Guest Speaker

Guest Speaker today was Mark Hillis who spoke on the state of play in the Auto Industry. His very entertaining talk took us down memory lane, where a standard vehicle had no heater, no radio, and ran drum brakes, crossply tires, and definitely no seat belts. This vehicle represented 54 weeks wages at that time.

Today, five star safety is sought, with self tensioning seat belts for all passengers, 4 wheel disc brakes, alloy wheels, radial ply tires, high energy headlights, eight airbags and intermittent wipers among other things as standard. And this car costs 10 weeks wages or just a wee little bit more!

There are more than 54  marques available in Australia. This is the widest range anywhere in the world. Back then you drove a Ford or a Holden. The market has changed dramatically in the past few years.

Mark pointed out that commercial and SUV make up half of the Australian market and local manufacture makes up just 10%. Mark was quite frank in saying that his business had shrunk from 35% to below 10%, which is the reason he has taken on several franchises.

He quite rightly pointed out that commuters, squinters, were overly represented in the infrastructure spending of governments as these one passenger vehicles choke up freeways and roads; traffic that could better be serviced by rail.

This very interesting and informative talk ranged over the topics of product positioning, market requirements, and workplace relations. John Gray gave Mark a huge wrap in his vote of thanks, and a measure of the reception by the group was not one person moved even though we went well overtime.