Cars and Coffee Gem wants to make shopping for a vehicle akin to a VIP lounge experience
*Produced by SilverKris for Cars and Coffee*
To those who know Singapore well, Leng Kee Road is synonymous with one thing and one thing only: cars. Though not a particularly long, this street – sandwiched between Alexandra and River Valley, is packed shoulder to shoulder with top-end car showrooms, ranging from Ferrari to Jaguar.
It’s hard to imagine the strip could get any more upscale than it already is. But that’s exactly what’s set to happen in mid-December, when Cars & Coffee opens its third showroom here.
Bringing an unparalleled luxury experience to the Singapore market, the new Cars & Coffee showroom displays no more than 10 cars at one time. If that seems like too few, consider the fact that each carries a minimum price tag of S$1 million. “That’s well over S$10 million worth of cars in the showroom at one time,” managing director Tony Wan explains. Brands you can expect range from Porsche and Bentley to Rolls-Royce.
This exclusivity extends to the shopping experience. Resembling a glamorous night club more than a car showroom, the space, called Cars & Coffee Gem, is kitted out to be a leisure experience. There is a pool table on site, as well as a full-fledged whiskey bar, for those who want to consider their choices with a dram in hand. Customers are welcomed by appointment only, with no more than two parties browsing at any given time.
This isn’t the first time Cars & Coffee has reinvented the car shopping experience. The brand’s inaugural sales gallery at One Commonwealth displays more mainstream models from Toyota to Mercedes, welcomed walk-ins and featured a fully equipped coffee bar – hence the name – inviting customers to treat car-shopping as a social outing. The new space borrows the same concept, but puts pedal to the metal, so to speak. “It’s a completely different vibe,” Tony says, “much more a VIP lounge than a coffee joint.”
If a pandemic year seems like a counter-intuitive time to open a luxury car showroom, think again. While the economy in general is seeing a downturn, the target audience for this luxury vehicles retain their spending power. In fact, according to Tony, the market has never been better. “Since the lockdown, our sales are at an all-time high. The demand for this type of luxury automobiles is huge. The manufacturers can’t make them fast enough right now,” he says.
He chalks it down to a lack of travel options. High net-worth individuals who may have previously spent on glamorous vacations are channeling their disposable income towards other interests. Geopolitical circumstances in the region, too, have also seen high-income investors relocate to Singapore to purchase homes – and cars – here. In addition to a selection of top-of-the-line vehicles, Cars and Coffee can offer them the lay of the land, the legal know-how as well as the post-sale services they would need in a new environment.
And when the showroom has its soft launch in just a couple of weeks, Tony does not anticipate a slow start. “We expect a lot of end-of-year transactions,” he says, “Also, Chinese New Year is just around the corner. These are auspicious times for meaningful purchases such as these.
Luckily, customers of Cars & Coffee Gem are unlikely to feel the year-end crush. With just two appointments given out at any given time, this showroom-cum-VIP lounge will ensure car-shopping remains a memorable experience.
Cars & Coffee Gem is located at 5 Kung Chong Road. For more information about Cars and Coffee and the new showroom, please visit the official website.
