Crichton’s fiat: start young, work hard, aim high

Neville Crichton sells Maseratis that go for $300,000 but drives a car that could park on a postage stamp.

Neville Crichton: ‘I was always destined to be in the dealing business.’ Picture: Nic Walker

For luxury car retailer Neville Crichton, it is a case of buy what I sell rather than what I drive.

Crichton is a member of The List — Australia’s Richest 250, published for the first time this year by The Weekend Australian today. Crichton’s wealth of $396 million comes primarily from his car dealership business Ateco, which has the exclusive distribution contract in Australia for Maserati and other luxury brands.

When The Weekend Australian meets Crichton at his office in Sydney’s Lidcombe, there are about 20 luxury cars in his garage and he offers up either a Maserati Gran Turismo or a RAM SUV, which sell for more than $300,000 and $100,000 respectively, for a photo shoot.

Crichton, though, prefers to get around in a more modest Fiat 500.

But the man widely known as “Croaky” (he speaks with two fingers clasped to his throat and a wide smile thanks to 30 operations to stave off throat cancer diagnosed in 1977) certainly knows the market when it comes to more upmarket models, which are holding up as sales for new cars in general slow.

He says: “Maserati has increased its sales in Australia six-fold in six years. It’s been driven by an expanded range. (Buyers) are at the top end of town, certainly professional people. And you’re looking at 90 per cent of our customers being new.

“I think (the general market) has dropped about 7 per cent lately, but we don’t see our Maserati business dropping at all.

“We are putting more pressure on more marketing (but) the brand has real, sustainable ­momentum.

“It has increased its market share in a market where other brands are losing share.”

Maserati was selling as little as 60 cars a year in Australia before Crichton’s business took over the marketing for the Italian brand and put together a local dealer network.

Now it sells more than 750 a year.

Ateco has the exclusive distribution rights for Maserati, the Chinese LDV van brand and RAM trucks from the US, as well as other partnerships in New Zealand such as Jeep, Chrysler and Dodge. It made a pre-tax profit of about $19m from $445m revenue in the 2018 financial year, ­according to documents lodged with the corporate regulator.

Crichton says car retailers have a “difficult” 12 months in store, and says car sales generally move up and down with house prices and business confidence also plays its part. Yet he is still optimistic about the longer term outlook for his segment of the market.

He says: “If business confidence is down, our business is down. (But) there is a lot more disposable income (and) there’s more people coming into this segment than five years ago.

“So while we’re only talking about a small market, there’s more people coming into that segment of the market.

“We’re also looking at electric cars and battery cars — but I think that’s still a reasonable distance away. Certainly I think in the next five years, the car industry will be in a similar format as it is today.

“Without the government totally supporting electric cars, it is hard to find industry change.”

Ateco was the first importer of Chinese vehicles into the Australian market and has also at various times helped salvage the sales for brands ranging from Ferrari to Kia, before losing exclusive distribution rights to both.

“We’ve been good at getting rundown brands and building them up,” Crichton says. “We haven’t been very good at keeping them, unfortunately, because we were too good at our jobs.”

Crichton is optimistic about the future for Chinese cars in Australia and elsewhere — “It’s got to keep going in this country! China is the biggest manufacturer in the world and as the world keeps going, China is going to get a bigger hold in the market” — but says the vehicles have to be available at a particular price point.

“I actually think the biggest problem is cost of production. Workers are demanding more wages and (China is) becoming less competitive than it has historically,” he says, though he says Chinese products have improved in quality.

Crichton negotiated with Chinese companies for seven years before finally introducing Great Wall to Australian consumers in 2009. Great Wall and Ateco originally had a five-year partnership which later encountered disputes over whether the Hebei-made ­vehicles met Australian preferences and standards. Other brands he went on to introduce in the local market include Suzuki, and less successfully, the Korean Ssangyong.

His other major challenge has been Ateco’s ventures in South Africa. The country was his first expansion outside the Oceania market and he says success came harder than he first thought.

“The business environment there is very difficult,” he said. Importers like Ateco end up paying up to 30 per cent more than other international players who choose to manufacture in South Africa.

“It’s been a difficult period and if I had my time over again, would I go there? No,” he says.

Crichton’s success comes from having effectively spent a lifetime in car retailing. In other avenues of life, he has also been a successful sailor, and in the 1980s won the New Zealand touring car championship. After selling his first car at 13 to a prefect at his school, Crichton left his home town, Rotorua, to sell cars in the Bay of Plenty. From there, he went on to own a dealership in Auckland for five years and lived Hawaii for several years before coming to Australia.

He says: “I think my father taught me how to buy and sell things … when I was old enough to buy and sell a lawnmower or a push bike and even then a car.

“I was always destined to be somewhere in the dealing business. I really didn’t do it for the money, I did it for the glory of selling things.”

The inaugural edition of The List — Australia’s Richest 250 is published in The Weekend Australian today.