Autohaus Prestige’s general manager David Butler was already running a successful dealer shop in Five Dock specialising in Audi and Lamborghini. Autohaus Five Dock is part of the dealer group Autosports which owns over 50 luxury car dealerships and six bodyshops. The company was founded in 2006 and floated on the stock exchange in 2016.
When Autosports bought BMW Canterbury in Sydney a couple of years ago there was the option for a BMW bodyshop. BMW was keen to keep the shop in the PMA and that meant finding another location for the Audi, Lamborghini and now Bentley badges Butler also has to manage being repaired. Once the Silverwater site was found, Butler immediately reached out to Mark Williams and his team at Lowbake for the workshop design and to John Bates at United Project Management who is responsible for the fit outs at many of the dealerships, for the offices and customer area.
Butler, originally from the UK, has 20 years of industry experience and seven years with Autohaus. He had some ideas of what to do with the space and Mark Williams took him on tours of a variety of shops – including Captial SMART to observe simplicity in layout – before they got to the drawing board.
“Originally we were going for a similar layout to the Bundoora BMW bodyshop with the booths in the middle. We had a few late nights going back to the drawing board and playing around with different configurations,” he said.
What they have achieved is a spacious, state of the art facility that is beautifully lit and full of top spec gear. The huge bays accommodate row on row of luxury metal and the glass customer area inside the workshop allows owners to view with confidence where their pride and joy will be expertly restored to pre-accident condition.
“Lowbake made things really simple,” said Butler. “It was a pleasure to work with Mark and the team. They have done so many of these kind of ‘from scratch’ fit outs that they know what works and what doesn’t. If any hurdles appear they have already come across them and have the solution.”
A testament to the design is that Autohaus has been busy from day one and the workflow has been smooth and effortless, with no need for tweaking.