Bolwell Corporation
Bolwell Cars was established in 1960 in the garage of the Bolwell family suburban home in the Melbourne seaside suburb of Frankston.
Since then, it has grown and evolved into something almost unrecognisable from what it once was.
The car business, now known as Bolwell Technologies, is Campbell Bolwell’s personal fiefdom.
The main priority nowadays is Bolwell Corporation, which focusses on the design and manufacture of composite plastic products. It began really developing after the production of the Nagari ended in 1974.
While Campbell is chairman of the board, it is managed by his son Vaughan and it supplies items to a variety of blue-ribbon clients including truck maker Kenworth.
Of course, Bolwell’s current composite skills grew out of experiments with fibreglass body panels by Campbell and brothers Graeme and Winston in Frankston.
Winston was tragically killed in a car accident in the 1960s, but Graeme was a key part of the development of the original Nagari and the 300 and 500 that followed.
In fact, family and friends are a constant part of the Bolwell story. Ross McConnell was a neighbour of the Bolwells in Frankston and was one of its first employees when he left school. Like Graeme, he worked on all three Nagari generations.
Then there’s Linnley Hughes, another childhood friend of the Bolwells, who joined the car company in 1970 and remains a director of Bolwell Corporation.
The family member Campbell makes clear played a pivotal role in the business surviving its tough early years is his father Jim.
A school headmaster, he supported his son’s bold decision to become a car maker at just 20 years-old, and then tipped in money as the business struggled to survive in its early years.
“My father, who raised
his eyebrows when I said I was going to build sportscar, actually had more faith in me than I had in myself,” Campbell recalls.
“Two or three years after I started I was struggling and struggling and struggling and he said ‘I will get you some money.’ He mortgaged his house – the only asset he had – for 6000 pounds. A lot of money.
“I thought I could put it all in the business, but then I thought ‘no I’ll put 2000 into the business, the rest I’ll buy some industrial land and put up a little factory’ – that was our first tin shed.
“I sold that tin shed for 20,000 pounds. I made more money out of real estate than I ever made out of cars.
“The thing is the real estate set us up. We now have 10 sites in Mordialloc and the factory in Thailand and we own all that.”