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For years pundits have been predicting the demise of main dealers. The emergence of brokers, the Internet, car supermarkets have all caused the prophets of doom to claim that dealerships would cease to exist other than to sell used cars and carry out service and maintenance.

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But of course no such thing ever happened and dealers happily sell as many new cars as ever. But following the last warning could that be about to finally change? When Hyundai ‘set up shop’ in the Bluewater shopping centre near Dartford in Kent it was predicted that this futuristic way of selling cars was like garlic bread as Peter Kaye would say – ‘The Future’.

They gave the shop a funky name as well to appeal to a younger audience, they called it Rockar and added an equally funky futuristic web site to support the ‘shop’. The idea was to put car sales where people were in numbers rather than stick the dealership out in the middle of an industrial estate where people wouldn’t just drop in they had to make a concerted effort to go there. So a year on – did it work?

Replacing hard nosed salesmen with softly softly ‘angels’ providing advice and support rather than selling was a big change – did it work? Are we now going to see a move away from coffee shops in shopping centres to be replaced by car shops from every manufacturer? The answer is – possibly – moving towards probably.

Hyundai clearly don’t want their competitors to know how successful they have been but Auto Express has managed to collect some statistics. After just a year Rockar is in the top ten of Hyundai dealers for cars sold – good start. A massive 163,000 people have walked into the store over the last year.

The average age of the visitors is 39 compared to the average age of visitors to other dealerships which is 52. This average age was mainly as a result of the massive success they had with the scrappage scheme which was taken advantage of by older drivers. Women accounted for 54% of the customers, roughly double the number in other Hyundai dealerships.

And half of Rockar customers transact online after visiting the store in person. Whilst Hyundai played down their success by pointing out that they will never be without a network of bricks and mortar dealers but added that the increased use of the Internet in the transaction means that customers are moving closer to Bricks and Clicks.

It was a big and expensive gamble for Hyundai to take but is seems to be working as they announced another Rockar store next month in the Westfield shopping centre in Stratford, East London. Maybe it won’t be long before we see other manufacturers not only follow suit but maybe create their own shopping centre and we will see the Ford Centre or the Mercedes Centre – you heard it here first.