10
LONG STANDING MEMBER
Kincraig Motors
THE PALLANT FAMILY’S AUTOMOTIVE LEGACY
BY LUCY BREWER
Kincraig Motors has been a long and highly successful family affair in the South East of South Australia.
He became general manager in 1971 and took ownership of the company in 1974.
Reg Pallant, currently at the helm, inherited the business from his father Bert, who was well known as ‘The Chief.’
In the days when Bert led the company it was an agent for Ford and then Holden when the brand was first introduced in Australia in the late 1940s. At this point Kincraig became one of two Holden dealers in Naracoorte.
Bert became a mechanic in the early 1920s when the reliability of vehicles was “questionable”. In 1924 he joined what was then the Kincraig Motor Garage, working for joint owners Frank Holmes and Malcom Beaton. In 1932, the Pallant family purchased the business, beginning what is now an automotive legacy.
Reg said Naracoorte, a rural town of approximately 4,000 people, was too small for two Holden dealers. So the company had to get creative with its services. “We sold and rented farm equipment and motorcycles,” he said. It was only after the other Holden dealer closed its doors that Kincraig Motors refocused on cars, specifically selling and renting Holden vehicles. Fast forward to 2017 and many people were saddened when it was announced Holden cars would no longer be manufactured in Australia. On 17 February 2021, General Motors confirmed the retirement of the Holden brand after 72 years. “I’ve always been in cars, of course,” said Reg. “It came as a shock.
Much like his father, Reg started at Kincraig Motors as an apprentice motor mechanic at the tender age of 15.
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“To be quite candid, as Holden dealers we were losing thousands of dollars every time we sold a car, and that made it very difficult to stay in business.”
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