SAE AGM | Feature
Australia’s car manufacturing is evolving not dissolving When the media announced that the auto industry in Australia was dead, Premcar didn’t get the memo
Premcar is the go-to partner for car manufacturers (OEs) who want to add excitement to their mainstream offerings, so much so, that OEs are proud to partner with Premcar, such is its reputation with consumers. “We take all of our knowledge, our experience and probably most importantly our passion and we apply that to our customers’ vehicles,” explained Bernie Quinn, Engineering Director Premcar speaking at SAE-A’s Annual General Meeting. “Our customers are OE, we call them OEMs: that’s Ford, Nissan, GM, a lot of others, in particular Nissan. That’s one of our products over there, the white (Nissan) Warrior. We take our passion and our knowledge, and we apply it to those vehicles to make it more relevant, more appealing to customers in the Australian market.” Premcar started in 1996 as Tickford Vehicle Engineering, set up to facilitate development of niche vehicles for Ford because Ford was building 100,000 Falcons at their factory in Broadmeadows and they didn’t have the capacity to do niche engineering such as police cars, LPG conversions or sports models. This continued through to 2002 when the company changed its name to Prodrive after it was purchased by Prodrive in the UK. At that stage the company also started a joint venture in Australia with Ford called Ford Performance
Bernie Quinn
Vehicles. The engineering team delivered vehicle development programs as a “turn-key” solution. Under Prodrive, the company also held the exclusive contract for the build of highperformance conversions of existing Toyota vehicles sold under the TRD brand and met all of Toyota’s quality standards. But then the big shift happened in the Australian car marketplace Australia’s car mainstays: the Falcon, the Commodore and in general large sedans lost popularity with SUVs and dual cabs taking over. So, as Mr Quinn said, the business model no longer made sense and it was offered up for sale in 2012. Mr Quinn and fellow director Jim Jovanovski bought the business, which was then quite small and the two have developed it into a much larger and better business than it has ever been. Now the company is responsible for providing a One Stop Shop solution for Nissan, for vehicles such as the Navara N-Trek Warrior. The content of the program includes: • Design • Product Engineering • Program Management • Prototype vehicle build • Certification and Homologation • Production management • Purchasing and Procurement • Materials Planning and Logistics • Secondary Vehicle Manufacturing • Quality.
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