Tom Hartley Jnr was recently the special guest on an episode of Fuelling Around, discussing how he makes millions through dealing elite classic cars, his success secrets and how he’s redefining what a family business is.
“I left school when I was 11 years old - didn’t have any type of formal education at home, didn’t have any tutor and was brought up through what was my father’s business at the time,” he began.
“For me, I was the farmer’s son, I.e, if you’re a farmer, you expect your son one day to also be a farmer and for me, I didn’t know anything any different. If I wasn’t a used car dealer, I’m not sure what I’d be.”
Tom, while part of his family business became Britain’s youngest millionaire at just 15 years old. However, his father wasn’t into classic and supercars as much he was so, now aged 41 with his own business, he’s focussing on them.
He explained to the podcast hosts; “The cars that we operate in, the cars that we deal in, you know, there’s no Glass’s Guide for them.”
“Basically, it all comes down to market knowledge - it all comes down to gut feeling.”
“And, ultimately, in my business, that comes down a lot to me. I live and breathe the business for 18 hours a day, seven days a week.”
“We get some cars wrong - we buy some cars sometimes and lose hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
“But yeah, you’ve got to just go by your gut feeling and, over time, if you get more right then wrong then you’ve got a good business and if you get more wrong than right then you’re not in business.”
The businessman understands the world he works in, using his years of experience in every facet of his company.
“I try to focus on just the very best of anything,” he added.
“I only like to buy cars that I actually like and believe in myself because when you come to sell the cars, it’s so much easier to sell.”
“We have a fantastic relationship with all manufacturers. My relationship with Ferrari is particularly strong, my relationship with McLaren is very strong, Aston Martin, everybody, because we do the job properly and we are ambassadors in a way, supporting the values of their cars.”
While discussing how he enjoys his clientele, he did reveal how he tends not to trust them upfront.
He said; “We would never rely on an owner or a client on the history of their car because that’s our job as experts to research that history before they buy it.”
“We come across loads of cars, lots of cars where people think - they were probably mis-sold the car a little bit when they bought it and they think they’ve got a car that’s got its original engine and they’ve owned the car for 25 years.”
“And we inspect it and we’re like, that’s not the original engine and the chassis numbers completely wrong on it.”
“We’ve seen and witnessed a lot of unusual things that go on over the years so that’s our responsibility really. In order to be super diligent, to know what we’re buying.”
“The onus is on us there.”
He also clarified that it works both ways in dealing such expensive vehicles.
“I think there’s more trust involved when people are buying from us because it’s unbelievable how many cars we sell where people never inspect or never visit us.”
“I have no idea why we’re building this new showroom because, you know, out of 30 cars that we sell, I would say one in 30 visit us or one in 30 send someone to inspect a car for them.”
Despite this, he’s still taking the job very seriously.
“It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and takes one bad deal to ruin a reputation,” he said.
“We will dedicate weeks - somewhere between two to four weeks on one particular chassis - on pure research.”
And after nearly three decades in dealing specialist cars, he’s looking to the future, which includes his three children, Olivia, Tom, and William.
“My daughter’s already in the business so, she’s 17 and she left school last year. She completed her GCSEs and done us all very proud because nobody in our family is very well educated. All we can do is add up the price of a car.”
“She done well across the subjects and then decided she wanted to come into the business which was really nice to hear.”
“Our oldest son, Tom, who’s 13, whenever he’s not at school, if he has a school holiday, he travels with me everywhere and comes to office with me everyday.”
“This weekend, he was working with our head detailer and he was detailing a Ferrari F40 that we’ve just purchased.”
“Last week, he was taking calls - he tried to sell one of them a Land Rover Defender - so he’s starting on the right path.”