Industry pioneer remembered
Tributes have been paid to automotive industry pioneer Mike Nelson, who has died aged 78.
His career spanned more than five decades and reached from the Hutt Valley to the markets of South America.
Nelson, pictured, began in the industry in 1970 at Manthel Motors, Wellington’s Holden dealership, before moving to Avery Ford two years later.
By 1973, aged 26, he had his own operation, Bellvue Auto Court, which grew to three branches across Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt and Wainuiomata.
He traded through the golden years of the Kiwi muscle car and his family remembers new Holden Monaros and Ford GT-HO Shaker Falcons coming home from the yard. “If only he'd kept a few of them,” notes his eldest son, Gregg.
Besides selling cars, Bellvue Auto Court, pictured below, proved to be a training ground for others in the industry and numerous dealers in and around the Hutt region made their start as salesmen under Nelson before opening their own vehicle-retailing businesses.
Away from the car sector, Nelson owned and raced MunLee, winner of the 1978 Marlborough Filly of the Year, and in the early 1980s founded PC Power to sell IBM-compatible hardware and software.
His digital fluency proved vital in 1987 when he established Trafalgar Cars Wholesale and became one of the early pioneers of the Japanese used-import wave, managing large fleets digitally and wholesaling nationwide for 15 years.
The import trade took him beyond New Zealand and to places such as Ireland and Czechoslovakia, where a first consignment of 50 cars sent by train across Russia arrived largely stolen.
In 2002, he moved to Chile and established Trafalgar’s export-import operation through the Zona Franca duty-free port at Iquique, supplying Japanese imports across South America until 2005, when he returned to New Zealand for semi-retirement and property investment.
Nelson also took an equity stake in LemonCheck, a digital vehicle-history venture founded by Gregg, in 2002.
He was in his final weeks when he heard of Gregg’s newest venture in the automotive industry and “smiled and gave it the thumbs up”.
Nelson passed away on July 1 and was laid to rest at Featherston Cemetery on July 6. He is survived by his three children, Gregg, Mark and Tania.
