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 that you truly believe in. It was a Saturday morning, and I was settling in, setting up my desk, collecting pens, pencils, staplers and sales agreements order pads and all the shit needed to sign up a customer, when I was handed a beautifully produced roster. Was it a roster of days off or the hours we were to work at the yard? No. It was the roster of who went up the street at 10AM and collect (and paid for) the party pies each Saturday for the sales teams morning coffee break. Last on, first on the list, I later found out from the used car manager Dick Sampson. Dick was a very funny guy. He came to Australia from Dutch Indonesia after the “troubles” when the Dutch left the region. He spoke with a strong Dutch accent, but I believe he never lived in Holland. I can stand corrected if that’s not so. Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/
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12: The cars we sold back then
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 boot and rear door panels were swept upwards over the wheel arch creating a profile which resembled that of a Coca Cola bottle. The first Australian car to incorporate the Coke bottle ‘hump’ was the XR Falcon in September 1966. The styling of the car was inspired by the Mustang, copying both the coke bottle style line and the long bonnet and deep, stumpy boot.Whereas the fifties were dominated by British made 4-cylinder cars, the sixties saw Holden, Ford and Chrysler erode the supremacy of the imported 4-cylinder car and establish the locally built 6-cylinder models as the Australian motorists’ premier vehicle of choice. Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/
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11: Back in The Trade
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 look for a business opportunity or a good job. We rented a Villa Unit in Nunawading and booked the kids into the local state school while we decided what we were going to do with the rest of our lives. One morning, I said to my wife Marian, “I think I'll go up to the Volvo dealerships and get the car serviced. I'll see you in a few hours” “yeah OK” she said “see you later” White Horse Motors were just around the corner from our flat, and if it was a long service I could walk home from there quite easily. Then after booking it in with the service people, Noel Cheney sees me and sits me down makes me a cup of coffee. I was going to be a few hours at the car yard and so we just filled in the time chit chatting about the pub and funny things that happened there. A phone call comes through, and Noel gets tied up. “I'm sorry Gordon, I’ll have to catch you later” and off he wandered. One of the other salesman Dick Samson was there selling used cars and he came over and he was talking away about this and that and the other. A new car salesman called Ron Kantor, a lovely guy, came over and spoke to me for a while and he sort of got tied up too. I was being handed from one salesperson to the next and it was just like the old days. Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/
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10: Drysdale Hotel
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 little BMW 2002 coupes were.The call was answered and went a bit like this:“Hi Mr McLeish, where are you calling from?”“Ah, I'm calling from a place called Drysdale” I said “a little hotel just out of Geelong on the Bellarine Peninsular”“Oh I see, look, how often do you get up to Melbourne?”I’m the publican here and it’s just a small family business, so I don't get away that often”“I was wondering if someone could bring one down to me and discuss it, I am a genuine buyer”“That’s fine, but we wouldn't travel that far” was the reply.I thought, what a pack of lazy ******* you are,So after I hung up I thought, well OK, let's see if there's a BMW dealer in Geelong.Yeah there was.Same answer,“how often do you get into Geelong from Drysdale? once a week?“yeah, well, let us know before you come in and I'll make sure I've got a demo here for you to have a drive in”“You couldn't bring one out to the pub, could you?”No, I'm pretty well tide up most days, and there’s only a couple of staff here”“You know, it would be just a lot easier if you could make it into the dealership”“OK thanks”So that was my stint at buying a BMW.Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/
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9: AGC and other stories
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 spent doing numbers. Financial figures. Percentages. And like some religious order, you had to read a book called the SPI which is about the size of a telephone book. The SPI (the specific practises and instructions) was the company bible and they tested you on it regularly. The branch accountant would say “have you done your SPI training?” Do you want to talk about it. Then they would send you endless amounts of meaningless internal memos. They would arrive via the company’s own “branch courier service”. Memos came in three parts, and you had to answer them ASAP and of course keep a copy and file in special folders. Carbonised paper. Reams of it. Relentlessly arriving day after day.Website: https://www.gordonmcleish.com/
The Podcast for car sales people, who want to reminisce, sit back and listen to some interesting and at times, amusing stories from an old "Car-ie". Written and hosted by Gordon McLeish, a fifty years veteran of the trade we all love. This podcast will cover the car trade from the sixties, up until more recent times. Plus, we'll add some of the car trades characters, the myths and legends along the way. Episode 1 will explain where it all started for me and how, like many of us, we fell, or just stumbled into........."The Trade"
New Zealand