Hughenden Motors BMW High Wycombe - Any Info

[anonymous-user]

a8hex said:

garyhun said:

a8hex said:

Not been there for 25 plus years. They were the main dealer in town. I used to work for Rapid Recall where half the cars seemed to be Beamers, so they were always about in the office.

Hah - I used to work at Rapid too around the early 90's. Red BMW 318iS

I'd have left in 88 or thereabouts I guess, while they were still in the old building near the Rose & Crown, Mendy Street still seems to be there according to street view, but ends about where I think the office should have been :-) I tried to work out what the road was, but it's gone.

Ah, I joined in the new building about a year before the Metrologie takeover. Looks like 1989 rather than early 90's after working out the dates.

[richard jh]

I used to work for BMW Concessionaires from 1972 to 75"Anton Hille who lived in Sonning died in 2010 living near Woking.He did indeed own 2 dealerships called Altwood in the Thames Valley in the period when the UK importer was taken over by the factory.. BMW Concessionaires was highly entrepreneurial and aged 24 I reported direct to the marketing director Chris Tenant.who was the Queen's first cousin and like me in his mid 20s . BMW was then owned by investment house / merchant venturerTKM who also owned or part owned importerships for Mazda, MAN Trucks,Alfa, Daihatsu and Kia..I moved to work at Mazda and then as Sales Manager at MAN. Eventually, after working in the finance sector and as commercial director oa a JV company with Asda - I joined Peugeot in the Uk holding several
eral Director roles over 15 years retiring aged 51, The last BMW I owned was a Z3M but have owned and cherished sundry classics including V12 Ferrari,Aston Martin,Porsche and my true love Facel Vega.

[Rimbo]

Your forum mentions the above who was head of BMW Concessionaires back in the 1970's and left after
a dispute with a golden handshake of £120 k and with that money bought Altwood Garage in Maidenhead,
Berkshire in about 1980. He eventually recruited Mike Harris from Sytners in Nottingham to be Managing Director and built a team round him to run the dealership. I was fortunate to be recruited as Commercial Director and made responsible for the financial and secretarial functions of the business. In 1982 Altwoods
opened a dealership in Slough and after a slow start business increased rapidly with the introduction of the
range of 3 series models. This continued over the next five years and I left in 1987 with Mike Harris who went to Aylesbury to take over Colver and Hencher subsequently renamed Autohaus, The Altwood sites were sold by Tony Hille to Graham Goodman the Sales Director for a substantial amount of money and he
retired to Woking in Surrey to live with his new partner. I have many memories of the man as he was as large as life and was never one to miss a good lunch and a few drinks and quite often a few more ! He died
in 2010 and I assume he must have been well into his eighties which is remarkable in its self. Milcars 1981 to 1982, Altwoods 1982 to 1987, Autohaus 1991 to 1994 plus various temporary assignments at other dealers/groups. Robert Muggeridge

[neutral 3]

Hi all and thank you so much for all of the replies!
I have only recently returned here after some time and have missed many of the replies to my post! Inc from my pal Samuri with the Golf yellow CSL, whose number etc etc i lost last year when i was robbed in Milan !

I will pm a few of you !

[NathanNotSoEnglish]

Hi all,

I'm Nathan and I'm based in Dublin, Ireland. This here is my (dream car) 1988 BMW 520i factory manual. I picked it up last September and have been loving it every minute so far!


These cars have been my dream for the last ten years basically, so it's still surreal to me, that I actually managed to pick one up, especially in the current climates we find ourselves in!


I have to give massive credit to the previous owners of this vehicle, without their obvious care and attentive attitude toward the car, it definitely wouldn't still be here. Or it would be far worse off. The car is genuinely rot-free which is not something that you usually come across in old cars!

It’s a UK car originally and I’m just wondering if anyone can help me to find any previous details regarding the car itself. I have some history on it...but not a lot considering it’s getting on for 35 years old!

Recently, I found an advert from around June/July 2019, when the car appeared to be living in Fakenham in England! Then in early 2020, it was up in Scotland where it was purchased by the guy I bought it off, in Lisburn, Northern Ireland. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Curiously though, one of the first things I noticed about my car was the dealer plate on the rear "Altwood BMW Slough". I'm trying hard to piece together the history of the car as much as possible. As I've said above, these cars have long since been my dream and as such, I'd like to know as much as possible about my car! My car is a 1988 BMW 520i e28 and my prior Reg was “E774 HJM”.

Note: The car was originally Lachsilber.



Cheers,
Nathan

[lowdrag]

I bought my Beemers in the 80's and early 90's from Cripps of Kibworth, a small dealership south of Leicester. They did well, but when the big dealership set up in Leicester, making deals they couldn't match, they eventually folded.

[TarquinMX5]

Nathan

You might be better off starting a new thread, dedicated to your question, otherwise you're reliant on somebody reading about Hughenden seeing your query, which doesn't appear to be related to the thread title.

[838HNK]

Sorry I hate really hate people who disrupt a thread .... Rapid Recall ... the Dawes brothers and the world of VMS .... Alan Bunker and the Golf GTI that just refused to die despite all his attempts ... and lots more stories of company car abuse :-)

[a8hex]

838HNK said:

Sorry I hate really hate people who disrupt a thread .... Rapid Recall ... the Dawes brothers and the world of VMS .... Alan Bunker and the Golf GTI that just refused to die despite all his attempts ... and lots more stories of company car abuse :-)

Hate away
I worked for Steve Dawes and very closely with Alan Bunker, bits of his GTi would die, I had the brakes on a loaner one die completely on me. Haven't seen either of them for years. Bumped in Alan near the Jekyll & Hyde on the A33 a few years after we'd both left Rapid and then Steve Dawes when he was on a training class but that must have been about 15 years ago. I used to see Paul Norris (the other VMS man) from time to time, but not for a few years now.
None of us seemed to be customers of Hughenden BMW though

[TwigtheWonderkid]

LanceRS said:

The Gerard's Cross dealer was Prophets.

Which became Sytner. Started selling BMW bikes also before they moved, out of the side of the showroom that was on Oak End Way. Then they opened a bespoke motorcycle showroom in Packhorse Road, where M&S now stands.

Eventually migrated to High Wycombe and the Station Rd dealership is now Waitrose.

I think.

[V41LEY]

I remember Hughes of Beaconsfield next to my school in the new town !

[TwigtheWonderkid]

V41LEY said:

I remember Hughes of Beaconsfield next to my school in the new town !

Still there. Bought my Merc from them.

[Sebring440]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

V41LEY said:

I remember Hughes of Beaconsfield next to my school in the new town !

Still there. Bought my Merc from them.

The new service centre which opened in March, 1971. They were still a Jensen dealer in those days:

[TarquinMX5]

Sebring440 said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

V41LEY said:

The new service centre which opened in March, 1971. They were still a Jensen dealer in those days:

There's a fair selection there, including: Rover P6, Triumph Pi, E-types, MK11 Jag, XJ, Jensen Interceptor, CV8, Capri and is that a Renault 16 on the ramp?

What's the two-tone car in the distance, a Herald? (it looks blurred)

[TypeR]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

LanceRS said:

The Gerard's Cross dealer was Prophets.

Which became Sytner. Started selling BMW bikes also before they moved, out of the side of the showroom that was on Oak End Way. Then they opened a bespoke motorcycle showroom in Packhorse Road, where M&S now stands.

Eventually migrated to High Wycombe and the Station Rd dealership is now Waitrose.

Before it was Prophets, it was named Birds I think. I seem to remember they carried out Hartge conversions.
Hartge then had a workshop near my house in Uxbridge.

I seem to remember the old Prophets site being taken over by a dealer who sold very high end cars with eye watering prices.

[ncbbmw]

lowdrag said:

I bought my Beemers in the 80's and early 90's from Cripps of Kibworth, a small dealership south of Leicester. They did well, but when the big dealership set up in Leicester, making deals they couldn't match, they eventually folded.

Cripps were a victim of BMW's termination plans, otherwise known as invest millions in new premises or leave the the franchise.

I went to the 7 series E38 launch in Munich with a work colleague, the drive out was a back to back comparison between E32 735i and E38 740i four to a car to the Interalpen Hotel in Austria.

We shared the car with Nick Cripps and his then (Parts?) Manager who drove the Autobahn section in the new 740i, Nick was sat in the back telling him to drive faster until we hit the speed limiter @ 200 kmh, that was the first and last time I've ever been that fast in a road car, somewhat ironically about 15 minutes later after we entered Austria we were stopped for speeding (as were many others on the event) doing about 60 kmh in a 40 zone, I was the only person with any local currency so ended up paying, from memory it was about 30 quid.