New role: Terry Keating is now chairman of the AADA and brings decades of industry experience to the role, including stints as chairman of both BMW and Ford’s national dealer council.

VETERAN Tamworth dealer Terry Keating has been appointed chairman of the relatively recently formed Australian Automotive Dealer Association (AADA) following the resignation of founding chairman Ian Field.

Mr Field announced that he was handing over the reins to Mr Keating at a committee meeting held during the well-attended AADA Convention in Melbourne last week. He will remain a member of the AADA board.

Mr Field was one of a number of high-profile motor dealer luminaries responsible for centralising dealer representation under one body in Canberra free from state trades associations, where dealer policy was often developed by motor trade participants who frequently competed with the business interests of franchised motor dealers.

Mr Keating, a practicing accountant, joined the car industry in 1970 at a standalone Ford dealership in Tamworth, NSW, eventually taking on BMW, Nissan, Land Rover and a range of heavy truck franchises. He retired in 2009, with the business run today by his son Murray.

He was chairman of the Ford National Dealer Council from 2000 to 2007 and was chairman of the BMW National Dealer Council in 1998 and 1999.

Mr Field is majority owner and executive chairman of Queensland-based Q Automotive Group Pty Ltd which owns four Ford branches and a Suzuki dealership as well as a number of property development enterprises.

He began his career as a lube attendant in 1962 and started in Ford retailing in 1980. He has served in key roles in the Motor Trades Association of Australia as well as on its superannuation fund board and was the dealer representative on the board of the Australian Motor Industry Federation.

He recently retired as the CEO of the Motor Trades Association of Queensland.

Mr Keating told Mr Field at a dinner at the AADA Convention that saying thank you “was faint praise when compared to your achievement” on behalf of the dealers of Australia.

“Your legacy must be that never again will the beneficiaries of your efforts, the new-car dealers of Australia, both big and small, metro provincial and rural, allow complacency and in some cases disinterest, to cause our association and indeed our combined destinies, to be controlled by anyone other than new-car dealers,” he said.

“I trust also the example you have set will inspire others to follow and to serve.”

By John Mellor