By
EWAN KENNEDY
11 February 2008
Rob McEniry looked awful. The President and CEO of Mitsubishi Motors
Australia had just suffered through the hardest 12 days of his life.
Major meetings with his chiefs in the Japanese head office, talks with
the board of Mitsubishi Australia, as well as with top Australian
government officials.
Then the dreaded talk to the company’s employees at a
mass get-together and finally the public announcement of the closure of
the Adelaide factory. Followed by seemingly endless media interviews.
Some rather aggressive, some conducted by interviewers who perhaps
hadn't done their research as well as they should.
In a chat with a small group of motoring journalists the
human side of the decision by Mitsubishi to pull out of local
manufacturing in Australia became heartbreakingly obvious.
McEniry was talking to us just 24 hours after the
momentous announcement on the future of Mitsubishi in Australia and
looked flushed in the face, bleary-eyed and exhausted. It was a stark
contrast to the big, booming positive personality that was very much
part of the man some of us have known for over 20 years. Our hearts went
out to him.
One of the things I really like about being part of the
Australian motoring industry is the passion it engenders in so many
people. Whether they are engineers, assembly line workers, stylists,
marketing people, or mere motoring writers, there's a level of
enthusiasm and enjoyment that simply doesn’t exist in any other
industry.
The downside of being passionate is that when something
goes badly wrong it becomes as much a personal problem as a business
one. And when the thing that has just gone wrong results in close to
1000 people losing their jobs all but the most thick-skinned of men
suffer severely. Rob McEniry is far from being thick-skinned.
Hindsight says that the decision to close down
Mitsubishi's Adelaide factory should probably have been made earlier.
Though the company tried to fight its way out of trouble, sales of the
Mitsubishi 380, the only Mitsubishi built in Australia, were only around
20 per cent of those needed to justify continuation of the plant.
When asked when it was that he finally realised the
factory had to be closed, McEniry began his reply, "I forget which
one of the sleepless nights it was…".
The good news is that employment agencies are already
knocking at Mitsubishi's door to try to work out ways of finding new
jobs. Many employees have worked with the Australian-Japanese company
for many years and should be valuable assets to other industries and,
obviously, to other car makers or suppliers of automotive components to
the manufacturing business. Unemployment levels are low in Australia and
there's little doubt that good people will be snapped up quickly
Mitsubishi will continue to operate in Australia. Only
about 17 per cent of cars sold in the last few years have been locally
made, the remaining 83 per cent are imports, generally from Japan. There
will now be a stronger concentration on those imports, with promises of
new models in the near and midterm future.
Those left at Mitsubishi Australia, led by a Rob McEniry,
hopefully after a well-deserved rest, say they are determined to
continue to provide the car and 4WD buyers of Australia with quality
products at good prices.
ewan@marque.com.au
