A hit on someone as high profile as Mick Hawi was no spur of the moment act, it required careful preparation and lots of money.

Assassinating the former boss of a bikie gang would have cost anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000 and take months of planning, according to underworld sources and police.

Cars had to be stolen and stored, illegal guns purchased and safe houses rented before and after the murder.

And that's before you pay the getaway driver and the gunman.

Hiring a hit man alone is costly. Ten years before he was eventually killed, a $100,000 contract was offered on Hawi's life, but no one was willing to take it up.

Mick Hawi's murder was almost a textbook gangland hit.

The high performance Mercedes Benz used in the execution was stolen nine months before his death. The Merc and a second getaway vehicle, a Toyota Aurion, were stored at a rented home in Bexley not far from where Hawi was gunned down outside the Fitness First gym in Rockdale.

Bikie gangs have similar stolen vehicles stashed in rented warehouses and workshops all over Sydney waiting for a rainy day - like when someone needs to be killed.

Car websites are trawled in the lead up to the murder for a registration number of a car matching it. A set of fake number plates matching a similar coloured and model Mercedes were made and attached for the drive to the hit, so all looked normal if police checked the rego.

Another set of stolen plates are made for the second car.

Police never recovered the murder weapon but know it was a Glock, favoured by the underworld, which would have cost up to $20,000 at the time and probably thrown away after the killing. The killers wouldn't risk selling it for another crime for fear the ballistics would come back to bite them.

Hawi, who had survived an attempt on his life in 2007, appears to have become complacent, and went to the Rockdale gym most days at the same time.

And on the day he was hit, his normal body guard or entourage was not with him.

There was only one way to kill Mick Hawi … and that was in broad daylight in public. He had too much security at home and would be alert.

CCTV footage showed that at the same time Hawi was arriving at the Rockdale gym for his daily workout, the stolen Mercedes was reversing out of the Bexley safe house.

At 12.06pm a carefree Hawi - wearing white shoes, grey tracksuit pants and a grey T-shirt - left the gym, climbed in his black Mercedes SUV and for some reason wound down the window.

Seconds later, a gunman dressed in black runs towards Hawi's vehicle with one arm outstretched and then fires multiple times, hitting the father of two in the head, face and shoulder.

The waiting getaway vehicle with driver then takes off before being dumped and not only set on fire but blown up by explosives to totally destroy any possible DNA. A second getaway car - the stolen Silver Toyota Aurion - was then used.

Two days after the shooting, the Aurion was loaded onto a tow truck from the Bexley safe house on CCTV footage played to the jury.

Originally published as $500k cold-blooded hit: Cost of a Sydney assassination