Frank Keane's interest in cars is hardly surprising given that their sales account for a turnover of more than £100 million (€127 million) in his business. But his 32-year-old love affair with BMW runs deeper. In that time he has seen the marque transformed into the dream purchase of the consumer age, promising satisfaction, speed and that peculiar finesse which seduced the producers of James Bond films into using the German-made cars and motorbikes as 007's playthings.

As the distributor of the Bavarian Motor Works brand since 1967, Mr Keane has seen the size of consignments grow from 10 to 200, "even 400 on occasions". "There is a charisma attached to the BMW. In fact, that is why I became interested in the car," he says.

He is now on the look out for a disused church which he could convert to a museum to house his collection of out-of-production BMWs.

As a former motor racing driver, he speaks of BMW's reputation on the race track in the early part of the century and its reputation as a motorbike manufacturer.

The showroom on Dublin's Navan Road displays some of the models which have passed through his hands, along with a motorbike range guaranteed to arouse t he suppressed desire among non-bikers to partake of the experience.

"It is surprising how many managing directors would use them. If you look at the financial services centre, for instance, quite a few people are not using cars going in there because of the traffic situation."

He is no stranger to the motorbike either and has twice driven on two wheels to the Monoco Grand Prix - a "superb trip", he says. But although BMW captures the imagination, most of his car sales come from Mitsubishi Motor. He has held the franchise for the Japanese cars and trucks since 1984. He is also the distributor for Pioneer Hi-Fi - which specialises in car and top end stereo products.

The eldest of six children whose father worked as an Irish Life Assurance superintendent, the young Frank Keane found himself in a variety of schools in Wexford, Longford, Dun Laoghaire and Monkstown in Dublin.

He left school at the age of 17 before doing his Leaving Cert because his father, who was ill, asked him was he wasting his time. He said he was.

His first job was with Brooks Thomas, selling paint. After a year-and-a-half he was told to stop talking about motor cars and do something about his interest in them. He joined Smithfield Motor Co, a Ford main dealership, as a junior salesman, and later moved to PR Reilly's, a multi-franchise operation, rising to the position of sales manager in 1956, at the tender age of 23.

A year later he started his motor racing career which stretched over 14 years, and included victory in the Sexton Championship in 1963, driving a Lotus Formula Junior. He eventually gave it up after a competitor deliberately drove him off the road during a race. "I was disturbed that somebody would do that," he recalls.

After nine years with PR Reilly, he moved to Mount Merrion Motors and then, in 1966, got the opportunity to become sales director at the Three Rock Garage in Rathfarnham. He subsequently went after and won the BMW franchise and formed the company Motor Import Ltd.

Before the Republic joined the EEC in 1973, he had lean years. As well as paying a 75 per cent duty on the car's landed cost, he was limited to importing 130 units a year, although the upside was that the car had "a scarcity value and a snob value".

"We started off literally in a laneway in Foster's Avenue in Mount Merrion. It was tough going. By 1972 we had lost maybe £22,000 or £25,000. In those days that was a hell of a lot of money, particularly when you were living on borrowed money."

When the restriction on importing cars was lifted in 1973, the business began to improve. Apart from a period in the early 1980s when tax rises forced him to reduce his staff from 64 to 38 and increase the price of his top of the range model from £21,750 to £37,000, the business has grown to where he took in 2,750 cars last year, much of it due to "a huge growth in female ownership".

These days he delegates responsibility because of his confidence in a good staff and management team which has won international management awards.

The first criterion of business, Mr Keane says, is to satisfy the customer, the second to "have staff who are happy working with you", an approach he learnt from Volkswagen in the 1950s when they sent over mechanics to introduce the Beetle to Irish garages.

But he feels nostalgic for the old, uncertain but "enjoyable days" when he tracked down customers, usually doctors and engineers, in far flung corners of the State.

"Those days of struggle were the happiest days of my life.

"When you are struggling and you are looking forward to things, those are the nice times."

In the first year which coincided with a depreciation in the value of the pound, he drove 57,000 miles but sold only about 30 units. "I would sit in my car and drive to Donegal, and tomorrow I would be in Cork, and the following day in Galway. I had to follow individuals. I found it difficult to get dealers because the car was not known. It was also seen as being over-priced."

He still does not possess an overcoat nor has he ever personally owned a car. He learnt to drive in his father's 1937 Ford Model Y - a long way from the company car he now drives, a yellow 1992 BMW 850.

He is "one of those nutcases" who used to swim all-year-round in the Forty Foot, and consequently does not feel the cold like lesser mortals. But, when indulging in another of his pastimes, duck and wild-fowl shooting, he does wears jackets, he points out.

Now 65 and with one of his sons coming into the business, he intends to do a lot more travelling, although, surprisingly, he won't be doing it on asphalt. After a few cruises on the Amazon, the Nile and the Yerawadda in Burma, riverboat manufacturers should watch out. "I am very interested in rivers," he says.