Toyota loses product planning chief

TOYOTA Australia product planning chief Greg Gardner last week quit the company after 26 years, preferring to stay in Sydney rather than relocate to Melbourne with other members of the planning team.

An engineer, Mr Gardner, 51, was corporate manager product planning, overseeing the model line-up for both Toyota and Lexus in Australia.

He told GoAuto he had elected to take a redundancy package from Toyota and stay in Sydney to support his wife, who was studying for a PhD.

“She has sacrificed her career for me over many years, so I thought it was time to return the favour,” he said.

The Toyota product planning team is being consolidated from Toyota Australia’s sales and marketing office in Caringbah, near Sydney’s Botany Bay, to the company’s Port Melbourne head office so the planners can work more closely with Toyota Australia engineers at its technical centre at Notting Hill, in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs.

Mr Gardner, who graduated from Sydney University with a degree in mechanical engineering, joined Toyota as a compliance engineer in the 1980s before being appointed product planning manager in 1991 – a position he held for a decade.

He then held a number of senior roles in other areas of the company, including TRD (Toyota Racing Development), marketing, accessories and retail development.

Most of those appointments were in Sydney, although he worked in Melbourne – site of Toyota’s corporate headquarters at Port Melbourne and main factory at Altona – between 1997 and 2000.

Mr Gardner said he had enjoyed his time with Toyota and had left on good terms.

He said he wished to continue working, and was looking for a new role in Sydney.

Toyota Australia public relations manager Mike Breen said a replacement for Mr Gardner had been identified, but it was premature to reveal the name.