Premcar - Australia’s car manufacturing is evolving not dissolving

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 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.

Bernie Quinn

Following on from the success of the N-Trek Warrior, Premcar has recently completed the design and development of the PRO4X Warrior, revealed in June 2021. The design and development also followed Premcar’s One Stop Shop formula. “We’ve got a big facility out in Epping in Victoria. Epping is about 20ks … north, it’s got a manufacturing team. It’s got an engineering team. It’s got a back-office staff team. It’s got a prototype workshop. It’s got a manufacturing facility out the back and it’s got secondary manufacturing authority,” Mr Quinn said. “We can basically put a VIN plate on a car, which says it’s legal; homologated to drive on Australian roads. “We’re also part of an international group, which the Australian business is 75 percent owned in Australia, 25 percent owned by a German company called RLE International, a product development business with a global reach and 22 hundred employees in that organization, and offices all around the world. “So, it gives us access to not only staff and capabilities across the globe in all sorts of areas, but also access to projects as well. We do projects internationally as well as in Australia.” The Nissan Warrior developed by Premcar in Australia, is being looked at as an export opportunity. This is the benchmark for Nissan globally. It is the toughest Navara in the world; it was developed in Australia and manufactured in Premcar’s facility. In the next financial year Mr Quinn said the company would produce more than 3000 vehicles and after that more like seven or 8,000 cars. Ford, when it died, did about 20,000. “The way we do it is we’ve got a really robust engineering process,” Mr Quinn said. The company can develop a PRO4X Warrior in about 12 months. And over the years it has developed vehicles such as the Ford XR8 Sprint. “I think that again sold out in about a day, made a massive profit for Ford. This one is interesting this is a Ford Bronco, it’s not even sold in Australia,” said Mr Quinn pointing to a photo.. “We did the 35-inch wheel entire program. When we did the program for Ford, it was based on a take up, it’s an option to have a 35 inch tyre on that car and it comes with a different suspension package, obviously a different wheel and a different tyre. “When the business case was drawn up by Ford ... it was profitable at a four percent take up … the actual take-up for that option on Ford

Bronco in the US – to keep in mind that it is about 250,000 vehicles – for Bronco is 47 percent. They make more money on this option than they do on the vehicle. It just shows you what niche vehicle engineering can do.” Niche engineering is not the only thing Premcar does, over the Covid years in Australia the company worked with an international team to take a concept for a Tesla competitor car to fruition completing all the chassis design, front and rear subframes, the wheel ends, suspension links, springs, dampers, brakes, and more. Premcar worked with a team in Germany doing the vehicle structure and several other teams around the world. Mr Quinn says that work enabled Premcar to gain valuable knowledge in engineering electric cars. “We need to keep in touch with what’s happening in the future. We need to understand customers. We need to understand what the technology trends are otherwise we are going to become irrelevant. “I’m kidding myself if I think I’m going to be doing dual cab utes in 2032 – it won’t be happening. Whatever we do it’s going to have a fuel cell, it’s going to be EV or hydrogen or whatever,” said Mr Quinn. Car manufacturing has not died in Australia, automotive engineering has not died but like all things in this world, it has evolved and will continue to evolve. There are still plenty of opportunities for automotive engineers.