It has been a busy 18 months for Maurie Pickering. The Gold Coast-based businessman has spent his career building a successful automotive enterprise that includes Mazda and Nissan dealerships as well as a national finance company, but he has stepped up his activities of late and recently established not only the Gold Coast’s first MG dealership but also Pickering Luxury Garage – a prestige used vehicle showroom that sells some of the world’s most luxurious and beautiful cars.

How did you come to establish Pickering Luxury Garage?

MP: We saw there were people who aspired to buy a prestige brand, had never quite been able to get there, but who could buy a very good, late model, low-kilometre car.

We don’t want to compete for someone who is picking up a new $800,000 Ferrari or $400,000 Bentley. However, if you want to buy a $345,000 458 Ferrari that is four years old, has 50,000kms on the clock, is well checked out, and has a four-year warranty, we are here. Our warranty is very interesting and covers the vehicle to the value of the car. So, if an engine blows up in a 458 Ferrari, or the transmission goes in a Q7, it’s covered and we’ll put in a new or a restored one. All of our cars come with that 4-year warranty.

I saw there was a need for this kind of dealership and service and, in the six weeks since we opened, we have sold 20 cars.

We source the cars from people we know in the industry – from good, stable companies. And it is important to find the right cars. For instance, we recently got a 2011 Land Rover 90 in silver with 36,000kms, and it lasted a day! We have an eye for details and know what’s hot.

You have launchedan MG dealership on the Gold Coast. How did you come to be involved with the brand?

MP: We started talking about doing that last year and I am excited about where MG is going. If someone wants something a little different, MG offers that. Our little car, for example, is just $14,990 drive away, and it has auto, an 8-inch screen, 7-year warranty, and German engineering. From the point of view of value, it is pretty hard to beat! There is also MG’s electric e-motion technology, and they are bringing back the two-door sports car which we will have that next year. It’s exciting to fit a good value brand here and I like the fact that it has 7-year warranty. That warranty means someone can keep an MG for three years, transfer it to someone else and that new owner will still have four years’ warranty. It’s an excellent value equation.

Importantly, MG is here to stay. They are part of China’s SAIC Group which made 7.4 million cars last year, and they are fair dinkum with what they want to do here. I believe they will be very successful, very quickly, in the Australian market.

What’s your background in the industry?

MP: I started as an 18-year-old cadet salesman at Sci-Fleet Toyota in Windsor in 1981. I was on $120 a week and that’s where I cut my teeth. I worked there for some time, then went to Albion Car Centre selling Alfa Romeo and Porsche. I became sales manager there before taking about a year off from the industry.

I then came back to work with Doug Barton, who was a Holden dealer at Wynnum. I worked with Doug for about nine years, before coming down to Southport in 1998 to be dealer principal and general manager of Warren McKie’s dealership business.

I stayed there until 2001 when I bought my first dealership from Harry Moore, who had Mazda and Nissan at Coolangatta. I also had South City Mazda at Mt Gravatt, which I sold about 18 months ago, and I started Finance Ezi in 2004.

I have worked in all areas of the business – sales, parts, service, and I was even a fleet salesman out in the bush!

I have also been president of the national Mazda Dealers Association and was involved with advisory boards and dealer agreement negotiations with manufacturers. My skill set is quite varied!

We know that the auto industry is changing and being disrupted. Do you see that change impacting the dealership model?

MP: The future probably doesn’t look as rosy for the retail experience. There’s the two per cent cap on consumer lending, which has halved our income, and there’s talk about dealerships not having their point-of-exemption rule.

Then there’s capped price servicing. We once serviced a car at 5000km, then that became 10,000km, and now it’s at one year/15,000kms, so you are lucky to see a customer once a year.

Then, of course, there’s the fact we are moving towards electric cars with features such as regenerative braking and so on.

Things have changed and I don’t know how some dealers will survive unless we get revenue up on cars. That means selling cars at a sustainable profit. and making sure the dealer has a fair margin and is able to maintain that margin.

There are a lot of people losing a lot of money and wondering what to do. For me, I have my foot flat and am going to make it happen. I am looking for that new business model but getting MG and perhaps a few other brands brings more choice and a bigger pot of revenue.

However, where the industry is heading is a broad concern.

You were involved in motor racing for many years and owned the Finance Ezi team. Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement in the sport?

MP: I started in karting in the early 1980s, and a few years later I was racing against Peter Brock and Dick Johnson! I only had a tiny budget back then because I was very much a privateer, but I recall sitting there next to them in the briefing room and having to pinch myself!

I bought a Group A Commodore, but we then entered the era when we were changing from VK to VL Commodores – when Brock started driving BMWs and Sierras.

We were trying to compete in a VK, which was essentially a taxi with a carburetted engine built in the 1960s! We pushed the envelope to try and keep up but then the Skyline arrived. The last race I had in Group A was at Oran Park. I had 485hp and was coming out of a corner when a Skyline came up on the inside, left four black lines, and was gone! I thought, ‘What are we doing this for?!’.

I then did sports sedans for a while, bought a beautiful Chevy Monza and raced that for a couple more years, and then my first child came along and I decided to stop motor racing.

A few years later, in 2012, I decided to get back behind the wheel.

I started with a third-tier V8 supercar in the Kumho series, bought a couple of engines and gearboxes, then a truck, and within a year the Finance Ezi team had four race cars, two trucks, 20 staff, and a budget of $1.8million!

We had two drivers racing in the V8 development series and, at the time, I did think about putting Mazda into the V8 Supercars. Back then, we saw the Mazda 6 as a perfectly good platform to use with a Ford generic engine, but Mazda were against the brand going that way. Anyway, there was a lot going on and one day my wife Ali looked at me and said, ‘Are you enjoying this?’, and I said ‘No’.

Not only was I hopping into the race car to drive, but I was also having to entertain people in the corporate box and take people to dinner and so on. I was racing 8 times a season, we had a Porsche team racing 8 times, and two v8 supercars racing 8 times all over the country. We had trucks going everywhere!

Then Ali said to me, ‘I thought you were just going to go back and do a little bit of motor racing?’. I thought about that and said, ‘No more, I’m done’. At that point, I stopped the team to spend the time with my family.

To what do you attribute your success?

MP: We do work very hard and people do feel at ease with us. That’s why we have been so effective – our customers are fully informed and at ease with the process. If you do that bit right, they

become brand ambassadors for you. You just have to be transparent and fair.

And I am driven. Though I am not highly educated and don’t have any letters after my name, I’ll back myself against most people – I know when things make sense or not.

Are members of your family involved with the business?

MP: My son Jack works with me. He’s pretty savvy, loves cars, loves talking to people, and he’s a good young man. He’s had a year working at Mazda and will be the sales manager at MG.

What do you do with your spare time, if you have any? Are you still involved in motorsport?

MP: I do follow motorsport but if I am not racing I rarely actually go. These days, I spend as much time as I can with my wife and children.

Source: Motor Trade E-Magazine March 2019 Edition

11 Mar 2019