Auto Ethnographer with John Stech

This week on The Auto Ethnographer podcast, host John Stech speaks with Stavros Paraskevaides, located near Athens, Greece. Stavros recounts the challenging eight years he spent in the Middle East and how he managed a wide array of cultures within a distributor operation. He now puts those learnings to use for clients at SP4A Advisory, a consultancy he founded in 2021.Stavros led BMW and Rolls-Royce at the brands’ largest distributor in Saudi Arabia, a large company with multiple locations and over

In this week's episode John Stech, host of The Auto Ethnographer, has a conversation with with Gianfranco Pizzuto, Founder and CEO of Automobili Estrema, a company designing and preparing the Fulminea e-hypercar for launch. He also reveals plans for a new, as-yet, unannounced project.Born and raised in northern Italy where the borders of Austria and Switzerland converge with his native country, Gianfranco was raised bi-lingual Italian and German. He attributes his upbringing to his success in

In this week's episode John Stech, host of The Auto Ethnographer, has a conversation with Gareth Dunsmore. With an appreciation of different cultures going back to his childhood, thanks to his family, Gareth talks about his experiences working overseas with Nissan and VinFast. He also speaks about McLaren and how to convey its Britishness around the world.Gareth started his marketing career with Nissan Motors UK but had an opportunity earlier in his career to move to Nissan’s regional office based

In this week's episode John Stech, host of The Auto Ethnographer, has a conversation with Dr. Helmut Groesser. Helmut spent most of his career in Product Management at Mercedes-Benz. Most of the vehicles you know over the past decade were influenced by Helmut and his team in some way. Today he talks about how Mercedes-Benz considered different country-market requirements and some of the interesting ways to convince the vaunted Mercedes-Benz Engineering Department to adapt the vehicles.He took a

This week John Stech, host of The Auto Ethnographer is joined by Greg Tebbutt. Greg has spent 30 years in marketing with half of that in the automotive industry, both on the agency and the automaker sides. On the agency side he worked with Nissan, BMW, Audi, and Volkswagen (South Africa). On the automaker side, he worked with Volkswagen (USA), VinFast, and Meyers Manx. The conversation centers on the Volkswagen brand in South Africa, of which Greg is a native, as well as the United States, providing

John Stech, The Auto Ethnographer, introduces the concept of autoethnography and how it became "auto ethnography" with a focus on cars. On this podcast we tell the human stories behind the famous automotive and vehicle brands, spanning continents, countries, and cultures across the globe. We unlock the mysteries of local culture, values, and approaches to success in the vehicle industry.Derived from Tony E. Adams’ definition, "autoethnography" is a research method leaning on the experiences of