Upscale Pit Stops : Auto-Care Centers Provide Cluster of Fast-Service Shops for Driver Who Wants Several Services During One Visit

Just because you’ve got a car doesn’t mean you want to drive all over town.

Now you don’t have to.

Autoplex--which officially opens today on South Bristol Street--offers the ultimate in one-stop convenience. Customers can now get a lube job, tinted windows and sushi all at the same Costa Mesa auto-mall--sometimes in less time than it takes to change a tire.

The Orange County developers behind the 40,000-square-foot project tout the auto-care shopping center--the first of many they plan to develop--as a super-clean cluster of shops where the service is quick and the prices a bargain compared to many dealers. A sort of fast-foods for cars--but without all the grease.

The one-stop shopping concept is not new. Unofficial estimates place the national number of similar auto-care centers at from 200 to 300. Orange County has at least 20--including “informal” projects that weren’t originally planned as auto-malls, estimated Taylor Grant, a Newport Beach developer often credited with developing the first auto-care center in Huntington Beach a decade ago.

Some predict as many as 2,000 of the centers will roll in across the country over the next five years. The concept has become as appealing as white-walls. A national trade association is being formed to bring together auto-mall tenants and developers.

The burst of popularity comes from a combination of factors.

More sophisticated cars, for one thing--with their computerized, electronic gadgetry--have left many of yesterday’s fix-all mechanics in the dust. They have been replaced by specialists who know the innermost workings of, say, on-board computers, electronic compasses or ambient temperature indicators.

At the same time, there are fewer and fewer choice locations for a repairman to set up shop. “McDonald’s, the convenience stores and gas stations have taken all the best corners,” explained Grant, whose American Commerce Centers develops car-care centers. “So Firestone (and everyone else) can’t find prime, one-third acres to build free-standing stores.”

Land isn’t the only thing that is in short supply. These days, customers--particularly working women--have less time than ever to traipse from tire store to transmission shop in search of car repairs.

It is the upscale customer with lots more money than time that Autoplex hopes to attract.

“We’re really appealing to the middle to upper-end market. . . . It’s convenience,” said Carl Middleton, president of Cardinal Development and a principal in the project.

“Most cars should be in and out in 20 minutes,” added James W. Ray, another principal, who is with Sanderson-J. Ray Development. That is because Autoplex emphasizes quick service--and doesn’t do really major repairs such as auto body work or rebuilding engines.

The center is a joint venture of Cardinal Development of Newport Beach and Irvine-based Sanderson-J. Ray Development.

Together, the handful of principals have put together a center that eventually will have about 18 tenants. Like other auto malls, Autoplex will have its share of the essential tenants: chains with nationally known names that draw loads of customers. Its anchors are a 4 Day Tire Store and Jiffy Lube.

The Costa Mesa center, now 90% leased, also hopes to lure customers who will follow Southwest Leasing, a Los Angeles-based, well-established name. The leasing and auto sales company offers anything from $99-a-month to lease a Dodge Colt to $3,500-per-month for a dazzling new, Rolls-Royce Corniche.

Because yuppies are almost as common as Republicans in Orange County, Autoplex is emphasizing foreign car service. The retail roster includes Benz & Beamer, which repairs Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs; Foreign Works, a Japanese auto-repair shop, and Europe Imports, which works on Volvos, Porsches, Audis and Saabs. Then there is an assortment of shops that will do everything from smog checks to installing tinted windows, stereos or car phones.

To attract even more business, Autoplex has sandwich and pizza shops and plans to add a sushi bar.

The auto-mall’s developers hope to attract people like Jane Jackson, a nurse who discovered the center because it is close to her son’s preschool and “everything’s so convenient.” She and her husband, Reggie, came shopping for tinted windows for their Jeep Eagle and “one thing led to another.”

As Jackson sampled the soup this week at Soupor Sandwiches, she mulled over whether to take a container of it home for dinner. She and her husband also are “talking about getting a cellular phone” from an Autoplex retailer. “And I’ll definitely try the pizza place.”

For retailers, the hope is that customers like Jackson will try one shop they like, spot another and try it, and then be referred to a third.

And that, in fact, is the way business has worked out at the Fountain Valley Commerce center, an auto-mall in that city, said Mike Hembree, manager of Smog Tech in Fountain Valley. “We get lots of customers from other shops,” he said. “They send us work and we send work to them.”

Still, not everyone is that enthusiastic.

Of the handful of customers at Autoplex earlier this week, several said the variety of services won’t tempt them to abandon their dealers. “With extended warranties, the only thing I don’t buy at a dealer is tires,” said Carl Gelbart, 31, a data processor from Laguna Niguel.

Even so, Autoplex’s “strength will come from all those businesses being together in one collection,” said Bert Boeckmann, president of the Greater Los Angeles Motor Car Dealers Assn. and owner of four dealerships in Los Angeles. “There will be an attraction for many motorists who would feel that everything they need is in one place.”

And at one stop.