Playing Dress-Ip
Marc Bourgeoise has lived in New Hampshire all his life, but when he decided he wanted a GMC Suburban turned into a supercharged, leather-upholstered, TV- and stereo-equipped living room on chrome wheels, he came West.
“They’re afraid to do anything creative with a car in the East,” said Bourgeoise, who turned to Huntington Beach customizer Pacific Auto/Truck Accessories to add a sunroof, performance equipment, a navigation system and three TV screens--doubling the price of the $35,000 Suburban.
“I wanted something that was powerful and a class act, and this is it,” he said.
As growing numbers of motorists are spending big bucks to upgrade their sport-utility vehicles, a handful of Southern California shops have gained international reputations for turning SUVs into rolling pleasure palaces.
The Southland’s preeminence in the car-styling industry is rooted in its climate. Cars last longer here because they aren’t eaten up by rust, and customizing grew up as a way of keeping old cars looking fresh.
Southern California, primarily Orange and Los Angeles counties, is home to more than 100 companies that handle about 40% of the $2.3-billion customizing business in the country, said industry analyst Jim Spoonhower.
Fixing up SUVs is still a small part of that business, but it is growing fast. More than 500,000 full-size SUVs have been sold in the U.S. since 1996, and they are now the hottest product in the auto market.
Buyers of SUVs run the gamut from corporate chieftains, sports figures and Saudi Arabian oil millionaires to suburban families.
Male buyers say they like the cargo or towing capacity, size and power. Women buyers, and there are a lot of them, say they like the big trucks’ roominess and sense of strength and safety.
Yorba Linda housewife Debbie Hoffman does the grocery shopping and carts her three children to school, dance class and soccer games in a fire-engine-red, lowered, chrome-wheeled Suburban shaved of all its factory trim and outfitted with a TV and fancy stereo.
“You put your personality into it, so it’s a fun thing to drive around in,” Hoffman said.
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The boom started in the early 1990s, when General Motors Corp.’s giant Suburban--long considered a work vehicle--caught on with buyers more interested in hauling kids and camping gear than concrete and construction tools.
Ford Motor Co. entered the market last year with its full-size Expedition and augmented its line this summer with the posh Navigator version for Lincoln dealers.
Despite a spate of reports in recent months about higher insurance rates and stiffer pollution rules for sport-utilities vehicles, the industry doesn’t seem to be slowing.
Indeed, Ford reportedly is developing a super SUV that will be nearly 20 feet long, overtaking the 18-foot Suburban as the biggest passenger vehicle around.
The craving to customize them is human nature, said Deborah Heisley, assistant professor of marketing at the Anderson School at UCLA. “It’s part of our consumption society. We want to be part of a special group, and then we want to have something that’s better than the other members of the group have.”
It’s that desire to be different that keeps shops like Beverly Hills Motoring Accessories Inc. going. The 24-year-old business is one of the oldest high-end customizing specialists and did some of the first full-size SUVs in 1992. This year, it has done about 50 of them, with the average customer spending $30,000, said founder Andy Cohen.
Recently, the company’s showroom has been displaying a Suburban with about $45,000 worth of performance, appearance and entertainment goodies. Including the initial purchase price, the whole thing cost $85,000 new, Cohen said.
The owner, a Saudi businessman, kept the four-wheel drive Suburban at his Los Angeles condo for the occasional ski trip when he was in town. He had put just 3,700 miles on it when he asked Cohen to build a new one on a 1998 Suburban frame.
“There’s a lot of keeping ahead of the Joneses that drives our customers,” said Brad Gallaway, chief operating officer of California Custom USA Inc.
California Custom, based in Orange, got started the way most customizing houses began. Owner Dana Bunker started customizing his own cars, graduated to doing work on friends’ vehicles and in 1985 leased a building and turned his backyard pursuit into a real business.
California Custom does hundreds of vehicles of all kinds each year. Full-size SUVs didn’t start showing up until about 1993, but now account for about 30% of the business, with volume growing weekly, Gallaway said.
Almost all of the big utility vehicles being customized are from GM or Ford. The other full-size models sold in the U.S.--Toyota’s Land Cruiser and the British-built Range Rover--are rarely dressed up except by off-road enthusiasts.
And the smaller sport utilities, like Ford’s wildly popular Explorer, “appeal to a more economy-minded owner, they’re a bread-and-butter vehicle,” said Pacific Auto/Truck owner Bob Richards.
Full Effect, a San Bernardino custom house that specializes in developing and installing performance packages for Fords after they’ve left the dealership, has done almost 75 Expeditions and Navigators this year at an average of $10,000.
“We get a lot of older buyers and a lot of professional athletes,” said owner Bill Thomas. “They have money and they want something special.”
One of Thomas’ customers, 25-year-old entrepreneur Shawn Williams, figures he has spent about $20,000 on his new Lincoln Navigator. Williams, who commutes weekly between his Redlands ceramics shop and his Las Vegas limousine service, said he used to drive a Lincoln Town Car but finds the Navigator a better fit for his 6-foot-5, 270-pound frame. It also tows his boats and, with the supercharger set on full boost, makes his 900-mile weekly trip go quickly.
“I customized it because I’m a car nut and I love to show off,” Williams said.
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Surprisingly, auto makers don’t mind the customizing efforts--in fact, major customizers often get prototypes of new models before they go on sale so they can develop so-called aftermarket parts to introduce at the same time the vehicles hit the showrooms.
“We try to give the aftermarket a canvas to work on,” said Bob Aikens, Ford’s chief truck designer. “We’re happy they can take our mass-produced products and add individualized pieces.”
Beverly Hills Motoring for instance, has worked with a computer-parts maker to develop a dashboard-mounted “smart” video screen for the Navigator that will display maps and other navigation information when it is being operated. It also handles e-mail and Internet surfing when parked.
Luxury goods retailer Neiman Marcus has long found that consumers’ drive to be different pays big dividends. And this year the company jumped on the SUV bandwagon, offering 100 of its Christmas catalog customers a $72,975 Sony Limited Edition SUV.
The customized GMC Suburban is crammed with just about every entertainment product Sony Corp. makes, including an eight-speaker sound system with separate tuners for front and rear passengers and a TV system with four separate seat-back video monitors. By mid-December, the retailer had received more than 100 “reservations” for the vehicles.
“We have to see how many will follow with cash, but we’re confidant we will sell all of them,” said Ginger Reeder, spokeswoman for Neiman Marcus’ catalog operation. “People want them.”
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Aftermarket Frills
Customizing specialists say it’s not unusual for buyers of full-size sport-utlity vehicles--typically selling for $35,000 to $45,000--to double the cost as they ad items to enhance appearance and performance.Here’s where the money goes:
Exterior
Window tint: $250 to $350
Headlight/tailight guards: $200 to $500
Rear rolled pan: $175 to $250
Fender flares: $500 to $700
Running board steps: $200 to $700
Side skirts: $200 to $500
Larger wheels: $1,200 to $4,000
Larger tires: $600 to $1,600
Billet grille: $200 to $250
High-intensity driving lights: $150 to $300
Front spoiler: $250 to $500
Brush guards: $600 to $1,300
Power moon roof: $1,000 to $1,500
Monochromatic paint: $500 to $700
Suspension
Lowering (springs, spindles, shocks, sway bars): $1,500 to $4,000
Raising (springs, control arms, shocks, sway bars): $1,500 to $4,000
Performance
Supercharger: $4,000 to $5,000
Performance chips: $300 to $500
Headers: $500 to $700
Exhaust systems: $500 to $1,500
Larger front disc brakes: $2,000 to $4,000
Interior
1. Upgrader leather upholstery: $1,200 to $3,500
2. Upgraded mats: $300 to $500
3. Fine-nap velour carpet: $1,500
4. Sound deadening: $1,000 to $1,500
5. Wood or carbon fiber veneer on dash, door panels, center console: $800 to $1,500
6. White-face gauges: $200 to $300
7. Digital surround-sound: $5,000 to $8,000
8. Console TV/VCR: $2,000 to $3,000
9. Overhead TV: $2,000 to $3,000
10. Game system: $500 to $1,000
11. Global positioning satellite navigation system: $3,000 to $4,000
Sources: Beverly Hills Motoring Accessories Inc., California custom USA Inc., Pacific Auto/Truck Accesories Inc.
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Sales Surge
Raging sales of full-size sport-utility vehicles have fueled a boom in the customizing market as owners spend thousands of dollars to make their Suburbans and Expeditions stand out from the crowd. A five year look at the sport utility market:
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