Car elevators, while a feat of engineering, are nothing new. The most famous of them, for now, is probably the “Dezervator” found in the 60-story Porsche Design Tower in Miami. Car towers as parking systems are becoming more routine (think of the Car Towers at Autostadt in Wolfsburg). Heck, even a car vending machine has been done before, at least for more economy cars. But what about a parking elevator designed as “the world’s largest luxury car vending machine”? That’s the idea behind the Automotive Inventory Management System (AIMS for short) in Singapore.
Built for Singapore used car dealer Autobahn Motors, AIMS is a 15-story showroom that holds up to 60 cars in four shafts and dispenses them at a push of a button.
Autobahn Motors’ general manager, Gary Hong, told Reuters, “We needed to meet our requirement of storing a lot of cars. At the same time, we wanted to be creative and innovative.”
Presumably, all the Porsches and other cars we can see in the “showroom” are for sale as that’s Autobahn Motor’s business. All they need to do know is add a price tag and a credit card machine and your choice of car will be “dispensed” in less than two minutes. I wonder if you can shake one free?