Luxury car buyers increasingly want to customize their rides with ultra-high-end features they can't get from a dealership or factory — and one company is leaning into that gap with a first-of-its-kind showroom in Los Angeles.
German automotive customization house Brabus has leased a 2,433-square-foot storefront along Avenue of the Stars at Century Plaza for what is expected to be its first Los Angeles flagship — and likely its first permanent showroom in the United States. An opening date has not been announced.
The glass-front showroom is designed to put the customization process on display, allowing visitors to browse Brabus-built supercars while working with consultants to select everything from hand-stitched leather interiors to custom wheel packages, paint finishes and engine upgrades that can push some Mercedes-Benz models beyond 1,000 horsepower.
Rather than functioning as a traditional dealership, the space is intended to resemble a luxury design studio where vehicles are commissioned piece by piece.
The retail space adds another experiential tenant to Century Plaza, the $2.5 billion mixed-use redevelopment anchored by the Fairmont Century Plaza hotel, the Park Elm luxury residential towers and roughly 94,000 square feet of high-end retail and restaurant space.
“Securing Brabus for the signature glass retail space at Century Plaza is a major win for Century City and for Los Angeles retail as a whole,” CBRE First Vice President Greg Briest, who represented the landlord with colleague Houman Mahboubi, told CoStar News. “Their debut flagship will sit among an extraordinary roster of neighbors.”
Founded in Germany as a Mercedes-Benz tuning specialist, Brabus has evolved into a global luxury brand focused on transforming already high-end vehicles into highly individualized products.
Luxury retail shift
The Century City outpost follows that same model, positioning Brabus less as a dealership and more as a design studio — a shift that mirrors a broader change in how luxury automakers are approaching physical retail.
That evolution is already playing out across Los Angeles. Tesla and Lucid operate showrooms at the nearby Westfield Century City mall, while Rivian has partnered with Caruso on a multiyear effort to install more than 150 public chargers across its Southern California properties and open new retail locations, tying vehicle sales more directly to experiential retail environments.
Brabus has also established a presence in major global cities, including a flagship-style boutique that opened in February 2024 at Dubai’s City Walk — its first location within a lifestyle shopping district — where visitors can explore materials, interact with the brand and engage with the vehicles beyond a traditional sales setting.
At Century Plaza, that approach is embedded in the project itself. The Reuben Brothers development links the Fairmont Century Plaza hotel, The Park Elm residences and The Shops at Century Plaza into a single campus aimed at high-end consumers, complete with a rooftop air taxi vertiport.
Retail tenants sit steps from hotel guests and full-time residents, while restaurants and wellness concepts are designed to keep visitors on-site longer — reinforcing a model that favors experiential tenants over traditional storefronts.
For Brabus, the showroom offers a foothold just minutes from one of the country’s densest clusters of exotic-car retailers, where dealerships for Rolls-Royce, Bugatti, Bentley, McLaren, Lamborghini and Aston Martin line the Beverly Hills area and cater to a global clientele.
Demand for personalization has become one of the industry's biggest profit drivers: Rolls-Royce says its average vehicle now sells for more than $500,000 because of bespoke commissions; Ferrari has credited customization options which helped drive a 46% jump in quarterly profit; and Bentley reports that roughly 75% of its vehicles now leave the factory with custom features.
For Century Plaza’s owners, the showroom aims to reinforce a broader bet: that the future of luxury retail looks less like buying a product — and more like commissioning something made to order.
For the record
CBRE's Houman Mahboubi team represented the landlord in the deal.