Park Place Maserati
Elegance incarnate, with verve in the curves

Earlier this year we paid a visit to Park Place Maserati in Dallas and spoke to Heath Strayhan, the General Manager. 

Park Place sells a number of fine automotive brands and they know the advantages of each. Maserati and Bentley have much in common – both are marques renowned for high-performance luxury cars, both have a heritage of racing and both were founded almost 100 years ago – Bentley in 1919, Maserati in 1914. We began by asking Heath to compare the current cars now that Bentley are no longer merely badge-engineered versions of Rolls-Royce cars. “A Maserati is completely different to a Bentley to drive; the Bentley is big, heavy, all-wheel drive, a massive machine,” he said. “You could say that it’s a driver’s car, but you could also say that it’s a car to be driven in, not a car to attack a curve with the same agility as a Quattroporte or GranTurismo.”

“In fact, any of Maserati’s competition is going to be a heavier car; so we sell the Maserati experience as being based on  a light-weight car that can be driven dynamically, like a four-door Ferrari – we describe it as that and we’re not ashamed of it because that is such a natural association,” Heath continued. “It is light weight, nimble and it has a rear-biased weight balance – those are features we use heavily. That’s what our clientele comes in for – the cars have a lot of verve, and Maserati is a racy, dynamic marque. Someone may come in to look at the car for those reasons alone, but when they get in the car after listening to our explanations, they know what a Maserati is all about – light weight, driver-oriented car that sounds like a race car. The cars do a great job of integrating you into the experience, and the one that does that the best is the GranTurismo S, with the MC Shift transmission. That is the most fun car to drive, of anything we have – it has a lot to do with the transmission, and the exhaust as well. We like to leverage that as much as we can; we’ll have it sitting under the porch out front and rev it a little.” That led to an interesting discussion on why people find it exciting to listen to a Maserati V8 engine being revved, whether it is hard-wired into our DNA or whether it comes from watching auto racing. Heath also revealed that his current favourite in the Maserati line-up is the Quattroporte Sport GT S – unsurprisingly, this has a sports exhaust system similar to that of the GranTurismo S.

The Park Place company was founded in 1987, when owner Ken Schnitzer moved from Houston to Dallas and bought a Mercedes-Benz dealership. Since then the group has expanded and now has seven different locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area with nine different brands. “Ken is very dynamic, always looking for the right opportunity, and that’s really how the Maserati franchise came about; he saw what the brand was about, and the products that were coming,” Heath explained. “He already had Bentley and Rolls-Royce, and was looking to add a third brand to go alongside those two in this building, which he had already planned. It has been really good for us, we see the brands as complementary. We do have a number of owners who have cars from more than one of our brands, so they may have a Bentley and a Maserati. But we don’t often get someone coming in to look at a Quattroporte who also wants to look at a Flying Spur; so that’s why we see them as complementary rather than competing.”

Heath believes that being located in Dallas has helped Park Place weather the storms of the economic crisis. “We are very thankful for where we are – we have a very diverse economy here in north Texas, which helps,” he said. “We’re seeing people move here from other parts of the country because of the industries we have; there’s high technology, energy, medical and so on. In fact our top three sectors for clients are energy, commercial real estate and medical. Even residential property has fared better than other parts of the country. So as a dealership we’ve improved our position from last year, which is through a combination of this market having been more resilient than some others and also we have improved some of the things we do. We manage our assets carefully, so we don’t carry too many cars here in the showroom. While we’re not selling as many cars as we would like, we’re doing okay.”

“We are also very active in the pre-owned market, which is actually pretty strong right now,” Heath told us. “In fact, that’s the flip side of the economic downturn; demand for new cars has fallen, so more people are looking at pre-owned – but because fewer new cars are being sold, fewer used cars are being traded in. Any economist will tell you that if demand is high but supply is tight, then prices will tend to increase. Right now, if I get a 2008 GranTurismo come in, it will almost always be sold in less than a week. So we’ve been able to establish that market, and I don’t see any reason for it to go away; the cars are a great value as a new purchase but if you can find one pre-owned, then that can be good too. And now there is the Maserati Certified Pre-Owned program, so buyers have additional peace of mind.”

“Purchases at this level are always emotional, no one buys these cars because they just want transportation; a lot of it is the exclusivity factor, they don’t want a car they can see on every street corner,” he continued. “So maybe they’re transitioning from their S550 that all their friends have. When the economy was strong it was emotional purchase; it’s still an emotional purchase, but people are now looking at things such as the economy not doing so well, or people getting laid off, so they are looking at pre-owned rather than new cars. You can understand that, and not just because pre-owned cars are priced lower than new cars; it’s also a matter of someone not wanting to be seen to be spending over $100,000 on a new car. Now, even if they buy a pre-owned Maserati that’s not exactly going to go ‘under the radar’, but the message people perceive is different if it’s a two-year-old car to a new one.”

Park Place is a significant player on the Dallas car scene, with multiple dealerships, although clearly the Lemmon Avenue store is their flagship. The group employs 1,400 people, and Heath makes full use of the facilities the group has available. “We make the most of the Park Place brand – it’s rare that we get a customer in here who has not bought a car from us before,” he explained. “We have several upscale brands such as Mercedes, Volvo and Porsche, and for a good number of people in those cars, Maserati is an aspirational marque, a transition to the next level. In fact, at one stage around 60% of our trade-ins were Mercedes. So if I want to create an email and send it to the 30,000 people we have in our database, we have the facilities to do that within the group. In addition we have a weekly meeting of senior management across all the brands, and I learn quite a lot in those meetings about what is going on with other makes, and what trends are emerging.”

Each time a new model is launched Park Place holds a ‘salon event’, usually at their impressive Lemmon Avenue showroom. “We always have an affinity partner for those shows, such as Salvatore Ferragamo; we try to make it as ‘showy’ as possible,” Heath told us. “We are big into affinity partnerships with partners who are a good fit for our clientele, and on occasion we will have a show which is off-campus, to meet the requirements of our partners. We are also involved in a lot of charitable events - we do a lot with schools in town, and with charitable organisations. We frequently provide something for their fund-raising auctions, often as part of a package – so an auction lot might be a weekend at the Ritz-Carlton with a Maserati to drive. That kind of thing makes sense; what we’ve found over the years is that auctions raise much more for the charities than raffles or door prizes. Of course, it helps us too – the most important thing is getting people in the cars to drive them, that really influences the purchase decision. It is much easier to understand what a Maserati is about after you have driven the car. So that is the major focus of all our events. We try to capture as much information as possible, and even if it doesn’t happen at the event, we try to get them back to drive the car and take them for a drive.”

Finally we asked Heath to explain what he felt makes Park Place special; his answer was unhesitating. “Our focus on service; our dealership is very client-focussed and process-oriented, which allows us to take better care of our clients,” he told us. “Our slogan is ‘Experts in Excellence’. What makes Park Place special is the collection of brands that we have, and our drive to become one of the finest luxury groups in the nation. The reputation we have allows us to build on that; anybody you talk to who has bought a Park Place vehicle would agree that whenever they need service after buying a car, they know they will be taken care of.”

“With Maserati, we have built on that high standard; we offer a pick-up and delivery service that is a little more exclusive, a little more convenient for our clients,” Heath went on. “We always aim to have a loan car available – it’s a very rare occasion when we can’t provide a loaner car, and that’s true even for people who drop by without an appointment. We have luxury cars as our loaner vehicles, we offer that to our clientele. So because we manage our assets carefully, manage it like a business, we are able to focus on client service, and I think that really shows when you look at both the sales and after-sales sides. We’re here for the long haul and we’re excited about the future of Maserati. There are more products coming, and I think the company has taken the right attitude to product development. We’re looking forward to expanding, along with Maserati.”

With superlative customer service, a tremendous showroom, world-class brands and people as knowledgeable, friendly and helpful as Heath; it is no surprise that Park Place has become as established as it is, and that it is set for future growth along with Maserati.