Premcar turns 30 in 2026. To celebrate, we’re sharing some of our carmaking knowledge. This time, it’s about self-belief.
Self-doubt has limitless power. It’s like an acid that can dissolve any material. When it’s eating away at your soul, it feels like it could burn its way from one side of the earth to the other.
Self-doubt typically rises at the wrong time, like when you’re facing a big decision or have to make a speech.
Self-doubt affects everyone at different times.
And we all know that self-belief, or the commitment to making an idea work, counters self-doubt.
But self-belief can be difficult to conjure at will.
Just ask Jerry Burgess, the guy who prepared the bikes for three of MotoGP’s greatest champions.
More than 15 years ago, Wayne Gardner, Mick Doohan and Valentino Rossi raced 500cc Grand Prix motorcycles.
Today’s 360 km/h MotoGP bikes might be faster than an F1 car, but those earlier two-stroke machines were unpredictable and violent to ride.
Anyone who raced them needed deep self-belief, something Aussie five-time World Champion Mick Doohan had in spades, which Burgess revealed during a 2007 interview:
“Wayne Gardner was a worrier and you’d have to remind him that he’d already beaten everyone he was racing against.
“Do that to Mick and he’d look at you with burning eyes and say, ‘So don’t you think I can do it, JB?’ That’s the thing with people like Mick and Valentino – they never doubt themselves.”
The same insight applies to volume carmaking, but with a problematic twist: because these operations and their teams are so large, their collective self-belief (and self-doubt) become imbued with inertia, causing them to stop questioning if their inputs are actually creating success – or failure.
Like a fast-spinning heavy flywheel, every decision and action taken at a car brand that’s ‘on a roll’ can seem to be the key drivers behind ever-growing sales and profits.
But when sales fall and keep sliding, it can seem impossible to spin up the necessary self-belief to create a turn-around, and it’s here that self-doubt and learned helplessness take root.
Because Premcar is much smaller than a global automaker, our team-based self-belief ‘flywheel’ is light and small. It has the potential to decelerate quickly but it can re-accelerate just as fast, especially in the face of challenges.
Collective self-belief isn’t about motivational posters on an office wall. It’s the chemical that neutralises the corrosive pH of self-doubt, and activates the decisions and behaviours that create better results.
Life and business teach us that self-doubt and self-belief are neighbours. They live on each side of the same coin.
But it’s hard to remember how to flip that coin when self-doubt is staring you down.
As I said, self-belief is committing to making an idea work. It’s also a commitment to living with stress, a commitment to making hard decisions and being prepared to be wrong on the road to making things right.
I’ve learned it all starts with first steps:
Raise your hand for help.
Privately seek trusted guidance.
Get advice from outside your team.
Do the things that worked previously.
Carefully introduce new methods.
Study if doing the opposite of the obvious can create better results.
Just don’t stay where you are.
Self-belief is a powerful invisible force in the highly complex world of carmaking.
Never underestimate it.
Bernie Quinn, CEO of Premcar
About Premcar:
Premcar Pty Ltd is a leading Australian vehicle engineering business that specialises in the automotive, defence and aerospace industries. For 30 years, global car-makers have made Premcar their go-to partner for the complete design, engineering and manufacture of niche-model new cars, full-scale new-vehicle development programs, and electric vehicle (EV) conversions and manufacturing. Premcar’s body of work is extensive. It is the name behind more than 213,000 new cars and 55,000 new-vehicle engines. The company has delivered technical advancements and sales success for major car brands from Europe, the USA, Japan, China and Australia. Visit premcar.au.
