Two incoming Presidents to meet members

Press, 9 October 1987, Page 35

Two incoming Presidents to meet members

Members of the Motor Trade Association and the Motor Vehicle Dealers’ Institute will be afforded an opportunity of getting to know their respective incoming presidents, both of whom were elected recently at the annual general meetings of their respective bodies. The M.T.A. president is Mr A. D. McLaren of Hamilton, who entered the motor business in 1958

as an apprentice to an ! engine reconditioner and ’ now owns a chain of I seven service stations in ! the Waikato-South Auck- ! land area. i A Dunedin specialist in I four-wheel-drive vehicles, I Mr G. L. Cowie, has been elected president of the M.V.D.I. ; A motor vehicle dealer I since 1972, firstly in a I partnership and then, for l the last nine years, on his

own account, Mr Cowie holds a 50 per cent shareholding in a company that dismantles four-wheel-drive vehicles and retails the parts. After completing his apprenticeship in the early sixties, when the job market was wide open, Mr McLaren went to work driving trucks and then selling cars. He found that there was a great deal of satisfaction to be derived

from serving the public and in 1964 he bought a Hamilton service station. Always a keen supporter of the M.T.A., Mr McLaren has represented Waikato as a national councillor for a number of years and is a pastpresident of the branch. He was also a member of the national executive and chairman of the M.T.A.’s Service Station Committee prior to the changes made

to the -Association’s committee structure. Now he is chairman of the Service Station Profitability Committee and a member of the board of directors of the association. For the last twelve months he has been the senior vice-president of the association. Mr Cowie began his working life on a farm before moving into the

grocery trade where he remained for four years. Then he spent nine years with Industrial Chemicals (N.Z.), Ltd, as a Southland sales supervisor before becoming involved in the motor Industry. He is a past chairman of the Otago branch of the M.V.D.I. and has represented Otago on the national council of the institute.