Penske JLR Dealership First to Adopt New Global Design

Jaguar Land Rover launches a $1.5 billion makeover of its U.S. dealerships, starting with a Penske Automotive Group store located in Darien, CT.

Designed to JLR’s new global standards, dubbed ARCH, the Darien dealership is a single-story bright gray rectangular structure featuring separate brightly lit pillar-less showroom windows for each brand. Inside, the showrooms employ elements of glass, walnut and lighting to provide a “fresh and luxurious feel,” the automaker says in a statement.

“It’s actually like a little jewel case,” says Joe Eberhardt, president and CEO-JLR North America, explaining ARCH isn’t an acronym but refers to a dual-box design that is “reminiscent of two arches. The focus inside is really on the cars.”

The 36,600 sq.-ft. (3,400 sq.-m) dual-branded Jaguar Land Rover of Darien dealership features a 10-car showroom, a 25-bay service shop and a drive-through reception area. The reception area offers in-lane service diagnostics and a Jaguar Land Rover boutique featuring accessories, wheels and branded merchandise.

CEO Roger Penske tells WardsAuto he invested $10 million to renovate the former stand-alone Land Rover dealership to add the Jaguar brand while incorporating the ARCH design standards. The move is necessary to differentiate JLR from other luxury brands and to build brand loyalty, Penske says.

“Our new facility offers customers a distinct and modern environment and focuses on delivering an experience that is representative of each brand,” Penske says. “We have to be consistent. To differentiate yourself it’s ‘How do you look?’ and ‘How do you feel?’ We have to be high tech and high touch.”

Combining service and other back-end departments also creates efficiencies and opportunities in areas such as used-car sales, he says.

The chairman says he expects a return on his investment over a 20- to 25-year period, but the change already is paying dividends in the community.

“The design has gotten a lot of accolades here in Darien,” says Penske, who also is applying the ARCH standards to his 19 Jaguar and Land Rover stores in the U.K. Penske Automotive Group, comprising 340 stores with annual sales of 460,000 new and used vehicles, has four JLR dealerships in the U.S.

A majority of dealerships are expected to complete their ARCH design makeovers by 2020, at a total investment of about $1.5 billion. Additional time will be needed to combine some stand-alone Jaguar or Land Rover dealers, and dealers who recently completed redesigns to an earlier standard can’t be expected to invest in another makeover so soon, Eberhardt says.
Even then, Eberhardt expects adoption by the company’s 220 U.S. dealerships in the “high 80%” range when the redesign project is complete.

“It speaks to the confidence our retail partners have in the future of the brand.”

Eberhardt says the overhaul of the U.S. dealer network is intended to increase profitability by increasing store throughput from the current per-store average of 400 sales annually to 700-800 sales per dealership.
JLR’s U.S. sales are up 25.9% so far this year, according to WardsAuto data, with Jaguar up 73.0% and Land Rover up 14.6%.

[email protected] @bobgritzinger