New Mini boss

Mini Australia boss David Woollcott was born in Brixworth, in North Hamptonshire, just 100km north of London and only 40 minutes from the Oxford factory where Minis are made.

"While the first car I had was a Toyota LandCruiser my dad bought me because it was bomb proof, the first car I bought was a Mini Cooper S," he says.  "I've always had an enthusiasm for BMW cars since I was nine when a friend of my dad had an E30 M3."

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Woolcott studied engineering at the University of Bath for five years before moving to Munich to work on BMW fibre optics for vehicle data transmission.  However, he was asked to move to sales and marketing because "I like to talk".

"I was a bit offended by the German engineers who didn't think I was good enough to be an engineer," he says.

BMW put him through a graduate program in the UK for two years, then Woollcott contacted a BMW dealer in Melbourne and came out here for 18 months to sell cars.  BMW then put him through a product training manager course for 2.5 years.