite Rolls, but my goodness it did!” Abiss said. “In 1982 the desire was still there to buy. But if you just closed a couple of companies or you’re fighting to save your company, you cannot go out and buy a Rolls.”
About half of Newport Auto Center’s Rolls-Royce customers park their cars in Newport Beach garages--with the balance of the buyers coming from other Southern California monied dominions such as Palm Springs and La Jolla. Most plunk down cash for their shiny new purchase.
“There’s no stereotypical buyer,” said Roger I. Fletcher, an English expatriate like his sales colleague Murphy. “The common denominator is the ability to pay.”
Like the 27-year-old Newport man who drove away in a new Corniche. His job? “He plays polo,” Murphy said.
Before leaving, the young man saw a $3,500 briefcase with Italian burled walnut finishing, the same as on his new dashboard. He bought that too.
Despite clients with money to spend and a salary “in excess of $100,000 for a good salesman,” the life of a Rolls-Royce dealer is not all polish and chrome, Fletcher said.
His challenge is to coax the potential buyer past the psychological barriers to investing in an automobile that can cost as much as the average Orange County house, Fletcher said.
Even in what is sometimes referred to as “Nouveau Beach,” a shiny new Rolls-Royce parked outside the bungalow may be a status symbol few feel they can successfully pull off.
“It’s what we call the comfort level,” Fletcher said. “They don’t want people gobbing at them. People need to get over the mental hurdle of this prestige.”
So what does he do to make people comfortable sitting on the 11 hand-sewn Scandinavian hides that go into the Rolls-Royce upholstery? “If I knew the answer to that, I’d sell 300 cars,” he said with a wistful smile.
Running his hand along his blue company tie, festooned with interlocking Rolls-Royce Rs, Fletcher gazed out the window as Cerise Feeley and Murphy clambered into the tan-and-black Corniche for a test spin: “I can’t understand why every Lido Isle garage doesn’t have a Rolls in it. They obviously can afford it.”
