The name Porsche stands for the highest quality and Porsche Austin is delivering a dealership experience that lives up to the brand. One of the most impactful aspects of the dealership in Austin, Texas, is a top floor window display of ten Porsche cars wonderfully highlighted using SEVEN Batten 72 linear lights from Elation Professional.
Eric Bernstein of Intelligent Lighting Services (ILS) of Austin has worked with the dealership’s ownership group for about 20 years. On this latest project, he worked with Kirk Franceschini, Managing Partner at Hi Tech Motorcars (Porsche Austin Group), who was tasked with implementing a lighting system that would attract attention to the new dealership. The idea was to line ten Porsche cars along a sixth floor display window and illuminate them in high-quality lighting so they couldn’t be missed by the myriads of people who drive by the dealership each day.
Eric designed the sixth-floor look and specified 20 Elation SEVEN Batten 72 fixtures, six ft colour-changing LED battens with seven-colour multi-chip LEDs, two units illuminating each car. “We brought several fixtures up there to demo in order to give the client a few choices,” said Eric, who was already familiar with the SEVEN Batten from several church installations he has used them on. “We decided that the SEVEN Batten was best for both colour choices and power. It also has an integrated gel slot so it’s easy to put filters in.” Elation’s SEVEN Batten houses long-life 25W RGBAW + Lime + UV LEDs, which provide an expanded palette of colours including a better white mixed output and improved CRI across all mixed white colour temperatures. Add to that an advanced optical design that produces better colour mixing and smoothness of field and the SEVEN Batten series is capable of powerful projections of uniform colour onto any surface.
At Porsche Austin, the SEVEN Battens work with light halos above each car, each halo comprising 496 four-colour LEDs with the intention of having full control over them. Each halo runs four universes via a Netron EN4 from Obsidian Control Systems, a powerful Ethernet to DMX gateway with internal cues, as well as factory and user presets.
As one of the largest Porsche dealerships in the US, and an apex brand in the automotive industry, Porsche is naturally strict when it comes to branding. Lighting plays a key role in the presentation of a vehicle and just like at an auto show, high lumen output and an extremely uniform level of light is required. “The SEVEN Battens usually run in white light and for the grand opening in August we popped everything in really bright white and it looked great,” Eric said of the window display illumination.
The Porsche Austin dealership is naturally supportive of the local community and according to Bernstein that’s where colour comes into play. “They will use the colours for branding local events to tie the dealership in with support for local teams,” he said. “Our new MLS team, Austin FC, plays at Q2 Stadium and you can see the dealership from the stadium so the top display floor will light up in the club colours of green and white.” The dealership will also glow in burnt orange to support University of Texas games.
Although the grand opening of the new Porsche Austin dealership took place in August, ILS installed the SEVEN Batten fixtures in February as the new location has been operating since March. “Overall, I’ve been very happy with the gear,” Eric concluded. “I like the support I get from Elation and that’s always been the case.”
