“Autopro is like a big family group, and the key to its success is the friendships built over the years,” says 69-year-old Gordon Hill.

Gordon’s history with Autopro dates back to 1984, but his history in the automotive aftermarket business goes back to when he left school and went to work for Repco in Canberra.

“I came from a Repco background,” Gordon said. “That’s where I started in 1964 in Canberra.

“Repco trained many good people; it was a great grounding and a fantastic school to learn the craft.

“Repco trained so many good people but they’ve not retained them and many of them went on to bigger and better things in management of other companies.”

Gordon said that when he started at Repco it was compulsory to do a mechanical technical course and retail technical course, which covered three years.

“I did those courses and they were invaluable,” he said, adding that each year he passed the courses he received an extra $5 in his pay.

“One of the best experiences of being at Repco Canberra was meeting Sir Jack Brabham,” Gordon said. “Jack was the nicest guy that ever walked the Earth. A lovely man who used to speak to everybody; an absolute champion Australian, he would come in often because he was driving a Repco Brabham, with which he won the World Championship. Repco Canberra had a very large workshop and did a lot of work on the motor of that car.

“I had the pleasure of meeting him again at an Autopro convention we had in Hobart, and they even brought his car along to the convention.”

When Gordon moved to Adelaide in 1966. In 1968, he met his wife of 47 years Sandra. Sandra came to work at Repco King William Street in the Cardex section. Gordon was working in phone orders. Sandra only worked at Repco for nine months, then got a job with the Post Master General. Gordon transferred to a new Repco store at Salisbury Park, which was only 10 minutes from home at Elizabeth. Gordon and Sandra married in 1970 and have two children, Heidi 41 and Paul 39, neither of them involved in the automotive trade.

In 1972 Gordon left Repco to become a sales representative for Salisbury Auto Parts. That business was sold in 1980 and Gordon went to work for Elizabeth Auto Parts as the manager. Elizabeth Auto Parts became an Autopro Store in 1984 when they moved to larger premises in Elizabeth. This was when Gordon became involved in the Autopro State Dealer Council, and was elected the State president of South Australia.

Autopro started in SA in 1984 out of the wreckage of British Leyland subsidiary Uniparts.

“When British Leyland went through the hoops, they closed all the Uniparts shops,” he explained. “Repco saw an opportunity to establish the same sort of thing with a bigger offering, so many those Uniparts stores became Autopro stores, which gave them an instant leg up.

“Repco was still trading as Repco, but there was a division of the company called Traders Auto Spares, and they were the ones who set up Autopro. Repco owned Traders Auto Spares, so they owned Autopro as well.”

Gordon said Repco used the Uniparts data to set up their own group: “Repco used to be a trade focussed business only, but now they wanted a slice of the retail as well and they set up the Autopro stores.

In 1987 Gordon was offered the manager’s job at DJ Auto Parts in Gawler, another Autopro store, and decided to take that job as he and his family lived in Gawler. Another draw for Gordon was his active involvement in the Gawler community where he was a local Lions Club member, chairman of the Gawler Primary School Council, member of the local Orchid Club, and a keen follower of local football team, Central Districts. So, because Gordon was well known in Gawler, it encouraged locals to shop locally at DJ’s.

In 1995 a National Dealer Council was formed to give the States a voice at the national level. One official was elected from each State.

“In the early days Autopro didn’t have a National Dealer Council. We used to have just a State council and I was the State president,” he explained.

Meetings were held in Adelaide. We also held regional meetings at Port Augusta and the Riverland. We would travel up and back in the same day, no overnight stays in those days.

When the National Dealer Council formed in 1995 there were five people on the council, Gordon, Frank Gibson, Ian Judd, Tom Exelby, and Kevin Jackson. Gordon served on the council until 2015.

In 1999, Gordon bought DJ Autoparts: “It was still Autopro; I was managing it so I bought it and turned into Autopro Gawler.”

Meanwhile, Traders Auto Spares evolved into CarParts (a joint venture between Repco and Atkins Carlyle). After a few year CarParts was sold out to National Parts (a division of the ACL Group) and in February 2008 ACL placed National Parts into voluntary administration.

Gordon said he attended a meeting in South Australia, which was just an advertising meeting on the Monday, and the next day got a telephone call from Bob Burness to tell him National Parts had gone into voluntary administration.

“At that time, I was State president of South Australia and Northern Territory Autopro stores. It was a dark period when the future of the stores, and individual owners, was in jeopardy.

“We were in limbo. National Parts had gone. They owned the Autopro brand, and were the major supplier to the group, and there were not a lot of other options available to us. We wondered: what’s going to happen to us now? Unless somebody picks us up we’re divided. We’re shot really.

“We were thinking where are we going to go now. They (National Parts) owned the name, they didn’t own the stores. But National Parts was our supplier and we had to access parts from elsewhere, and there wasn’t a lot of options.”

Fortunately, along came Garry Dumbrell. Garry thought that Autobarn and Autopro combination could be a good mix for both groups. Garry also recognised that both Autopro and Autobarn needed access the extensive range of product previously supplied by National Parts. This was going to take a lot of work to build the distribution platform to support the stores and add in the product ranges that were required.

“Garry was asked to attend a specially convened Autopro National Dealer Council meeting organised by Bob Way and Grant Jarrett. He was impressed with what the group had to contribute to the industry and local communities, and decided to put in an offer for the business.”

As Garry tells the story: “National Parts was in financial jeopardy, and they owned the Autopro name, which had a strong regional and trade business presence. We had to buy that (Autopro) name.”

Garry negotiated with the administrators to buy the Autopro brand name and was successful. It was a win-win situation with benefits for Garry as well as the Autopro store owners. The purchase of National Parts and the Autopro name was the catalyst for the big jump in the size of the Automotive Brands Group, which went from about 90 stores to more than 200. The distribution capability and range expansion within Automotive Brands was also extensive, moving from one warehouse with around 2000 parts, to three warehouses and over 50,000 parts in a very short space of time.

There is a mutual respect and admiration between Gordon and Garry. And Gordon is firm when he says, “I looked at Garry Dumbrell as a saviour of Autopro, and the individual store owners. He gave us a lifeline and I’ve got so much respect for the guy. He’s a lovely guy and I got on very well with him.

“So that was another chapter in Autopro’s history: we joined the Automotive Brands Group.”

A strong point about Autopro stores is that there has always been a closeness of the operators.

“We used to refer to it as the family, and the operators had a fantastic attitude and were all there for each other,” Gordon said. “When we had catalogue sales, if you didn’t have something you would ring another store and they would be obliging and let you have it if they had it so you could make the sale.

“We had regional meetings at which we all got together and thrashed ideas around; we had weekends away, like in the Barossa Valley or Victor Harbour when we all got together and just socialised. And that was the strength of the group.”   

Gordon said that at its peak, Autopro had about 22 stores in SA and 200 around Australia (1997).

Grant Jarret, executive general manager, operations, worked with Gordon since he joined Traders Auto Spares (the then owner of the Autopro brand) in 1999. Grant said that through the highs and lows, Gordon remained 100 per cent committed to the group.

“His loyalty and hard work made him one of the most awarded Autopro stores in the country, and his service to the group was recognised with a special service award (now known as the Hall of Fame award) at the Auckland conference in 2009,” Grant said. 

As for his own business at Gawler, he and Sandra bought it in 1999 and sold in November 2016. In the years he owned the store, Gordon won five Master Dealer Awards from Autopro.

“The awards were given out at our conventions, which were held every two years,” he said.

“The first convention was special because it was held at the Royal Pines on the Gold Coast in 1994. They built a model superstore on the tennis courts for that convention; it was a new concept of a model store based on research in the US.”

And Gordon remembers the Hobart convention where he was reunited with Sir Jack Brabham, and another at Hamilton Island attended by another legend of the race track, Peter Brock.

“We had many identities come to our conventions who helped make them worthwhile and memorable”. One of the most memorable for Gordon was Li Cunxin, former principal dancer with the Australian Ballet and author of Mao’s Last Dancer, a story that Gordon said brought tears to his eyes Gordon said.

As for retail, Gordon said it can be a “hard gig” sometimes: “I’m a member of the Gawler Car Club and we’ve got about 300 members with a massive variety of different cars from the 1920s on. I had one member come in and he was looking for a six-volt flasher unit. I said I’ve got one at home and I took it in and let him have it. That unit was worth about $45.

“The very next week there were two customers stood at the counter and one guy turned around to the other and said: ‘You get sick of waiting, did you?’

“And the second guy said: ‘What do you mean?’

“And the first chap said: ‘I just saw you up at Repco’.

“And then the second guy explained that the Repco people were so slow he came down to my store. He was the guy I’d just given the flasher unit to, and the very next week he’s shopping at the opposition!

“That really upset me. I thought, for goodness sake, I always try and look after people. I always have. I bend over backwards for people, and when that sort of thing happens it destroys your faith sometimes.”

There is more to life than being in the retail business. Gordon has a passion for old cars and has a couple of “absolutely original” antiques. Ford aficionados would love to get their hands on his Cortina Mk 1 GT 500. Ford only manufactured 110 of these cars, and did so to make them eligible to compete at Bathurst in 1965. Gordon said there are only 29 of the Cortinas left in the country, and the last one sold for $78,000. To complement the Ford there is an Austin Healey 3000. A 6-cylinder, 1965 Mk 3 Phase 2, which was the last model Healey made.”

Despite his success as a retailer, Gordon said what he treasures most are the friendships built up over the years. People like Victorian Ian Judd who sat on the National Dealer Council and was the Mayor of Camperdown and his wife Lorraine. Ian was on the first NDC with Gordon.

“Ian was like a mentor to me when I came along because I didn’t have a lot of experience,” Gordon said. “Getting up at a convention and speaking in front of 800 people sort of terrified me, almost. Ian gave me guidance and tips, and helped me enormously through that period.

“He got inducted into the Hall of Fame a few years ago, and he really deserved it because he was a great operator.”

So was Gordon. He is also a member of the Hall of Fame. Gordon and the late Doug Brown of Canberra were the first members inducted into the Hall of Fame. 

Gordon is now in a well-earned retirement after a string of memories encompassing more than half a century of involvement in the automotive retail business, however, he and Sandra still catch up with fellow Autopro store owners who have become good friends over the years. 

Interviewed June 2017