Ten Square for Good

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Ten Square For Good

I usually stay at the same hotel on Bencoolen Street when I go to Singapore. This is an interesting area, with plenty of reasonably priced restaurants around, and right behind the hotel is a Hindu temple and the Kwan Im Buddhist temple. Like many people who find themselves in familiar surroundings, I tend to follow the same familiar pathways to get around.

This year I was looking out my hotel room window and saw this tall, skinny building with an immense video screen that I hadn’t seen before. Now I’ve seen big video screens before, notably the video screen at the Tokyo Race Course which is 218 feet by 37 feet, but this one was almost 4 stories high and wrapped around the building.

Curious, I turned to ever trusty Google Maps to see what this place was. Alas, Google was not much help. This trapezoidal shaped building was labeled as “Ten Square, Landmark of Good,” which tells me absolutely nothing about this building’s purpose.

Now I’m even more intrigued. I walk over to the building, which is shoe-horned into a triangular lot. There is only room to park maybe two cars, provided both of them are small. This is a neighborhood of small apartments, satellite college campuses, and cheap restaurants, so there is nothing obvious this tiny triangle of land could be used for.

Well, there is no sign, except the logo for Ten Square, but on the side of the building without the video screen I did see 14 stories of luxury cars on display through the plate glass windows. I’m talking a stack of Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Maseratis, and the odd Ferrari. But to what end? A luxury warehouse? A very secure – and very expensive – parking lot?

With a little bit of digging I find Gary Hong, owner of Autobahn Motors in Singapore. One day he was shopping with his young son and saw a display of Matchbox toy cars. This display gave him an idea of how to solve the problem of displaying cars at his dealership. Singapore is a small country, and land is at a premium, but nothing stopped him from displaying cars vertically.

From that idea came the idea of a car vending machine. From a regular sized vending machine on the ground floor of this very tall building you choose the car you want, and in less than two minutes the vending machine delivers it to you. I assume somewhere along the way, probably before you get to the vending machine, you have to pay for this very exclusive automobile, but it is still a very cool idea, and a very smart way for Autobahn Motors to solve its space problem.

Alas, my spare change did not come close to getting something from this vending machine, so I did not get to see it function.

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Photos

Ten Square screen
This is what I saw from my hotel room window.

ten square stack
stacks of luxury cars

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Back in Singapore
You do love to visit Singapore. I would probably stay in a different hotel each time to have a different neighborhood experience. But, I like change.

[Kuan Yin]

Back in Singapore
I have stayed in different neighborhoods over the years, but this one is centrally located so that in a 10 minute walk or 2 stops on the MRT I can be in Chinatown, or the Central Business District, or the Harbourfront, or the Colonial District.....