In the latest episode of the Let’s Drive Together with Glenn Ridge, we sits down with John Zeigler — a man best known for his extraordinary career in global advertising,
yet now making headlines for something entirely different: building a new generation of bespoke performance cars in Australia.
Zeigler, the former Asia-Pacific head of DDB and winner of the Academy of Marketing Science’s Global Marketer of the Year in 2013, has long been recognised for steering one of the most successful agency networks in the region. But behind the boardroom success is something far more visceral: a lifelong obsession with cars.
That passion began early. “I had enough money when I was 17 to buy half a new car,” John recalls. “Dad cleverly said to me, I need a new ute for the servo — I’ll go halves, and when you turn 18 you can have the ute.”
But what arrived wasn’t quite what he expected. “Just before I turned 18, Dad turned up with this old welder’s van. We painted it, put glass in the side, put surfboards in
the back… and it turned into this dream for an 18-year-old.”
Decades later, that same love for motoring has evolved into John’s biggest challenge yet: starting a car manufacturing company.
Introducing Zeigler Bailey: Australia’s New Bespoke Car Maker
Together with business partner Greg Bailey, John has founded Zeigler Bailey (ZB) — a company re-engineering classic G-Series Porsche 911s from the 1970s and ’80s into modern, hand-built performance machines.
“People refer to these as restomods,” John explains, “but this is a re-engineered car that has all the latest technology, suspension and luxury inside the classic G-Series
911.”
The comparison to Singer is inevitable, but John is quick to set the tone: “We respect and love what Singer have done, but we are doing something a little different.”
And they’re not just rebuilding engines — they’re reinventing them. “You’re not talking about putting a Porsche engine back in,” John says. “We are redoing a 4.4- litre engine… we’ve created a world first.”
That philosophy extends to the engineering. “We reinvented the suspension system to be a horizontally opposed, roller-rocker system where we move the shocks and
springs up over the engine — similar to the latest Lamborghini,” he reveals. Even the manufacturing process pushes boundaries:
“I think at last count we had something like 13 3D printers, and that ties to the concept of tool-less manufacture.” One of the most surprising elements is how flexible the platform is. “A day in the workshop and it goes from left-hand to right-hand drive — that’s because our unique skill is for the car to be ambidextrous from the start.” With the first cars set to hit the Australian market early next year, interest is already exceeding expectations.
“We’ve got enough interest where we think that when we launch next March, we will have sold all our 2026 production,” he notes. “We’re going steady for perfect — we never intend to produce hundreds of cars. We want a bespoke, really unique global car.”
John’s motivation is rooted not just in engineering, but also in Australia’s automotive identity. “Whilst we closed down the automotive industry, there’s something about
young people, men and women, that is part of our core culture as a country,” he says — a belief that passion, skill and innovation can thrive here once again. Some critics may think John is dreaming. But after seeing the Melbourne workshop — the precision, the craftsmanship, the energy of the team — it’s hard not to believe something remarkable is happening at Zeigler Bailey. And John himself sums up the project with a simple question that drives everything they do:
“What would Ferdinand Porsche have done if he knew what we know now?” If the early signs are anything to go by, John, Greg and their investors might very well have the last laugh — and Australia may soon have a new automotive icon to call its own.
You can listen to the entire chat by clicking on the podcast link below
