IDLE TORQUE
As the son of Greek immigrants, the young diesel fitter knew the value of work and how to stick at a job. Especially when you had to walk Sydney town to find that job, sweep f loors to keep it.
Those attributes, plus an early introduction to Japanese business practices, helped John Conomos take Toyota’s Australian enterprise from a mixed grab of 1980s entities to the dominant vehicle brand. Direct, charming and forceful with politicians, press and Japanese bosses, Conomos and his team took Toyota to the top with a mix of flair and confidence. The young Conomos liked working with his hands and found his first job with truck company Thornycroft in Sydney; which was then taken over by English bus builder AEC, in turn bought out by British Leyland. Here John was seconded into an office role. ‘I didn’t have a suit’, says the man who became one of the motor industry’s best-dressed. Here he met Bob Johnston, the man who’d become his mentor and, later, Thiess Toyota boss.
In 1974 Leyland stopped making P76s, shut down its Sydney plant and Conomos was sent south as a Leyland bus salesman in Victoria. ‘Sales training was the loan of a company car, a road map and £20 for motel expenses. See you in three weeks, it was as clumsy as that’.
He was promoted to an operations role, sent off to see what the Leyland empire looked like, and in South Africa saw his first Daihatsu, an F10 built by the Toyota affiliate.
Back here he convinced his bosses – and head office in Japan – to import Daihatsu commercials, but was stymied by Johnston, now head of Thiess Toyota, who could see Daihatsus giving Toyota’s Landcruiser grief. Instead, Johnston formed an independent company to import the brand and Conomos became chief executive. He was the first and only employee, started from scratch in 1975.
‘We didn’t have a split pin to call our own. Had to recruit key staff, form a bank relationship, learn about international trading, letters of credit, import laws, appoint distributors……
‘It was a hell of an experience and I loved every moment. I got to know the immense cultural differences between the Japanese way of doing business and he stifling climate of the British hierarchy and class distinctions and so on.
Five years into the Daihatsu business, Conomos realised volume was limited without a utility, van or passenger car on the horizon. These were the days of import quotas and 57.5 percent tariffs and when Daihatsu – at Conomos’ request – homologated the Charade sedan; he went to work on politicans, lobbying Canberra to loosen up the system. The young upstart secured more import licences at a premium; yet with the dollar buying 440 yen there was prof it in the $4999 Charade.
In the early 1980s, Johnston and Thiess Toyota snaffled Conomos for their burgeoning business. From here a combination of foresight, fortune and John’s forcefulness helped build Toyota Australia. There were distributors to buy out, dealers to sort, jealousies to hose down and the wedding of Australian Motor Industries – the local Toyota builder – and Thiess Toyota to organise. ‘It would have been easier to unite the Israelis and the Arabs’, John says.
Toyota’s market share crept up from five per cent to 10 in the early 1990s. With executives such as ebullient marketer Bob Miller, plus Toyota’s worldwide growth spurt, Conomos determined to dominate the 1990s. And by 2018 Toyota had more than 18 per cent market share and had topped sales for 16 consecutive years; the top-selling Hilux and a range of SUVS hasn’t hurt. He says selling cars remains a matter of having the right people because the product is a given, most cars today are quite good. In his time, he says, Nissan and Toyota mirrored each other in terms of product, network and Japanese parents. ‘The only difference in my simple way is people – we had a good team, they didn’t. We had good parents, they didn’t’.
Conomos allows there were battles to overcome the perception of bland Toyotas. ‘But they were undeniable in their performance, in their quality and sales. We had to persevere. We did zany things with advertising, off the wall promotions with dealers, gave away prizes that’d make your head spin’.
Still Conomos was never keen, despite years of discussion, planning and costings, to take Toyota to V8 Supercars. ‘We were held back only by my own belief that we’d be soundly condemned by the motoring public, that if we entered the Ford-holden rivalry we’d get worse than (Jim) Richards got when he won (Bathurst 1992).’
John Conomos’ biggest disappointment was his mandatory ‘but correct’ retirement 10 years ago. ‘I miss being directly involved and I miss it most dreadfully when it comes to issues’. That’s heightened by a swag of issues he sees ahead for the motor business – from autonomous motoring to power technologies to a lack of clear political vision on the future of the car.