Customer says "I want my website to look like this one". Any advice?

Dear all,

a new potential customer is adamant that he wants his new website to look like that of a competitor of his. While I’m trying to explain to him that his approach should be more content centric, I’m bracing myself for a “but I want my website to look like this!”.

The website to be “mimicked” is http://www.applus.com

• Profusion of buttons and horizontal menus
• Pop-up video
• Spartian yet sophisiticated corporate look
• Small picture estate

I considered one of the iTheme builder templates, bit I’m not sure they are refined enough to achieve this look.
I don’t have the skills to code a new theme from scratch. What I can do is play with the CSS and maybe use a customized child theme (as long as it doesn’t involve meddling with the PHP).
What template would you consider I start with, bearing in mind that it would have to be a flexible enough template because I have the feeling this customer will change his mind quite often…

Thanks in advance for your help and contributions! 🙂