Tucked inside an outdoor shopping complex in Scottsdale, Arizona, among various trendy stores is something one would’ve thought hilariously out of place not so long ago: a Lincoln dealer. But this isn’t any old dealership, Lincoln or otherwise. This would be the Sanderson Lincoln Boutique, the first of its kind for Ford’s luxury brand.
Walk through the big glass doors and you’re greeted by a 2022 Navigator on your right, a 2022 Aviator Grand Touring straight ahead, and to your left, an expansive coffee bar. Vintage promotional images from Lincoln’s midcentury glory years line the walls, which is a treat to anyone fond of that automotive era. There are smaller seating areas elsewhere, including one enclosed in glass presumably for more privately discussing a sale, but the overall vibe is reminiscent of an airline lounge. There are also no sales people: Those on hand are salaried product specialists who get paid the same whether you buy a car or not. Oh, and baristas, there to whip up some caffeine free of charge whether you buy a car or not. That seems like a recipe for being popular with teenagers, but I digress.
Lincoln is planning for other such boutique stores, but the decision to create this one was all on an individual dealer, Sanderson Lincoln, with the full support of Lincoln. And according to Lincoln President Joy Falotico, such boutique stores and their car-buying model could complement radical changes already happening elsewhere in the car-buying realm.
In short, the ongoing supply shortage is set to change everything. Customers are not only getting used to waiting for cars, but also ordering them and therefore getting exactly what they want. That’s where boutique stores come in. At the same time, Lincoln and its dealers see the value in not keeping huge inventories of cars that will end up discounted or incentivized. Yes, that means being able to keep prices higher, which is a giant part of this, but it also means they’ll be delivering cars customers actually want.
“We don’t intend to go back to the old model of (overabundant) dealer inventory,” Falotico definitively said.
She elaborated that moving to a model where customers increasingly order their cars could increase the build possibilities and opportunities for customization.
“We’ve always assumed people like packages, but do they?” Falotico pondered aloud, adding that product planners are merely offering their best educated guess as to what customers will inevitably want in terms of equipment, colors and the build mix of those variations. Packaging features together is a means of reducing complexity and costs, but it does increase the chances of a customer being forced to get features they don’t really need or want.
Moving to a model where customers more frequently order their cars would therefore result in customers actually getting what they want, while also, as Falotico suggested, increase the number of options available to them. And yes, it would reduce the amount of undesirable inventory languishing on dealer lots. One assumes it would also reduce the real estate needed to park it all.
Ordering cars isn’t new, and is in fact how it’s largely done in Europe. Although some dealers and brands make it easier than others (particularly European ones), you pretty much have always been able to do it – if you have the patience to wait and know you can do so in the first place.
Multiple Autoblog editors have ordered cars over years and have gotten a discount almost every time, including myself with a 2007 Acura TSX (Electric blue! Manual!) and 2017 Mercedes GLC for my mother (Designo Red! Brown leather!). Those builds simply did not exist on dealer lots, yet with a little patience, we got exactly what we wanted. Now, the discount bit is largely because we represented an automatic sale and a car earmarked for the dealer that’s guaranteed not to languish on the lot and therefore lose money. Admittedly, that element would change should car ordering and reduced inventory become more common.
As for Sanderson Lincoln Boutique and others like them, Tesla was the first to really push in this direction in large part due to its direct-to-consumer sales model that bypasses traditional dealers. It’s certainly a buying environment that modern consumers are used to, and even the prospect of paying MSRP and not negotiating a discount (if that’s how things ultimately shake out) doesn’t seem like some deal-breaking, foreign concept. It’s not like we go into the Apple store and start haggling with the guy in the blue T-shirt about the price of an iPhone. Really, it’s the traditional car-buying process that’s the weird outlier now, not a “boutique” experience like this one.
Furthermore, car buyers inevitably already use Build Your Own configurators on brand websites – wouldn’t it be swell if they could actually buy the exact car they virtually build? That’s pretty rare. I could easily see this resulting in more colorful car selections, as I know from discussions with Porsche that custom orders are far more likely to be colors as opposed to the black, white and gray norm typically bound for dealer lots. I could also see average transaction prices go down a bit as customers wouldn’t be forced into buying heavily optioned trim levels just to get a particular color or an unrelated option. I could also see certain new features, especially infotainment and driver assistance technologies, start to disappear as car buyers choose not to buy something they don’t understand, haven’t heard of, or have lived quite happily without for decades.
Well, that’s if this change happens at all. The big question is, will American car buyers really accept waiting for what they want as opposed to getting something kinda close to it immediately? And will dealers hold firm or will they start filling their acreage again with best-guess inventory in order to easily “put you in this car today” and definitively secure a sale? I think the answer probably lies in how long these shortages last, but to hear Falotico speak, it sure sounds like Lincoln is at least going to make a go of it. Yes, it’ll be good for the company’s business, but I also think it’s ultimately good for car buyers, too.
Keyword: Lincoln is changing the way it sells cars (for the better)