FEATURE – Rare Spares Part 2 – Company History
Words: Mike Ryan and Rare Spares
Photos: Rare Spares
Rare Spares is a name that’s so prodigious nowadays it’s become synonymous with classic car ownership and restoration. If you want a reproduction part for your classic Holden, Ford or Chrysler Valiant, you head to Rare Spares – it’s as simple as that.
It seems like it’s been that way forever, but Rare Spares is still a fairly young company in the grand scheme of things, having yet to reach its 50th Anniversary. That milestone is fast approaching, though, which makes it timely to look back on the history of this great Australian company and the great things it’s achieved to ensure Aussie-made Fords, Holdens and other classics are more than just memories – they’re working, driving, “living” pieces of Australian history.
In the Beginning. . .
While it carries a diverse range of parts for many different marques today, Rare Spares was initially a Holden-only venture. That’s because its founders - Les McVeigh, John Rayner and David Ryan – were mad-keen owners, restorers and modifiers of FX and FJ Holdens.
Back in the early 1970s, the trio moved in the same Holden enthusiast circles in suburban Melbourne, which meant they inevitably encountered each other; Les initially, with David and John introduced via a mutual friend. The trio started off buying, selling and swapping parts amongst themselves and others in the Early Model Holden Club of Victoria, of which Les was a founding member. This was years before the idea of formalising their shared interest into a business was even a thought.
The trio soon became well known within the early Holden community as a source for New Old Stock parts, which meant that when their hobby developed into a business, they already had customers lining up!
Prior to forming Rare Spares, Les, John and David were working independently - and often in competition with one another. To find those rarities, they’d often “go bush”, heading to GM-H dealers in Victorian country towns to hunt through their parts departments and warehouses. On occasion, those buying trips would take them as far afield as South Australia and New South Wales, too.
“We were a godsend for those guys who wanted parts for their FXs and FJs, and it just took off from there,” David Ryan recalls.
By the time Les, John, and a little later David, joined forces and formed Rare Spares in 1974, many of those rural Victorian GM-H dealerships had been picked clean, forcing them to venture even further in search of NOS goodies - as far away as North Queensland and Western Australia on occasion.
“There was still gold to be found in them thar hills,” as Lance Corby, a longtime member of the Rare Spares family and current General Manager, remembers.
“When City State Motors in Adelaide went belly up, Les, John and David went over with $3,500 and came back with 3 or 4 rail carriages full of stock!”
Initially, Rare Spares operated out of a small factory unit in Reservoir in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, with counter sales and mail order (remember that?), but no interstate distributors.
In 1976, just two years after opening its doors, Rare Spares had expanded enough to move into larger premises in Brunswick, closer to Melbourne’s CBD.
Rare Spares Pty Ltd was officially registered in the same year and the first reproduction parts were introduced at this time, too. Those initial parts were FJ sills and EH door belts.
A year later, rubber kits – door rubbers and windscreen seals – were added and became popular product lines, with rust repair panels and larger items following.
In 1980, founding member John Rayner sold his shares equally between Neal Videan and David Rayner, both of whom had recently joined the company. A year later, current Rare Spares General Manager, Lance Corby, started working as a ‘general hand’ for the company.
Rare Spares wasn’t all about NOS and reproduction parts in these early days – the business was offering reconditioned parts back then, too, like transmissions, steering boxes and other steering components, with Neal leading this section of the business. Neal would go on to establish Rare Spares’ overseas manufacturing operations that are a vital part of the company today.
Heading Out and Turning Blue
For Holden restorers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Rare Spares’ base at 190 Brunswick Rd, Brunswick, became a popular destination, but the business wasn’t done expanding.
The first distributors were appointed in 1979, thanks to the efforts of David Rayner, who went on to serve as Rare Spares’ General Manager until his retirement in 2016, selling his share in the business to Lance Corby.
An even bigger change came in 1986, when Rare Spares offered Ford reproduction parts for the first time.
“An advertising campaign was set up with the message: ‘You can’t hold us back now, Rare Spares goes Ford’,” Lance remembers. “We also started a diversification programme that year, marketing our products to Original Equipment Manufacturers here, such as General Motors-Holden and Ford Motor Company.”
Moving into the OEM space was as big a game changer for Rare Spares as the introduction of Ford products, with these OEM offerings formalised under the ‘Ford Reproduction Parts’ and ‘Holden Reproduction Parts’ banners in 2010.
Away from the classic car restoration arena, Rare Spares also formed ‘Raresco’ in 1986 to sell industrial rubber products, with these two arms of the business united in 1998 under the ‘RSP Australia Pty Ltd’ banner. In 2006, the business name changed again, to ‘RSP Automotive & Industrial Pty Ltd’.
“RSP Automotive & Industrial Pty Ltd, was developed to represent every aspect of our business,” Lance explains, “From automotive OEM, clips and fasteners, information technology, metal pressing, moulded rubber products, hose products and the Rare Spares branded automotive aftermarket parts and accessories.”
Bowe on Board and Fine Tuning
In 2005, Rare Spares signed up Australian touring car legend John Bowe as a brand ambassador. Bowe’s long and successful history in tin top racing made him a great fit for the business and he’s been a feature of Rare Spares promotion and advertising ever since.
It was through Bowe that Rare Spares were introduced to Gary O’Brien of Bendigo Retro Muscle Cars; an introduction that would benefit both parties.
Gary built and maintained Bowe’s Mustang for his Touring Car Masters campaigns back then, but he also did smash repair and restoration work that was highly regarded. More importantly, Gary was also a Holden fan, which endeared him to the Rare Spares team.
“We visited Gary’s business, looked at his operation and felt what he did fitted into an area that would help us with product testing on a more professional level than we could do ourselves,” Lance recalls.
Along with Gary O’Brien, other partners, like the GT Shop in Epping (VIC), help test and fine-tune future products, but every new reproduction part and panel is initially assessed at Rare Spares’ extensive in-house R&D facility before it goes to these specialists, with adjustments and improvements made as required prior to going into production and hitting the market.
Sourcing good, factory-accurate cars to take samples from when making reproduction parts is crucial and that previously meant heading out to wrecking yards to find original, unmolested cars to remove parts from, then returning to the same yard to test-fit the reproduction part. Lance says these trips were like the early days of parts-hunting, with the acquisition of a donor template to make new stock just as exciting as finding those forgotten NOS stashes decades earlier.
Now, much of the test-fitting is done at the aforementioned R&D facility (with much better working conditions than junkyards!), but finding factory-accurate donor cars remains vital. “We still travel wide and far to find unmolested cars,” Lance adds.
Ongoing Expansion, Exceptional Accuracy
As Rare Spares has grown, the range of reproduction parts they offer has grown, too.
“We’re now making parts that are far more complex than anything we could have dreamt of, even in the last ten years,” says David Ryan. An example of this would be full quarter panels for HQ-WB Holden utes.
The process of bringing such a large panel like this to market starts with finding a good donor vehicle, then shipping that off to Rare Spares’ overseas manufacturing facility to serve as a template for the reproduction part. This is manufactured in prototype form at first, then adjusted and modified as required before going to full production.
Rare Spares go over these pre-production pieces with a fine-tooth comb at their Melbourne HQ, then send them on to the likes of Gary O’Brien for further assessment. As Lance explains, experienced restorers like Gary are really attuned to the nuts and bolts of car restoration, so they’re a great source of feedback. This ultimately benefits both parties, as guys like Gary need the final product to meet OEM standards for their restoration projects, so it’s in their interest for all reproduction parts or panels to be as accurate to the original as they can be.
That commitment to accuracy with reproduction panels and parts for classic Holdens and Fords also extends to new OEM parts Rare Spares produce.
Speaking of Holden, the demise of “Australia’s Own” in 2020 hasn’t meant the demise of Rare Spares’ Holden parts development. If anything, it’s made the commitment to keep offering Holden parts and bringing new products to market for old Holdens even stronger, as owners become more determined to keep their cars alive and keep them on the road.
While “More Than Just a Part in Your Project” is the current Rare Spares slogan, the old tagline - “Old Holdens Never Die, ‘Coz Rare Spares Cares” – is truer now more than ever.
A New Era
An end of an era for Rare Spares came in 2016 with the passing of founder Les McVeigh, along with the retirements of Neal Videan and David Rayner. This led to a new partnership between David Ryan, Melissa McVeigh (Les’s daughter) and Lance Corby. This trio also formed a new Board of Directors for Rare Spares that included David Ryan Jnr (David’s son) and Joe Xuereb.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Rare Spares had to adapt and innovate, just like every other business, but thanks to established online ordering processes, the impact on day-to-day operations and the ability to serve customers was minimal.
In June, 2021, a new chapter in the Rare Spares story was written with the acquisition of RSP Automotive & Industrial Pty Ltd by GPC Asia Pacific, a subsidiary of the US-based Genuine Parts Company that also owns Repco and NAPA Auto Parts.
In the wake of this acquisition, Lance assures longstanding customers that Rare Spares standalone stores - and indeed Rare Spares itself - won’t disappear.
“RSP and Rare Spares will continue to operate under the Rare Spares banner,” Lance says. “In addition, our existing leadership team and operational structure remains in place and the RSP and Rare Spares brands will continue to grow in the market.
“There is only upside to this,” Lance adds. “You won’t see a change in the Rare Spares brand at all. GPC has a lot of tools we can access to help our development and supply to market faster – product sourcing, shipping and so on. There are so many synergies with the two companies working together.”
Today, Rare Spares retains a strong retail network, with Queensland operations expanded in 2021 with the opening of a new mega store in Brisbane’s Slacks Creek, while another mega store opened in Sydney earlier this year (see breakout), joining existing Rare Spares stores in Melbourne and Perth.
There’s more to come from Rare Spares, including new products to suit VK-VL Commodores and XD-XF Falcons as these models are now bona fide classics. Parts for Commodores as recent as VZ and Falcons as recent as BF have been launched, too - just to make some of us feel a lot older!
That being said, Rare Spares haven’t forgotten their origins, with FX-FJ Holden stone guard kits recently added to the range.
For the latest new products from Rare Spares, call in to your local Rare Spares or Repco store, or go to: rarespares.net.au
More on the early days of Rare Spares can be seen in the ‘Survivor’ video that’s on YouTube.
