10 minute read
VISION 2017
WORDS BRUCENEWTON PHOTOS NATHANDUFF ILLUSTRATIONS FELIPE UBILLA
ING focuses the mind like knowing you oing to be hung in the morning,” John mos deadpans. now semi-retired auto industry veteran, layed a key role in Toyota’s rise to the Australia, is making the point that if ntto be involved in the car industry seyourself in Australia post-2017, you’d ave your plans in place now. oodthing is there are smart, hungry, nedpeople who are doing just that, and them have been for years. now that when the lines grind to a halt 2016 and then at Holden and Toyota in illbe the end of an era. But they want ofan auto industry that continues on, that will survive on a much smaller outsubstantive government assistance or ction. gewill be so great that in 2018, unless a
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Ethan Automotive overcomes massive kes it to the start line, there will be just left in Australia that has the ability
OTH to design, engineer, assemble and market cars locally, areg and that’s the Walkinshaw Automotive Group, which Cono includes Holden Special Vehicles. It’s a company aware The of the risks and difficulties of the car industry, not least whop because it is based in the old Nissan plant, in the southtopin eastern Melbourne suburb of Clayton, which churned youwa out its last Pintara in 1992. andba The force driving this business into a new era betterh is owner Ryan Walkinshaw, the 26-year-old son of Theg automotive and motor racing legend Tom Walkinshaw. determi While other auto industry exces – older, greyer heads someof with an era of struggle and eventual failure ingrained Theyk within them – see only hurdles and obstacles in the at Fordin future, this fierce and determined chip off the old 2017,itw block sees opportunity. tobepa tr Essentially, he argues, once the multinationals have l abe t i one vacated the field of battle, he will own it. So while he sc la e, with is emphatic HSV will continue in some form beyond lo ac l produ the end of the Commodore, he intends to pursue other hT e c na brands as well. star -t up like “We are going to be the only engineering and d an ma manufacturing house in Australia, so we can offer the one e compan a y manufacturers who are importing here something no
- John Conomos
WALKINSHAW’S AUSTRALIAN OPERATION HAS CENTRED ON HOLDEN ROAD AND RACE CARS, BUT IT MAY DIVERSIFY IN FUTURE
Walkinshaw AutomotiveGroup
t i THEWalkinshawAutomotiveGrouptracesits ancestryinAustraliabackto1987,whenTom WalkinshawdidacontroversialdealwithHolden to replace Peter Brock, the Holden Dealer Team and HDT Special Vehicles.
Since Tom’s death in 2010, son Ryan has become the company’s leader and driving force. The highly successful Holden Special Vehicles division is the star act and biggest single entity, employing 115 people to design, engineer, manufacture, market and sell the performance V8 sports sedans it develops from the Holden Commodore.
Walkinshaw Racing employs 65 staff to construct and race four Holden Commodores in the V8 Supercars Championship. Two of these cars form the Holden Racing Team, the most successful team in the history of Australian touring car racing.
Walkinshaw Performance designs, manufactures and sells aftermarket performance parts and vehicle enhancements, employing 15 staff. It also supports motorsport activities. The most recent addition to the group is Fusion Automotive, which has a staff of 10 and imports, distributes and sells the Indian-made Tata vehicles in Australia. Each organisation runs as its own entity, but there is cross-pollination of talents and skills. For instance, HSV and HRT operate closely together. The group’s turnover was put at $160 million in 2013.
Performax boss Glenn Soper is watching the mooted freeing-up of import rules with some concern
performax international
ESTABLISHED in 1989, Queenslandbased Performax is Australia’s largest converter of American trucks and highperformance cars to right-hand drive.
It has done more than 3000 conversions and within three years plans to raise its annual production rate from around 300 cars per annum to 450.
It has gained full volume-manufacturer compliance, enabling it to convert the iconic 12th-generation F-Series truck for the local market and sell it without restriction.
With a starting price of $115,000, it’s an attractive business, but Performax admits gaining that accreditation has required an even higher production quality. It has started importing and retailing the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Denali under the same arrangement. Having gone to the expense and effort of gaining manufacturer accreditation, general manager Glenn Soper admits Performax is now watching, with some concern, the mooted freeing-up of import rules. “We think there would be a degradation of quality of vehicles put out in the marketplace,” he says. “We would not like to see any dilution of the current framework.” Performax is the dominant player in the Australian market, with a 65 percent share and a turnover of more than $75 million a year. It has around 100 employees and a plan to grow that to 110. It has also developed a national dealer network to sell its products, a servicing facility within its Gympie base, a new retailing facility in Brisbane, and offers a four-year or 120,000km warranty on its vehicles. The company supplies conversion kits to South Africa and has exported completely built-up vehicles. oneelsecan,which is a turn-key solution to try and get uniqueproducts into the market,” he explains. “We can doitwithincredibly short timelines, which we have demonstratedplenty of times.
“Wehavegot a very good supplier base and a commercialmodel that works very, very well, which hasbeentried,tested and proved with Holden for a significantperiod of time. Now we have the opportunity togoinandspeak to everyone else and ask what can wedoandwhat value can we add to their business.
Walkinshaw’s ambitions spread beyond Australia. Australiaishislaunching pad into Asia for the company’sengineering and design capabilities. A relationshipwith Indian giant Tata has already been established,but that is a starting point only.
Thereisacertain irony in this being a path already welltroddenby HSV’s crosstown rival, Premcar. The companyformerly known as Prodrive Automotive Technology, which cut its teeth developing Ford Performance Vehicles Falcons, has had a presence in China since 2005, and also performs engineering and vehicle validation work in India.
OnceadirectsubsidiaryofProdriveUK,itisnow locallyownedbyagroupofAustralianengineerswho havehadtoadjustfromdeveloping330kWrear-drive V8musclecarsforFPVtoeconomycarsforChinese brandsGeely,Lifanandthelike.
PremcarstilldoesworkforFordandothercustomers inAustralia,withlinksintotheBlueOval’sregional developmentprogramsinAustraliaandinternationally. Butithasalsodiversified.Premcarrecentlydeveloped awet-brakedesignforminingtrucksforaUScompany, andalsoworkswithinthedefenceindustryandothers.
Thisjack-of-all-tradesapproachistheonlyway tokeepanAustralianaddressandstayintheauto industry,accordingtochiefengineerBernieQuinn.
“It’sworthdoingbecausewe’vegotalltheguyswe havehademployedandwearestillwinningwork,” Quinnsays.“Buttosayithasbeenachallenge–an ongoingchallengeactually–isanunderstatement. Resilienceisthekey.
Premcar’sAsianbusinessisjustthesortofactivity ConomossaysAustralianautomotivecompaniesneed toundertaketosurvive.Aswellastheobvioustargets ofChinaandIndia,heratesIndonesiaandMalaysiaas emergingmarketsthatneedAustralianexpertise.
Conomosknowsofwhathespeaks.Forthepast fiveyearshehasactedasanambassadorforthe Australianautomotiveindustry,headingtrademissions andknockingondoorsthroughouttheregion.His rolehasonlyrecentlybeenterminatedbythefederal government,whichhasinsteadthrownthatbudgetinto the$155millionpotknownastheGrowthFund,which isdesignedtoeasethe‘transition’–lovethatword!–of employeesandcompaniesawayfromcarmanufacturing intosomethingelse.
MarkAlbertisthesortofentrepreneurConomos knowswillhaveago.Healreadyhas.Albertis managingdirectorofMTMAutomotiveComponents, afamilyownedtier-onesupplierestablishedbyhis
PWR SUPPLIES MOST OF THE FIELD IN NASCAR (LEFT), WORLD RALLY CHAMPION VOLKSWAGEN (BELOW) AND, AS ACCIDENTALLY REVEALED ON TV AT ALBERT PARK IN MARCH (BELOW LEFT), THE RED BULL F1 TEAM
PWRPerformance Products
IN INTERNATIONAL motorsport, PWRisjustaboutunavoidable.
FromitsOrmeaudevelopment and manufacturing facility on the Gold Coast it supplies cooling products to teams in championships across the globe.
That list starts with Formula One, where it claims 90 percent of the field including Red Bull and Ferrari. There’s the World Endurance Championship, World Rally Championship, NASCAR, IndyCar, the German DTM and more. Back home in Australia PWR last year celebrated its fourth straight V8 Supercars championship with Jamie Whincup and Triple Eight.
PWR is owned by Kees Weel and son Paul (left) – it actually stands for Paul Weel Radiators – and was started in 1997, when the two racers recognised the demand here and internationally for ultra-high quality cooling products including radiators, oil coolers and intercoolers. PWR now has 95 employees and revenue of more than $20 million last year. In March, it bought US-based cooling system maker C&R Racing, giving it an even bigger foothold in US racing. While racing is the high-profile activity, PWR also services the aftermarket, military, industrial and off-road markets. High-performance road cars are now a target as well, including the Nurburgring lap-record breaking Porsche 918 Spyder hybrid supercar, which comes standard from Porsche with the full PWR cooling package.
Thenot-so-bigthree Multinational suppliers
HoldenandToyotabeyond2017is CLARIFYINGtheexactsizeofFord, will walk away when the impossible,notleastbecausetheyadmit theydon’tknowthemselveswhattheir money stops flowing, but post-manufacturingfootprintlookslike. Whatwedoknowisallthree organisationswillincludesalesand MTM will still be here marketingandafter-salesdivisions–the bits required to sell cars here whether you father, Max, in 1965 in the Melbourne suburb of build them locally or not. Oakleigh. While the multinational suppliers will walk
Toyota has confirmed the closure of its Sydney base and centralisation of its Australian HQ to Melbourne, and that its Australian workforce will drop from 3900 away when the cars and money stop flowing, MTM – and a few other locals – will still be here. “I like Australia,” Albert laughs. “We are one of the to 1300. Ford will shift its administrative few manufacturers growing in the current environment base from Campbellfield in Melbourne’s … I am quite positive about the future.” north to inner-city Richmond. Albert read the writing on the wall for the Australian In all three cases some form of design car industry years ago. He has aggressively sold his and engineering capability has been company’s abilities into international markets and has retained. Ford’s commitment is the supplied components directly to General Motors in most comprehensive, including 1500 staff employed across a design centre at Campbellfield, an engineering centre in Geelong and the proving ground at the North America – not via Holden – for nearly 20 years. At the time it was a radical action. Nowadays MTM also services the Ford Ranger You Yangs. That will make the Blue Oval programs in Argentina, Thailand and South Africa. the largest automotive employer in the “It took us five or more years to land our first country post-2017. international orders … we’d gone to Asia, we’d gone GM will retain a design centre, to Europe and we were in North America; GM at that engineering capability and the Lang Lang point had a problem and we could fix the problem.” Proving Ground, but its head count in MTM has also diversified beyond its traditional these areas is unlikely to nudge beyond a couple of hundred. Toyota will also retain its small design studio in Australia and some form of automotive base, including manufacture of the Tomcar all-terrain vehicle (driven by Albert below) originally developed in Israel. It also has a plant in China that is engineering presence, but the tech centre an adjunct to its Melbourne plant, not a replacement. established with so much pomp in 2005 “You need to be tenacious and you need to be will not be retained in its current form. bloody-minded to survive here,” Albert says. “You have to get out there on the front foot and that means you have to look forward.”
nissancasting australia
FIRST out, last in. That’s the story for Nissan Australia. It bailed out of local car manufacturing in 1992 yet, once everyone else leaves by the end of 2017, it will be the sole OEM still manufacturing in Australia.
That will be via its Dandenong casting plant, which was established in 1982 and at this stage at least has no visible end date.
The plant employs 141 full-time and 23 casual staff. It makes 2.3 million castings a year for Nissan, Infiniti and Renault vehicles, and 25,000 accessory towbars and sports bars, and has sales in excess of $65 million.
As a sign of Nissan’s ongoing commitment, a new tower furnace was installed in the first half of 2013 at a cost of $1.868 million, a third of that supplied by federal government investment programs. The furnace has a forecast working life of 20 years. In April, Nissan revealed it had won new work to make driveline components for soon-to-be-released new models, new motor technology, and all-new propulsion systems that are yet to be announced. So how does this one small plant survive when every other manufacturing facility owned by a multinational car company will soon shut down? “It is never going to make lots of money and it is never going to lose lots of money,” explained Nissan Australia boss Richard Emery (left). “It is basically run to get by, no matter what is thrown at us from a government, regulatory or currency perspective.” It’s nice to know nearly all Nissan and Infiniti vehicles sold in Australia have locally produced parts, arguably making them as Aussie as any cars will be post-2017. If you want to make sure, just go hunting for the kangaroo logo in the casting.
