THE Australian motor industry has lost one of its greatest supporters with the recent death of Tom Phillips, best known for his role as the man who set out to save Mitsubishi Motors’ Australian manufacturing operations against all the odds.

Mr Phillips, 78, after an eminently successful career at Toyota Australia, ran the Mitsubishi Motors manufacturing outpost in Adelaide from 2000 to 2005. 

He left the top sales post at Toyota for Adelaide to fulfill a long-held ambition to run an Australian car manufacturing enterprise.

Tom Phillips

As managing director of MMAL, he built up a unique manufacturing operation at Tonsley Park but battled a time when the head office in Japan was in turmoil under Daimler and Chrysler investments and warranty and board scandals. 

In addition, the export markets he needed to ensure survival of the plant were ultimately denied him and denied the workforce he so championed.

Mr Phillips had three phases to his career; at Holden where he briefly became a dealer; at Toyota where he presided over achieving market leadership and at Mitsubishi Motors Australia (MMAL).

Toyota’s Bob Miller, who worked alongside Mr Phillips as marketing manager at Toyota Australia, once described Tom Phillips “as a good man to have in a storm” and said Mr Phillips’ time as sales director of Toyota Australia “was a triumph”.

Such was the high regard held for Mr Phillips at Toyota Australia, even though he changed teams and moved to run the Mitsubishi operations, and had not worked at Toyota for 24 years, the president of Toyota Australia Matthew Callachor wrote a note to all his dealers marking Mr Phillips passing saying that it was people like Mr Phillips who made the Toyota what it is today.  

John Conomos, Mr Phillips’ boss during his career at Toyota, gave a eulogy at the funeral as did leading dealer Phil McCarroll on behalf of the retail network.

Mr Phillips started his career at Holden as a teenager driving Holden parts between Toowoomba and Townsville and spent the next 10 years with General Motors in various sales roles. 

For nearly three years he ran his own dealership with another General Motors executive in Oxley, Brisbane called Miall Phillips Holden. He sold out in 1978 when floods damaged the business and joined Ira Berk, the distributor for Datsun and BMW in QLD, as dealer operations manager. Within five years he moved to Melbourne to work with Toyota assembler and Victorian distributor AMI but that was short lived as Ira Burke lured him back to Brisbane.  

In 1986 he was appointed general manager of York Motors, the then Toyota distributor for NSW.

Following the buy-out of York Motors by Toyota Motor Corporation, he was asked to stay on as general manager for NSW and, in January 1989, was appointed national general manager, sales for Toyota.  

He worked at Toyota until early 2000.

During this time he introduced Lexus to Australia in 1990 and led the sales result from a distant third to becoming Number 1 for the first time in 1991 and many more times after that aided and abetted by marketing wizard Bob Miller and the Camry Chicken. 

Mr Phillips was appointed as director of sales and marketing in 1997 and in that role cemented the high regard in which he was already held and then grew the strong bond he had formed with the Toyota dealer network.

To Mr Phillips, people around him were always his team, his people, his dealers and this would be a common theme of his career.

Following Toyota, Mr Phillips went to live out a lifetime ambition to be CEO of an automotive company in Australia. 

The day he started at Mitsubishi, news broke from Japan about huge corruption within senior ranks of their board and this was an omen of the challenges that were to follow in the five years he spent working to save the embattled company, amidst constant negative media speculation about the future of his plant both locally and out of Japan.  

Within weeks he was on a plane to Japan to plead for a lifeline of cash to help the company stay afloat and turn around. It was to prove to be the first 20 similar trips made over five years. 

The job was complicated by DaimlerChrysler taking a position in MMC and the executives from Japan, Germany and the US vying to protect their territories from cuts.

Mr Phillips, president and CEO of MMAL, and his manufacturing team set out to be included in a new business plan on the basis that the expertise within the plant and the ability of the plant to handle relatively small production runs cost-effectively was an asset within the MMC/DaimlerChrysler manufacturing matrix.

During a plant visit from head office the workers at every work station in Tonsley Park gave a poster or powerpoint presentation to the visiting executives that explained the value they were adding to the car at each point in the production process and the cost-effectiveness of measures they had taken to improve efficiency at their point of production.

The visitors had never seen anything like it.

Soon after an elated Mr Phillips rang me to say that they had been given the green light on further investment and that the telex read: “There is something special going on in Adelaide and we want to find out what it is.”

Indeed, much to Mr Phillips’ satisfaction, MMAL people found their way into production plants run by MMC, especially the Nedcar plant in the Netherlands.

But in spite of a huge $200 million investment by MMC and innovative employee involvement in installing production equipment, job banking arrangements, whole-of-side body presses, build-to-order painted body storage racking and robots – events would overtake MMAL.

As all this progress was occurring in Adelaide Mr Phillips would watch in dismay as the US market that was so fundamental to getting volume through Tonsley Park was destroyed almost overnight.

It had been all so promising. Between 1999 and 2002 MMC had seen 81 per cent growth to 345,000 units in the US and was the fastest growing brand in the country.

MMAL already had its toe in the water with exports of the Diamante to the US so Mr Phillips and his team had every reason to believe that strong demand for their production was just over the horizon.

But disaster struck when MMC in North America started the notorious 0-0-0 sales campaign; zero deposit, zero interest and zero payments for 12 months designed to increase sales to 500,000.

Anyone could get a loan (if you had a pulse you got approved) and in effect a free car for 12 months.

Those who could not pay after the first year handed the car back so MMCNA had hundreds of thousands of year-old cars for which they had yet to have been paid any money competing for sales with brand new cars pouring in from the car plants.

The US wrote off a billion dollars (in today’s money) in a year and with that went any hope of exports from Adelaide.

Mr Phillips also had a team setting up exports to the Middle East but MMC stepped in and said that rights in the Middle East belonged to a Japanese trading company and, even though that company did not send any cars to the Middle East, Mr Phillips was told to withdraw.

Instead of standing up before his people at MMAL to announce the export contracts they were hoping for, he stood facing the 600 workers at the Lonsdale engine plant telling them they were out of work through no fault of their own.

Mr Phillips’ son Andrew, who is COO at Australian Motor Group, told mourners at his father’s funeral: “One of the most special relationships he had throughout his entire career was with the dealer network. 

“He knew that no task was possible without the engagement of the people who interface with the consumers on a daily basis. He loved them, he motivated them, he was once one of them, and I think for all those reasons, the respect back was unparalleled.” 

Andrew recalled a dinner put on by the dealers for Mr Phillips’ 60th birthday.

“At one point, the dealers went around the table telling story after story about how Dad had impacted them personally, their businesses and their families.”   

MMAL said in an online statement: “Those of us that had the privilege of working with or for Tom understand how tirelessly he worked to provide our business with stability and certainty over a tumultuous period.

“As a leader, Tom was respected and highly regarded by staff, colleagues and the entire Mitsubishi Motors Australia dealership network. He was a true gentleman.”

After MMAL, Mr Phillips went on to sit on 11 boards including Australia Post, SafeWork South Australia, Southern Adelaide Economic Development Board, Uranium SA and Redarc Electronics. 

For two years he sat on the board of the Flinders Centre Foundation with Andrew where they helped raise $30 million to build the Flinders Medical Innovation of Cancer Centre.   

In 2002 he was named South Australian Businessman of the year, and in 2007 he was appointed a Member to the Order of Australia for service to business through the automotive industry and to the community.  

Mr Phillips is survived by his wife Judith and his children Emma, Andrew and Peter. 

Footnote: Mr Phillps had the unique distinction of having blacked out parts of Adelaide as the delivery of huge new body panel presses from the docks in Port Adelaide to Tonsley Park on a fleet of 20 low-loaders involved the removal of wires and poles along the route. He liked telling that story.