Car lover’s dream job up for grabs

10 July, 2016

We all know working at an insurance company is boring, right? You’d be just another nameless employee stuck wearing a suit in an ivory tower … or would you?

The car lover’s insurance company, Classic Cover, couldn’t be further removed from that stereotype. They’re small, they don’t wear suits, and certainly don’t occupy a 20-story tower in the heart of the city.

They’re actually car lovers like you and I, except they work in the insurance industry — after all, it doesn’t pay that badly.

And now, due to their ever-increasing popularity with other car and motorbike lovers, they’re looking for staff.

The job that they’ve got up for grabs is a Client Support role, in which you’d be responsible for providing effective client service and support through all aspects of the role, including claims, solving client queries, processing of renewals, endorsements, and new business. 

It’s a busy role as you’ll spend the bulk of your time dealing directly with clients, so obviously you’ll not only have to be a great communicator, you’ll also need to know your way around developing and maintaining relationships with clients, providing quotes, and processing policies and claims, so experience in the insurance industry would be an advantage, but isn’t essential. 

What is essential is that you know your cars, love your cars, can work hard, and are willing to learn. Excellent time management and the ability to provide the highest standard of client service, with a focus on quality outcomes, are also necessary, along with an exceptional phone manner and proven ability to build rapport with clients. Essentially you need to be the person that, if you were the customer, you’d love to deal with. 

There’s plenty of hard work involved, but you’ll be working with a great team who also enjoy cars as well as a good laugh, and there’s great potential for career progression.

If this role sounds like something you would be interested in, fire through a CV and cover letter to [email protected]z

Lunch with … Cary Taylor

Many years ago — in June 1995 to be more precise — I was being wowed with yet another terrific tale from Geoff Manning who had worked spanners on all types of racing cars. We were chatting at Bruce McLaren Intermediate school on the 25th anniversary of the death of the extraordinary Kiwi for whom the school was named. Geoff, who had been part of Ford’s Le Mans programme in the ’60s, and also Graham Hill’s chief mechanic — clearly realising that he had me in the palm of his hand — offered a piece of advice that I’ve never forgotten: “If you want the really good stories, talk to the mechanics.”
Without doubt the top mechanics, those involved in the highest echelons of motor racing, have stories galore — after all, they had relationships with their drivers so intimate that, to quote Geoff all those years ago, “Mechanics know what really happened.”

ROTARY CHIC

Kerry Bowman readily describes himself as a dyed-in-the-wool Citroën fan and a keen Citroën Car Club member. His Auckland home holds some of the chic French cars and many parts. He has also owned a number of examples of the marque as daily drivers, but he now drives a Birotor GS. They are rare, even in France, and this is a car which was not supposed to see the light of day outside France’s borders, yet somehow this one escaped the buyback to be one of the few survivors out in the world.
It’s a special car Kerry first saw while overseas in the ’70s, indulging an interest sparked early on by his father’s keenness for Citroëns back home in Tauranga. He was keen to see one ‘in the flesh’.
“I got interested in this Birotor when I bought a GS in Paris in 1972. I got in contact with Citroën Cars in Slough, and they got me an invitation to the Earls Court Motor Show where they had the first Birotor prototype on display. I said to a guy on the stand, ‘I’d like one of these,’ and he said I wouldn’t be allowed to get one. Citroën were building them for their own market to test them, and they were only left-hand drive.”