Mr Hunt was born in Manchester, England in 1923 and was the third generation of a family which has now spent five generations in the motor industry. His grandfather sold steam cars in his native Britain and raced at Brooklands. Both Reg’s mother and grandfather also raced motorcycles.

His father sold cars and motorcycles and also sold fuel to the British army during the war. 

In Australia, one of Reg’s sons, Graham Hunt, joined the business and ran the company’s Ford dealership (President Ford) from the family’s famous Elsternwick site while grandson Nigel Hunt continues to run the Hunt family interests.

The Hunts came to Australia in 1949 and set up selling used cars while Reg Hunt began racing cars. 

Five years after he began racing in Australia Reg Hunt was a national champion and a familiar sight on the sports pages of the time taking the chequered flag in his imported grand prix Maserati 250 F. He was well on the way to becoming a household name.

Reg Hunt

Like many of his peers on the racing circuit, Reg Hunt was offered a Holden franchise. These racing luminaries (and his rivals) included Stan Jones (father of world champion Alan Jones), Bib Stillwell (who later moved across to Ford) and Bill Patterson.

It was the heyday of Holden which supplied around one in every two cars sold in Australia.  

Sales volumes and profits were huge at the time as Australians took to the road but he also saw the opportunity of used cars and was known for the huge choice of used cars on offer.

He ran a vast used car operation on what became a 4.5 hectare site in Elsternwick. All up, Reg’s various used car operations in the city centre and Melbourne’s south east, eventually covered 20 hectares with as many as 2000 cars in stock.

I once asked Reg what was the secret to building up his business. “Nothing to it,” he said. “I am a trader. It does not matter if it’s stoves, horses or cars. First you have to figure out how to sell at a higher price than when you bought. Once you have done that, then you keep doing it as often as you can.” 

And that’s what drove the development of what ended up as the “Golden Mile of Cars” along the Nepean Highway at Elsternwick as, bit-by-bit, he acquired adjoining house blocks and commercial properties as they came on to the market.

The golden mile was built to the north and south of the original “modernist” showroom built at 77 Nepean Highway Elsternwick in 1957 with large expanses of glass virtually unknown in car dealerships at the time.

Reg Hunt  was as hugely competitive within the Holden camp as he was with rival brands in the open market.  

Source: The Reg Hunt family collection

Mark Sawicki, Reg Hunt’s long-standing director of sales, recalls that Mr Hunt was obsessed with being number one in the Holden Top 30 dealer listing which was published and distributed to all dealers each month.

Mr Sawicki said Mr Hunt was also totally determined to be the top-selling Holden dealer for 10 years in a row. 

“He wanted that more than anything else in life,” he said.

In the lead-up to the end of the tenth year, they calculated that he needed to sell 300 cars more than the current running rate to secure the title. He clinched a deal for 300 cars with a car rental company and Reg Hunt Holden became the only Holden dealer before or since to be number one for a decade.

Reg Hunt Holden was also Victoria’s number one Holden dealer for around four decades. 

During normal trading in Holden’s car market leadership days, Reg Hunt Holden would average 300 new Holdens a month. The biggest volume month was 1102 of which Holden made up of 460 new and the balance from their other franchises.

Reg Hunt was known in Melbourne for his permanent booking of a half page display advertisement on the front page of the Age newspaper’s massive Saturday motoring classifieds section using the slogan: ‘Nobody undersells Reg Hunt – But Nobody!’

Source: State Library of Victoria Picture Collection

While it was seen as an absolute fixture in the Melbourne motor trade, Mr Sawicki recalls the occasion when Mr Hunt agreed to an experiment where they advertised the same car on the front page and also in a regular classified listing but with different phone numbers.

In the event, the classified advertising listing drew far more phone calls and the Age was given the bad news that Reg Hunt Motors was pulling the half page booking.  

Mr Sawicki said: “We would have spent millions on that space over the years and Reg couldn’t believe the classified listings were getting more calls than that display ad generated. But he dropped it and we never went back and saved a fortune.”  

A child of the Depression and wartime Britain, Mr Hunt never lost sight of being careful with expensenses. 

When a senior employee was heading for Sydney on business, Mr Hunt told him it was cheaper to drive and then went as far as to calculate the difference in petrol cost between driving a six-cylinder Kingswood up the Hume Highway and back and a four-cylinder Torana. The Torana won but he eventually agreed it was a false economy and the executive flew.  

Mr Hunt used to say he never held a grudge but that he was more than happy if he ever got even. Nor could he abide ‘Yes’ men and he strongly believed that ‘profit is not a dirty word’. 

Part of the Elsternwick site was eventually sold for an estimated $25 million which made way for Toyota to build its landmark dealerships, Brighton Toyota and Brighton Lexus.

In 2002 Reg Hunt Rhodes was sold to the Japanese-owned Sumitomo Group via Summit Investments and Mr Hunt moved to Monaco. He maintained an active interest in the family’s business affairs for the rest of his life.

Source: The Reg Hunt family collection

By John Mellor