[10] Bmw Newport Beach Making This Year Discuss

South Coast Plaza is best known for its retailers of designer handbags, high-carat jewelry and Vogueing clothiers, so visitors to the Costa Mesa mall this summer may be surprised to find a car parked in one of its chic boutiques.

It is on the first level – between spaces showcasing the newest summer fashions from Escada and onesies at the French children’s chain Jacadi – that BMW has literally set up shop. The BMW Gallery, as it’s called, presents a pair of the German automaker’s cars as if they were art pieces, in a modern, well-lit space enhanced by a digital installation coordinated with the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach.

“We’ve been looking at different channels to interact with our customers and potential customers, and we always like the idea of going where they spend their time,” said Sven Wood, sales and marketing manager for BMW of North America’s western region. “Shopping malls is one of the places that happens. We’re not selling cars there, but we’re creating a BMW environment that’s synonymous with our brand values.”

That is to say: innovative, stylish, luxurious, modern. Just beyond the gallery’s floor-to-ceiling glass entrance sits BMW’s sleek hybrid supercar, its dramatic scissor doors propped open, beckoning visitors to experience the $135,700 i8 from its low-slung driver’s seat.

BMW selected Orange County because it is a very affluent, “hyper competitive” auto market, Wood said – especially among the luxury brands Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Audi.

BMW Group sells about 130,000 BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce cars in California each year and claims 1 million automobiles on the roads statewide. The Greater Los Angeles area accounts for 45 percent of BMW’s West Coast sales.

According to automaker reports, BMW sold 339,738 vehicles nationwide in 2014, a 9.8 percent increase from 2013. Mercedes-Benz sold 330,391 vehicles in the U.S. last year, an increase of 5.7 percent from a year prior; and Audi sold 102,011 cars, up 15.2 percent.

Southern California is becoming a particularly fierce battleground among German brands, which are working to win the hearts and minds of consumers long before they buy a car.

Last November, BMW set up its Performance Center West at the Thermal Club residential race track development near Palm Springs. Porsche will open its highly anticipated Experience Center in Carson early next year.

The new BMW Gallery, a redux of the pilot-project pop-up hosted at a different location inside South Coast Plaza late last year, celebrated its grand opening Wednesday.

During its soft opening last week, the Gallery was abuzz as visitors took selfies with the car and watched videos of various BMWs in action on a wall of flat-screen TVs.

“I think it’s awesome,” said Chen Lu, a 20-year-old computer science major at UC Irvine, who was celebrating the end of final exams with dinner at the mall when he stumbled upon the Gallery. “I like BMW. I don’t know very much about cars, but I just love the design.”

With more car shoppers doing their research online and new technologies voiding the need for buyers to ever set foot in a car dealership, the BMW Gallery is a pilot program for the luxury auto maker as it experiments with new ways to create a positive brand impression outside the usual channels.

Last year’s Gallery, which launched in mid-November and ran for 31/2 months, drew more than 100,000 visitors – including 2,400 on a single day. More than 60 percent of them were not BMW owners, Wood said.

This year’s Gallery is 50 percent larger and will run twice as long – through the end of the year.

Beginning in July, visitors can take test drives – conducted through the mall’s valet – of the 3 Series, 5 Series, all-electric i3 and other as-yet-unrevealed models. Visitors to last year’s pop-up could also test-drive vehicles, but they took place at the five local dealers that supported the Gallery by paying its operating costs.

Sterling BMW of Newport Beach and Irvine BMW are among the supporting dealerships that are reaping its benefits.

Last year’s pop-up helped Irvine BMW set sales records in November and December, general manager Steve Rudkin told Automotive News. Following a temporary exhibit of a special-edition 5 Series over Thanksgiving weekend, Irvine BMW reported selling out of the car.

This summer, BMW will continue the tradition of hosting temporary exhibits within its Gallery. Over the July Fourth weekend, the Gallery will host a “Made in America” celebration with a couple of the X models produced at its U.S. factory in Spartanburg, S.C.

In mid-July, it will host an event for its not-yet-seen-in-public 2016 7 Series, with its carbon fiber body and gesture-activated controls. Visitors to the 7 Series event will have to give up their cellphones temporarily if they want to experience the car – in order to keep it under wraps, Wood said.

BMW had been looking for new “experiential, outside the box” ways to showcase its cars, said Wood. It initially reached out to the Orange County Museum of Art, then the Segerstrom family, about operating a semi-permanent space inside South Coast Plaza.

“We found that customers passing by the store – men and women alike – halted in their tracks and walked into the Gallery to look at the cars and SUVs,” said Debra Gunn Downing, executive director of marketing for South Coast Plaza.

“We were impressed with how BMW of North America executed the concept of a relaxed retail environment in which shoppers could learn and examine the latest models of a luxury automobile brand, much like they would timepieces and handbags,” Gunn Downing said. “It’s a good fit with our collection of International and American luxury brands.”

BMW will deepen its ties with the Orange County Museum of Art when it helps promote its Robert Rauschenberg exhibit, opening later this month (June 28). Rauschenberg created one of BMW’s most famous art cars, the 1986 653 CSI.

“People want premium experiences,” Wood said. “Aligned with that, you can own a BMW and be part of a premium experience.”

And not only in Orange County. The BMW Gallery is likely to expand next year with a pop-up shop in L.A.

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