Sean Nero

Sales of Ford ve­hi­cles in T&T have been in­creas­ing de­spite the down­turn in the lo­cal econ­o­my, says Jim­my Boissiere, gen­er­al man­ag­er of McE­near­ney Mo­tors.He spoke about the health of the brand at the re­cent launch of new mod­els–the 2016 Ford Ever­est, Ranger and Fu­sion at the deal­er­ship's Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, head­quar­ters.

"The Ford brand is a de­sired brand. A lot of our pick-ups are the de­sired pick-ups in the in­dus­try. In the mar­ket­place every­one grav­i­tates to a Ford Ranger," he said.

"The Ranger is the heav­i­est du­ty pay­load pick-up on the mar­ket. Be­sides the con­sumers on that end be­ing sat­is­fied, we are now look­ing more at di­ver­si­fy­ing the Ford range, so as the con­sumers ad­just to the re­al­i­ty of the econ­o­my, they have op­tions at Ford to suit their pock­ets," Boissiere said.

"We are build­ing a brand. We are build­ing the op­tions. The con­sumer has choic­es with Ford. Un­doubt­ed­ly, the econ­o­my is ad­just­ing and the con­sumers' buy­ing pow­er is go­ing to ad­just to a new re­al­i­ty. We have to po­si­tion our­selves so that we have choic­es the con­sumers can look at and make a good choice with Ford."

McE­near­ney Mo­tors is a di­vi­sion of Ansa Au­to­mo­tive in the ANSA McAL Group.

Boissiere said long be­fore the econ­o­my took a neg­a­tive turn, the ANSA McAL Group de­vel­oped a pack­age to make it eas­i­er on new car own­ers, re­duc­ing their month­ly pay­ments on prod­ucts and ser­vices cru­cial to the up­keep, safe­ty and com­pli­ance of their ve­hi­cles on the na­tion's roads.

"One of the things ANSA McAL pi­o­neered–and we are still num­ber one in–is pro­vid­ing the con­sumer with an in-one pack­age where your ser­vice, your in­sur­ance, your fi­nance...every­thing is in one pack­age. So it works for the con­sumer in that for five years, you don't have to look for in­sur­ance, for five years you don't have to look for ser­vice. So it cer­tain­ly helps the con­sumer. Every­thing is fi­nanced through ANSA Mer­chant Bank," he said

Boissiere de­scribes the mar­ket's re­sponse to the new Ford mod­els as ex­cit­ing.

"The Ever­est is a beau­ti­ful ve­hi­cle, sol­id on the high end of the SUV side, but there is a mar­ket for it and we are see­ing that with our cus­tomers. We have done ex­ceed­ing­ly well so far, and the in­ter­est we have seen, we are very en­cour­aged by it. A more ma­ture cus­tomer, but pro­fes­sion­al, who un­der­stands val­ue for mon­ey was dri­ving the Ever­est out of the show­room," he said.