Des Royal and Paul Biti, from Culcairn’s Biti Motors, with Stefan Kanaganayagam, representing Ford, and the Biti family’s own 1927 Model T Ford on display at this year’s Henty Machinery Field Days to help celebrate Ford’s 100th anniversary. Photo Supplied.
Paul Biti remembers the day someone knocked on the door of the family’s Culcairn car business and asked if they wanted to sell Fords.
“We shrugged our shoulders and said, ‘Yes, that sounds like a plan,'” Paul said. “We were one of the last upstanding dealers Ford put in place.”
Paul started working at Biti Motors in 1978 during school holidays and at weekends – before the first Falcon arrived at the dealership established by Bruno and Lois Biti and still situated at the town’s roundabout.
He went full-time in the business in 1980, describing it as “one of those three-way family partnerships with Mum, Dad and me”.
“We didn’t stress over who was doing what,” Paul said. “The sun came up, you went to work, the sun went down and you went home.”
The local community rallied around the new Ford dealership, according to Paul.
And with the XD Falcon released after the dealership’s opening, Biti Motors would set up its first display at the Henty Machinery Field Days in 1979.
This year the Biti family joined Ford at Henty’s three-day agricultural extravaganza to celebrate 100 years of rural motoring.
“We have been at Henty every year and have seen how the field days have grown,” Paul said. “I have been here for the whole journey of 47 years – there have been a lot of changes along the way but Ford reaching 100 years in Australia is a great milestone.”
There sitting quietly among the displays at the Ford site were several stately old vehicles parked beside their modern counterpart, the 2026 Ford Ranger Super Duty.
This nod to the motoring past featured a 1927 Model T Ford from the Biti family’s own private collection, a 1966 Ford ute which served as the dealership’s workhorse, and a 1942 Ford Jailbar owned by Brian Gleeson, of Lockhart.
The truck was used for pulling tractors for dam silting in the 1950s and was originally bought secondhand by Reg Gleeson, from Osborne, at a Woomargama clearing sale for the sum of 525 pounds ($1050).
It was used as the main farm truck until it was superseded in 1967 and then relegated to the second farm truck until it no longer started in 1999. According to its owner, restoration work started on the truck in 2003 and was completed in 2010.
Henty Machinery Field Days deputy chairman Daryl Thomson said Paul Biti was known locally as the “Ranger Man” with the Ford offering taking off in the local farming community.
“The Ranger is designed for the farming areas and has done well,” Mr Thomson said. “We want to thank Ford for your support to the agricultural community and the Henty field days.”
Federal Opposition Leader and Farrer MP Sussan Ley paid tribute to the Biti family for not only looking after the local area but the broader region.
“The Bitis are an incredible family and what they have achieved all comes from hard work,” she said.
“We back people who work hard, take risks, give back and build our community.”
