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Appropriately enough my first
journey anywhere involved a Mercedes Benz, when my father
collected
my mother and I from Queen Charlotte's Hospital
Chiswick where I was born. My mother had not counted on the 300 SL 'Gullwing'
doubling up as a baby carriage, but she had long since learnt to
appreciate the 'three pointed star' in all its many guises.
Growing up around the
Mercedes Benz marque and being taken regularly on trips to
Stuttgart, holidays often
centred around a visit to the factory to
see Rudi Uhlenhaut and to pick up a new or experimental model
for a tour through the Tirol. As newer models were
introduced so were we introduced to them. And as Mercedes
Benz and the motor
trade expanded so too did our 'family' with it.
Outings, such as the introduction of the 450 SEL 6.9 at Foreign
Fast Car Day at Silverstone, led to meeting many interesting people,
among them the car's chief designer Eric Wachsemberger.
So, from an early age I began to understand that there was
something fundamentally different about the very exceptional way
in which Mercedes Benz engineers designed, constructed and
tested their cars. Naturally school holidays became an opportunity to learn
more about
these cars, mainly under the tutelage and watchful eyes of Owen Williams, Eddie
Hawkins, Clive Williams, Clive Woods and so many others at Woking Motors.
Upon leaving Cranleigh school,
where I managed to extinguish myself in all categories, I was lucky
enough to spend some time at the Goethe Institut in Freiburg im
Breisgau studying German, followed by a short period of work,
curiously enough at a textile company, in
Stuttgart. After more travelling and working abroad,
mainly in the South of France, I
gained more experience in the trade, initially preparing cars,
and then later as a
Citroen salesman at Deepdene Car Centre in Dorking and after
that at SE Thomas in Chiswick. After yet another period of travelling,
this time to
the West Indies, I was introduced to a genial and mercurial motor trader
specializing in prestige cars in Denham, Buckinghamshire. Here I learnt much about the
essence of buying, and even more about my own
naivety.
However in 1986 I was encouraged by
a number of franchised dealers who I had come to know, to set up
on my own as
a 'motor trader' dealing in Mercedes Benz and other prestige
marques. This
business was centred largely around underwriting part exchanges
for various Mercedes Benz agents in and around London and the
South East, often buying from one retail agent and selling to
another. One would naturally have expected that to have had
one's father in residence in Mercedes Benz would have been a
considerable bonus. But in contrast I remember one particular sales
manager, who shall remain nameless, who refused to do business
with me in case I should later discuss the details of the
transaction with my
father, even though by then he had retired. Over the years, aside from the trading, I
built up a list of private clients for both modern and classic
Mercedes Benz, many of whom come back to change their models on
a regular basis. The eighties were something of a high point,
with steadily increasing prices and demand, and unsurpassed
residual values - a legacy of my father's efforts some years
before. Nostalgia would suggest that you went to bed, having
bought a car, and woke up in the morning with a profit. However,
this was not practically the case. Nostalgia always has a way of
gilding that lily. Yet this was without doubt the best
production period for Mercedes Benz motor-cars. Many of the
models I supplied at that time have only recently come up for change,
such was the exemplary build
quality from the factory. These cars possessed few,
if any, faults let alone any of the built-in obsolescence that
is so evident in today's examples. They were not designed for
recycling. They were built to last.
Through the early and mid nineties
I was lucky enough to enjoy some terrific motor racing with the
Historic Sports Car Club; initially Lotus Elans S2s, prepared by
Tony Thompson and latterly Historic Formula Fords prepared by Simon Hadfield. Other cars included Austin Healeys and Marcos.
Remarkable characters such as Guy Evans, David Bennett, Chris
Alford and David Methley all helped to paint a colourful canvas. The mantras of 'to finish first, first you have to finish' and
'the second person to cross the line is the first person to
lose' were never more appropriate in my case, as I learnt
first to finish and then to follow the aforementioned brave pilots
through more chequered flags than I care to remember. But,
as Ayrton Senna said; 'it's the taking part that counts'.
If the clouds of the eighties had
their silver lining then in the nineties the silver linings had
their clouds. Those heady days of the late eighties
were in stark contrast to the difficult era of the early
nineties as the
recession took many casualties. Although I cannot claim to have
seen it coming, I was fortunate enough not to
have paid heed to those who had advised me on a more expansive approach
to the business.
The changing face of the icon that is Mercedes Benz from the
nineties, where city financed companies competed for the old
family franchises, through to the Stuttgart owned dawn of the
new century, bears an uncanny resemblance to the Klondike Gold
Rush at the end of the nineteenth century. The avaricious eye of
the city, and latterly the manufacturer, had for too long
coveted the profits of the franchised dealers. Under the mantle
of the removal of the 'Block Exemption' for the motor trade from
EU Law, a cultural revolution in marketing was ultimately
irresistible. But inevitable as it was irresistible the number
crunchers soon found out that all was not as easy as it had
always appeared. A business that evolved over the last fifty years around colourful
private entrepreneurs and larger than life characters, now
suddenly belongs to
the e-mail directive, the on-line auction, and the face of a stranger every time you
walk into your local dealership. The current belief that
all will be rosy if your customer service department phones your
customer three times in the weeks after his last service, fills
in as many satisfaction surveys, and then sends him the glossy
magazine in the post, is misplaced. Yet not all manufacturers
have banished long-standing and well-proven marketing attitudes
from within their psyche. If Audi, for many years the great
exponents of disorderly marketing, can reverse their practices
then there is still hope for Mercedes Benz. Build-quality must
still be the foundation. Prudently managed unit-production,
marketing and distribution are all crucial parts of the
manufacturing process. The keys to the kingdom are not always to
be found at the dealership.
Consequently my belief in respect,
the continuity of the motor trade, and the personal service that
customers are entitled to, holds stronger today than ever. Our
level of repeat business bears this out.
These days we are committed to
dealing in Mercedes Benz coupes and convertibles of the sixties,
seventies, eighties. The 113, 107, and 124 models if used
sparingly and kept properly, can not only retain but also
improve their residual values, besides being a sheer pleasure to
drive.
After twenty-two years, and over
two and a half thousand cars, meeting new and established
Mercedes Benz enthusiasts, and sourcing and
supplying these cars is still our family enterprise
and our very great pleasure.
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