Car Dealerships Face the Great Homogenization (Hummer Corp Architecture)

[NashVegas]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/business/yourmoney/11show.html

IT'S not that Wendy Kent Churchill doesn't want a shiny new showroom. She just wishes that it could look like a place to buy a luxury vehicle, rather than a military barracks.

But the macho, pared-down look is what the Hummer division of General Motors is pushing Ms. Churchill, a Fort Worth, Tex., auto dealer, to build. Unlike some automakers, she said, the company is not offering any financial help to add a new showroom. It doesn't have to, Ms. Churchill said, because so many competitors are vying for the right to sell new Hummers.

The drive for the new-style showroom, complete with exposed concrete, metal rafters and helicopterlike ceiling fans, is all part of Hummer's new corporate-image program, which calls for the rollout of 164 stand-alone, look-alike dealerships by 2005.

"If what they're really looking to achieve is quality, well, why can't that be done without it having to look exactly the same?" asked Ms. Churchill, who has owned part of her grandfather's 68-year-old dealership, the Frank Kent Motor Company, since she was 18 and is now its president.


Just another sign of rising fascism (corporatism) in America. When are the architects' groups going to stand up to this shit and make some noise? Surely somewhere in their careers, they learned a thing or two about civic design and how it represents/influences community ...

The building pictured in the story isn't all that bad; but must we have one in every town?

[Muddleoftheroad]

1. Have you ever been to McDonald's?

Same corporate concept -- duplicate look and feel for all locations. Form and function fit the theme. Now, here we have the ridiculous Hummer. It is a military vehicle.

[NashVegas]

3. :) Not recently

The funny thing about McD's is that, last spring I visited my hometown last spring, and saw the original McDonald's there had returned to its pre-1970s architecture. Even within that area (upstate NY) there were variations, depending on what era the franchise went in (recall the puke-green interiors of the 1980s).

In more recent cases elsewhere, McDonalds has been forced to conform to local standards when they try to go into an historical zone.

[dobak]

7. Go to the McD's in Bismarck, ND

Sports Theme McDonalds & 50's Rock n Roll Cafe McDonalds

[Muddleoftheroad]

10. Changes

Yes, McDonald's has changed SINCE it established its market dominance. Hummer is still trying for that.

[Military Brat]

2. Make the showroom look as spartan chic as possible

So the consumers will forget that they're filling the Hummer tanks with our soldiers' blood.

[brainshrub]

5. Ooohhh...good comment. (nt)

[NoPasaran]

4. All their gas-guzzling evilness aside

Aren't these hummers butt ugly?

[ClintonTyree]

6. With all apologies...................

to Charles Dickens, anyone who goes about driving one of these monstrosities should be boiled in their own transmission fluid and have their drive shaft driven through their heart.
There is no earthly reason for someone to own or drive one of these urban assault vehicles.
I really don't blame the people who take it upon themselves to key or spray paint them at every opportunity. It's not something I'd do myself, but I can understand their anger. Maybe if their insurance premiums triple, they'll think twice about buying one of these abortions.

[ContinentalOp]

8. Overheard at the gas station...

A true and truly nauseating story:
The other day a guy in a brand new hummer pulled up behind me at the pump and was actually complaining to another guy there about how he "just had to fill this thing up yesterday. It's ridiculous." Well duh a**hole! I love LA but sometimes when I really think about Arnold and all of the Hummers I really can't blame the rest of the country for hating us :)

[DoNotRefill]

9. Doesn't Saturn do the same thing?

I thought that was SOP for franchisees...