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Back in the early 70s, Len Wrennall was happily living the life of a muso. Lighting up the stage at pubs around Auckland and smashing out covers by The Eagles and The Beatles, he’d never envisioned a career for himself in automotive dismantling – until a spot of reading changed everything.
“He was a full-time musician, and then he read an article about these Australian automotive recyclers who would buy cars, strip the parts off them, and sell them,” says Jared Wrennall, Len’s son and a director at Advanced Parts. “He thought it was interesting, so one day he and his mate bought a car, stripped some parts off it, and I think they made 500 dollars. And they thought, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea.’”
Fast forward to 2024, and Len’s homegrown automative dismantling business has just marked 50 very successful years in operation. Advanced Parts is a family business proud to specialise in dismantling and selling parts for Ford, Holden, and Tesla vehicles. The decision to branch out into Teslas was a recent one, a move that made perfect sense for a business keen to keep innovating in their industry space.
“We have always been ones to push the boundaries,” says Jared. “We’re very big on embracing technology and creating efficient systems. We were the first dismantler in New Zealand to have a computer stocking system.”
The business’s focus on efficiency is evident in the high volume of work they do. Every day, their close-knit team of 26 works like a well-oiled machine to purchase, process, and sell car parts that many mechanics can’t find anywhere else.
“We buy damaged cars,” explains Jared, “we strip all the good parts off them, and we recycle them and sell the parts for use again second hand.”
The vehicles are typically sourced from local car auctions, with occasional imports from Australia making their way into Advanced Parts’ commercial space and massive warehouse. From there, the team gets to work dismantling the vehicle and categorising each part, with anything unusable moved on to scrap metal recycling.
“At the moment, we dismantle 1.5 cars per day,” says Jared, “depending on the car and the number of parts we can pull off it. Before we get started, we have a specialist who goes around the car and writes a report telling us what parts are good and what parts aren’t, and then we can decide which ones we need to keep and what we’ll recycle, based on the demand in the market and what we already have in stock. It can vary depending on what’s damaged on the car – for example, if we buy a car that’s been hit in the front, obviously you can’t get anything usable off the front, so a lot of broken stuff will just get scrapped straight away.”
The parts fit for resale are cleaned, tested, and stored in the warehouse until a buyer comes looking – and the inventory on offer is incredibly wide, with the business holding stock of at least 200,000 parts at any given time.
Advanced Parts’ customer base is made up in the majority by mechanics, auto electricians, and panelbeaters, with a handful of car enthusiasts thrown in. “We do have a sales counter, so you can come in and see us,” says Jared, “but about 96% of our businesses is done either over the phone or by e-mail, with parts sent out by courier nationwide. We have a big dispatch department with two people packing and packing parts full time.”
No matter who gets in touch to buy a part, customers come away with peace of mind to go with their purchase.
“When people are looking for a part, they want to know: ‘Has it been tested? Has it got a warranty?’ One of the biggest things that sets us apart from a lot of our competitors is our warranties. We like to say that we have the longest warranties – a lot of our parts are warrantied for longer than a brand-new part. Some parts can be thousands and thousands of dollars, so when you’re spending a lot of money, I think people want real peace of mind that what they’re buying is exactly what they need, the right part for their car, and that it’s not going to break down.”
Eighteen months ago, Advanced Parts took a market-leading step away from dismantling strictly Ford and Holden vehicles; prompted by the growing electric vehicle market in New Zealand, they began to work with Teslas.
“We hadn’t done electric vehicles before,” notes Jared. “Now, from what I can tell, we’re the only serious Tesla dismantler in the country. We’re always looking for new trends and ways we can develop our business, make things more efficient, keep up with technological advances and provide better service for our customers.”
Although dismantling the occasional rare vehicle is fun (“We recently wrecked a Ford Mustang, and we dismantled a 1960s Ford Galaxy for a friend of ours”), Jared says the business’s secret to success has been consistently working with the same makes and models of cars. “We’re more efficient when we we’re doing cars that we know really well and we know what parts we need to keep.”
Also key to the 50-years-strong success of Advanced Parts is their hardworking team, some of whom have been with the business for over 20 years. “Probably one of my favourite things about the business is the people that we work with, the team that we have,” says Jared. “Even above skills and qualifications, the most important thing that we look for when we hire someone is their character and how they’ll fit in our business. We’re different people from all different walks, but we all get along really well and everyone really cares about the business.”
As Len’s son, Jared isn’t the only member of the family have a close connection to the business. Jared recalls a childhood spent intertwined with its daily operations, with the business “almost seeming like another sibling.”
“Ever since I was a kid, we’ve always been in the same location. Dad would come into work on Saturdays and bring us kids, and we’d run through the yard and look through cars, find money in cars and play around in the building.
“To some degree, the business has dictated things like family holidays and all sorts of things, back when Dad was really trying to get it off the ground and putting in the hard yards. He worked a lot when we were younger.”
All of Len’s hard work and the family’s sacrifices have certainly paid off. As the business celebrates the past 50 years, they can also mark the milestone of having three generations of the Wrennall family among the ranks.
Len, of course, is a director and still active in the business, and his wife, Gaye, joined him at work when their three children were young to manage the business accounts receivable (which she did for 15 years, alongside running the kids’ day-to-day lives). Jared’s brother and sister both joined as teenagers before moving on their own chosen careers, a cousin and nephew also came on board, and now Jared, who has been with the business for over 20 years, has proudly welcomed his teenaged daughter into a part-time role.
“On some days we’ll have three generations of my family working at the same time, which I think is quite special,” Jared says. “I don’t think there’s a lot of businesses out there with that sort of family network running through it.”
He adds, “I like to think that our family connection, and feeling like family with our staff, too, rubs off on our customer service and the quality of what we do. We have a business that cares about people and cares about each other, and we hold that to high value.”
As the family and team behind Advanced Parts looks to the future, Jared says that one thing is certain: like families do, they’ll continue to grow.
“We’ve had really good growth over the last five years, and we’ll continue to push that,” says Jared. “We’ll be continuing to find efficiencies so we can provide the best for for us and our staff and the best quality that we can for the industry. With the automotive market continuing to shift, we’re going to be making sure we shift with it.”
Advanced Parts is located at 11 Honan Place in Avondale. If you’re in the market for a Ford, Holden or Tesla part, their friendly team can be reached by phone at 0800 777 525 or by email at [email protected]. You can also visit their website: fordandholdenparts.co.nz.
By Beth Caunter
Roundabout Magazine
This article was published in Roundabout Magazine Issue 211 (September 2024).