“I had dirty overalls on at the service station where I was working and a guy in a suit and tie walks in,” Keith Harrison recalls.
“He goes ‘the local real-estate agent told me you were the one to speak to about starting a Toyota dealership in Melton’.”
It’s hard to imagine that this conversation, 40 years ago this month, led to the creation of one of Melton’s most renowned businesses.
“We started in a little service station [in 1973] and then moved in 1994, to where Harrison Hyundai [also part of the family business] is now,’’ Harrison says.
“We used to pick up the cars and clean them ourselves. We had only three staff members and everything was manual back then, with no computers.’’
Harrison, a former citizen of the year, says the business has changed greatly over the past 40 years – just like Melton itself.
“There were about 3000 to 5000 people in the district total, with no big shopping centres,” he recalls. “At the western end of town there was nothing, and there were houses in between shops.”
The fact that the business is still in family hands after so many years is something of which Harrison is proud.
His son Grant runs the Toyota dealership, while another son, Nicholas, runs two Hyundai dealerships in Melton and
Caroline Springs.
Grant was four when his father started the business, but that didn’t stop him becoming involved. “I used to have one of those push-pedal cars and I used to drive it through the cars in the dealership.’’
He says community involvement remains important to the company. “There’s still the community feel and family aspects.
‘‘We are selling cars to second and third generations, people whose parents purchased cars with us.
“We have also given a lot to the community and as I get older I’m trying to give even
more back.”
