The Car Trade - Revisited Gordon

I promised in my previous podcast that I would cover the MINI car revolution in this episode and I will, but first I need to do a touch more fleshing out of my journey back into the trade. After the briefest of all breaks after settling the sale of the pub, I found myself in the used car department at Whitehorse Motors in Nunawading. Once was a client but now, an employee selling a car brand I had come to admire and actually like. There’s nothing like selling a product th...

The 1960s was a decade of great change and the motor vehicle industry played a major role in those changes. The decade began with the introduction of the iconic Mini and ended with the arrival of home-grown muscle cars – the Holden Monaro, the Falcon GT and the Valiant Charger.In between, came the beginning of the end of our preference for European vehicles with the arrival of the Japanese.The major styling feature introduced during the sixties was the ‘Coke bottle effect’, in which the ...

Back in The Trade The kids were growing up. The work was relentless and hard. Anyone that dreams of owning a little country pub should have a month running one on their own. Then decide. The hours just kill you. So, we decided that one day when we got an offer on the hotel that maybe we should accept it and one day we did. We moved back to Melbourne. Plan (A) was to go overseas, do a bit of a tour of Europe or maybe a cruise on a ship and then I’d come back and l...

After about a year of hard slog, we got it into our minds, that we now deserved a NEW car.Something we could take away on a couple of weeks break. To South Australia or up to NSW. Anywhere, just to get away for a break.And I remembered whilst I was working for Bill Patterson Motors that we owned a company called Grand Prix Motors – BMW.I loved the look of the little BMW's that they drove as demos.So, I thought, I’ll get on the phone, ring them up, and find out how much the sexy litt...

Now you would think that joining AGC was a great move.Originally, I thought it was. No weekend work. About the same sort of pay they said, and more freedom, how wrong it was. When I worked in an office, I was an accounting type person. I hated it. When I went to Bill Patterson Motors, I became this raging sales type person. At AGC they wanted you to do sales and accounting type duties, so they gave you the title DSM (District sales manager) but most of your day was sp...

When we needed to finance car, GMAC was the first port of call.Well, for all new cars that is.We had Lombard and others we could use if GMAC if a deal was a so-so type of deal.As well as Lombard there was IAC, AGC, Custom Credit and Avco if you were desperate.With GMAC if we got a contract approved and settled, we received an extra $5 Commission.And believe me, that was handy.I was on about $50 per week.Commissions were structured for volume selling. Not like today.Where "order takers" t...