NSW Rover Dealers (Series 1 period)

[Lotz-A-Landies]

Just doing a bit of research on the Grenville Motors books and trying to collate destinations against local dealer names.

What we want is for people with long memories to go back and jog their archives for names. The ones below are the dealer names where we don't know the town or location. Johnstone Bros.
NZ and Australian Land Co.
Turnbull Bros.
Monaro Trading Co.
Roper Bros.
C.E. Skinner
D.J. Townsend
H.R. Kurrle
Jolly's Garage
The problem with the list is that the names have been transcribed from written records which are sometimes almost indecipherable so the spelling may be wrong and also the name may have been a regular customer rather than a dealer.

Put your thinking caps on and lets see if we can identify where these dealers were. Some may have been in the early series 2 period as well.

Diana

[series1buff]

This reply has a tenuous link to Diana's query ..but anyway .

There was a LR dealer in Warragul ..selling them from the very early 1950's. The company also ran a bus service as a sideline ,or maybe it was the main business. They were still selling Land Rovers as late as 1969 . The building is still there ..but for how much longer I don't know as it's not looking too flash these days.I guess Regents would have ben suplying them with new cars ..The dealership may expain-to some extent, why so many early 80" vehicles turn up in this area, albiet normally in a very delapitated condition.

Mike

[Lotz-A-Landies]

That's correct Mike, the "dealers" in question will be in NSW and probably excluding the Northern Rivers of NSW which were supplied out of Annand and Thompson in Qld.

Diana

[ivery819]

Hi Diana
Some of those names look like they were from a customer list from Grenville Motors in Cooma.
My memory of these times is very faded but my recollections may help someone else recall more accurate information.
Grenville Motors in Cooma was situated on the Western corner of Sharp St (Monaro Hwy) and North Street. If I recall it was wholly owned and tightly controlled from Sydney. It not only serviced the Snowy Mountains Authority but also the Monaro customer base which in those pre-Toyota days was quite extensive. When Grenvilles closed the building was taken over by Paddy McGee who then became a Toyota dealer. When Paddy shut up shop the building passed to it's present owners Norton's Building Supplies. There was considerable community anger when Grenvilles closed because the tax laws of the day insisted that the spare parts needed to be destroyed in order to be written off. As a consequence hundreds and hundreds of Land Rover and VW parts such blocks, pistons, cylinder heads, manifolds, body panels etc were destroyed with sledge hammers and dumped at the local tip.
As far as your list goes.....
* Johnstone Bros. Customers. "Brookfield Park"
* NZ and Australian Land Co. Customers "Dromore Station" (and possibly others)
* Turnbull Bros.unknown
* Monaro Trading Co. Customer I will try to find out more from one of the old timers.
* Roper Bros.
* C.E. Skinner
* D.J. Townsend
* H.R. Kurrle
* Jolly's Garage Customer/sub agent. I think they were in Bombala but I might be wrong.

I'm throwing all this into the pot as it is probably known already. I'm not vouching for its' accuracy but it may help unravel some of the history.

[Lotz-A-Landies]

Hi Diana
Some of those names look like they were from a customer list from Grenville Motors in Cooma.
My memory of these times is very faded but my recollections may help someone else recall more accurate information.
Grenville Motors in Cooma was situated on the Western corner of Sharp St (Monaro Hwy) and North Street. If I recall it was wholly owned and tightly controlled from Sydney. ...

... I'm throwing all this into the pot as it is probably known already. I'm not vouching for its' accuracy but it may help unravel some of the history.
Thanks for the quite extensive reply, the information is very useful. We knew that there was a satellite Grenville Motors branch in Cooma, but the records are from the "allocations" books out of Sydney and of interest is the fact that vehicles sold out of Sydney often had their registration numbers included. Those out of the dealers and Cooma never had their Rego numbers recorded.

Would you be able to include a village or town of the customers properties as well?

Diana :)