Cameron Doidge

THE owner of Ferntree Gully Hyundai and the award-winning Ferntree Gully Kia in Melbourne’s east, Cameron Doidge, has bought Doncaster Holden and Doncaster Hyundai from the Birrell Motor Group owned by Marcus Birrell and Sergio Buccilli.

The two Doncaster franchises, north-east of Melbourne, were not included in the bundle of Birrell Group and Motors Group dealerships in Victoria and Tasmania bought by AP Eagers in November last year. The Eagers deal included Mercedes-Benz dealerships in Doncaster, Burwood and Ringwood and Waverley Toyota but not the Holden and Hyundai sites in Doncaster.

Both the Hyundai and Holden dealerships in Doncaster were losing money and did not make the cut with Eagers. Both were flagged for closure unless another buyer could be found. Mr Doidge, who runs a significant wholesale operation in addition to his new-car dealerships, believed he could make the business work and approached Birrells in early December. The deal was signed off last week.

The land is owned by Ted Strapp, the founder of Strapp Ford. The Birrell group closed Strapp Ford in Doncaster and Burwood nearly two years ago when Ford announced it would close its Victorian manufacturing operations.

Mr Doidge said the fact that the Holden and Hyundai dealerships were left out of the Eagers deal “was a bit of a kick in the teeth for the staff” at the Doncaster sites and that he believed with some restructuring of the two businesses he could return them to profit.

He told GoAutoNews Premium: “I thought they had good potential as dealerships.

“The rent is more than I would like but I think we can work our way through that and generate the profit we need to turn the business around.”

Mr Doidge said he needs to renovate the Hyundai showroom to bring it up to Hyundai standards which will make the showroom larger.

“We can get that done in six to eight months. Holden has been done.”

He said that the majority of the staff at the two Doncaster sites were staying on to turn the business around, although some had moved on prior to settlement.

Of the combined Holden-Hyundai service department he said: “We have taken on most of the mechanics in the workshop and it’s business as usual. We will be renovating the workshop to make it a more pleasant place to work; starting next week.”

Doncaster has 62 employees and 72 people work at Ferntree Gully.

Mr Doidge bought the Ferntree Gully Hyundai and Ferntree Gully Kia from Geoff Brady, best known as a high-profile Holden dealer and major backer of the Carsales website, three-and-a-half years ago. Mr Doidge has won Dealer of the Year with Kia for the past two years and is Kia’s national number one dealership.

He commenced his dealership experience in the workshop at Ralph D’Silva Holden in the early 1990s and went on to become sales manager before moving to Watson Holden.

He then moved into his own wholesale business, Auto Sales Australia, which was run from Port Melbourne for the past 14 years. He was turning over 600 to 700 cars a month from this site before moving into new-car retailing again. Auto Sales Australia is now operated from Ferntree Gully.

“Last year Doncaster Hyundai sold 772 new cars and about 660 cars for Holden. We believe we can do 850 for Hyundai and probably 800 for Holden. We are looking at 450 to 500 used cars. At the moment we are doing about 240 used cars. So we envisage about 2000 total cars out of the business a year.

“I am going to be applying some of my wholesaling expertise to this. We should do 40 a month minimum in used cars. So we should be doubling used cars.”

Mr Doidge runs the wholesale business from Ferntree Gully which these days turns over about 250 cars a month. His buyers are out on the road sourcing cars from other dealerships and selling them on to dealer used car operations – especially independent yards.

“The smaller yards that don’t have a dealership backing them to source trade-ins are now the ones we concentrate on and we sell the cars into there.

“So our trades go into the wholesale business and we purchase cars from there for our used-car lots. That is an advantage for us because we have an unlimited amount of used-car stock. We always have stock we can pick.

“But,” he said, “we don’t have an unlimited number of clients who walk in. So the ones who walk in we really make sure we sell them a car. While profit is not a dirty word we tell our people to make sure they keep the profit low so we get the turnover into the business.

“By reducing our expected “sale profit”, we foster long-term relationships with our customers and as a result our repeat business and referral business has sky-rocketed.

“That way we can get new customers into our family, get them on to our records and get them into our business long-term.

“Up in the Gully we are getting a lot of repeat customers who are now coming back to get their second or third purchase. Repeat and referral customers are a lot easier to sell a second or third time. So it’s about customer service creating customer retention and ensuring we never have an unhappy customer,” Mr Doidge said.

By John Mellor

Hyundai Doncater