Luxury line: Grant Barling has extensive experience with Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus and now turns his attention to German brand Audi as its new national sales director.

LONG-SERVING Toyota Motor Corporation Australia (TMCA) executive Grant Barling has joined Audi Australia as national sales director, effective immediately.

Mr Barling fills the gap created in the German prestige brand’s senior local management team when Brad Cramb – another former Toyota executive – left the company only a short period after his appointment in June.

As previously reported, Mr Cramb is now general manager of distribution at mortgage broking giant Aussie.

Audi Australia managing director Paul Sansom had assumed Mr Cramb’s former responsibilities while the company recruited for a new sales director.

Mr Barling brings to the position almost 30 years’ experience with TMCA, having joined the Australian arm of the Japanese auto giant in 1989 in a customer service role and subsequently working his way up through the ranks in a variety of sales, marketing and other senior management positions.

Most recently, Mr Barling was TMCA’s corporate manager of the ‘knowledge transfer project’ – a role which placed him in charge of “capturing and transferring” all the sales and marketing experience at Toyota’s Sydney office at Caringbah, near Botany Bay, as the department prepares to relocate to the company’s Port Melbourne headquarters early next year.

This consolidation is part of TMCA’s transition to a national sales company following the closure of its Australian manufacturing operations last month, which has led to a string of senior sales and marketing executives electing to not move from New South Wales to Victoria.

Indeed, as GoAuto has reported, just 80 of the 360 people employed by TMCA at Caringbah are transferring to Melbourne, leaving some 280 staffers to take a redundancy package or retire at the end of this year.

Mr Barling has managed the ‘knowledge transfer project’ since April 2015 – about 14 months after Toyota announced it was quitting Australian manufacturing.

He had spent the previous three years as managing director of Sydney City Lexus but left when TMCA sold the flagship dealership, and Sydney City Toyota, to a newly created independent entity (Kaizen Motors) that was formed from a partnership between Brisbane-based Sci-Fleet Group and one-time Lexus Australia chief executive John Roca.

Mr Barling had earlier served for a brief period as sales and marketing corporate manager (national parts and accessories division) for Toyota Australia, and spent the previous 11 years in high-level sales positions for Lexus Australia – four years as sales operations and strategic planning corporate manager, and seven years as sales manager.

Other roles he had undertaken at Toyota include Victoria/Tasmania regional manager (parts and service), national accessories manager, export sales and new business manager, and training and development manager.

Mr Barling’s appointment comes as Audi is facing its first annual sales downturn after a remarkable run of 12 successive years of growth.

Audi delivered 24,258 vehicles in 2016, but to the end of October this year is down 9.8 per cent with 18,047 new registrations.

As reported, the company has also made a number of other senior management moves recently under Mr Sansom, who took the reins earlier this year as Andrew Doyle relocated to the UK to head up Audi’s operations in Britain.

Former BMW Group executive Shawn Ticehurst was appointed product planning director, corporate communications director Anna Burgdorf added responsibility for marketing to her role, and Joshua Wood was promoted to CX (customer experience) and digital innovation director.

This restructure took place following the departure of general manager of marketing Kevin Goult, who was in charge of product planning and customer experience, as well as marketing.

Ms Burgdorf told GoAuto that Mr Barling’s appointment now sees the company’s top management team well positioned to move forward into 2018.

“We’re really pleased to have a strong team in place for 2018 to take the next step for the Audi brand,” she said.

By Terry Martin