Sir Arnold Clark
Hands-on motor-trade billionaire who kept his books ‘in apple-pie order’ and treated customers well
SIR ARNOLD CLARK, who has died aged 89, was a Glaswegian billionaire who built a vast motor-trade empire from the humblest of beginnings. By the time Clark’s business celebrated its 60th birthday in 2014, it could proudly claim to be “Europe’s Number One independently owned family-run car dealer”. The group operates some 200 dealerships across the UK, selling up to a quarter of a million cars annually.
Arnold Clark himself was a bluff hands-on manager who believed in treating the customer right and “keeping my books in apple-pie order”. His philosophy of expanding by reinvesting profits rather than borrowing saw him through repeated downturns, though he denied strongarming smaller rival firms acquired on advantageous terms when trade was depressed. He remained active in the business – which he also regarded as his hobby – well into his ninth decade.
The son of a steelworker, John Arnold Clark was born in the Townhead area of Glasgow on November 27 1927. He left school at 14, sold vegetables door-to-door that his father grew on an allotment and worked for the Co-op before being conscripted into the RAF, where he trained as a motor mechanics instructor.
In 1954 he used his demob money to buy his first car, a 1933 Morris Ten Four, for £70. Having restored it and sold it at a profit he dabbled in car dealing until he had enough money to open his first showroom in Park Road, Glasgow, claiming modestly that he started the business “because nobody else would employ me”.
In the 1960s he acquired a Morris dealership, later extended to other British Leyland marques, and garages in Paisley and Bearsden; he branched into car rental, leasing and accident repair centres, and in due course became Scotland’s leading Renault franchisee. In the 1980s, he began buying up dealerships all over Scotland – and after the downturn of the early 1990s he set himself more ambitious expansion targets, acquiring a plethora of businesses across the North and Midlands.
In recent years, the Arnold Clark group has generated more than £100 million a year in profits. The family fortune was estimated at just over £1 billion in 2016, earning Clark himself the accolade of “Britain’s first billionaire car dealer”.
Driven by strong faith – he was an elder of the Church of Scotland – he was also a generous philanthropist, both corporately and personally. He was a trustee of the Kelvingrove art gallery, and of an appeal to raise funds for Glasgow’s Zaha Hadid-designed Riverside Museum (formerly the city’s museum of transport) to which he donated £200,000 and lent a 1950 Daimler coupé once driven by King George VI. His companies supported a wide range of charitable projects, including a Prince’s Trust scheme for mechanic apprenticeships. Clark was knighted in 2004 for community work in Scotland as well as services to the motor industry.
Though his work ethic never faded, Clark unashamedly enjoyed his wealth: “I will buy whatever I want to buy, and I will buy the best,” he once said. A competitive sailor in his younger days, in 1988 he bought the 78 ft racing yacht Drum which had been commissioned for Simon Le Bon, lead singer of Duran Duran. Drum had famously broken her keel and capsized during the 1985 Fastnet Race, but went on to finish third in the Whitbread Round the World race the following year. Clark raced the yacht himself for some years, winning the Round Ireland Race among other trophies, and later used her for family cruising and corporate charters.
He also collected classic cars, including two Model T Fords, a Bentley and a 1928 Rolls-Royce tourer. He kept a villa in Spain and a property in the north of Scotland, as well as the family home at Killearn, north of Glasgow, where his children and grandchildren gathered around him every Sunday.
He was twice married. By his first wife he had four sons, of whom one predeceased him. He is survived by his second wife Philomena, with whom he had two more sons and four daughters.
Sir Arnold Clark, born November 27 1927, died April 10 2017