Sean Nero

Lo­cal car deal­er­ship Clas­sic Mo­tors con­tin­ues to per­form well de­spite the slow­down in the T&T econ­o­my and de­cline in con­sumer spend­ing.

Daryl Young, gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Ansa Mo­tors sub­sidiary, told the T&T Guardian: "Our sales are very good. In the last year we have al­most dou­bled what we had as mar­ket share. I would like to say that the fu­ture looks good for us at this point in time.

"We are still sell­ing over a 1,000 new cars a month. I think what is hap­pen­ing is peo­ple are go­ing to look for the best bang for their buck. They are go­ing to look to max­imise the val­ue for their pur­chase. At Ansa Mo­tors, we have sev­en of the best brands any­where in the world, so we have some­thing for every­one here.

"It's go­ing to be a mat­ter of how much of the mar­ket you want and every­body is go­ing to go fight­ing for their share." Young said ex­ist­ing clients are vis­it the com­pa­ny's show­rooms to ex­plore up­grades and prospec­tive clients are ex­cit­ed about the lines on of­fer. The Hon­da City CNG bi-fu­el (sedan) is a large part of the com­pa­ny's suc­cess, he said, sup­port­ed by the new com­pact sport util­i­ty (SUV) ve­hi­cle, the HR-V.

"It is the first time we have an SUV un­der $290,000 VAT in­clu­sive in T&T, which again puts the SUV is a price brack­et that is a lit­tle more at­trac­tive. That's do­ing very well," Young said. In Au­gust the com­pa­ny un­veiled its new mod­el Hon­da Civic, which Young de­scribed as a rad­i­cal de­par­ture from the orig­i­nal.

"They ar­rived on Au­gust 30 and if you want­ed one you'd have to wait six weeks. The mod­els lined-up are now re­freshed, sexy, strong, and peo­ple are look­ing at them and grav­i­tat­ing to us," he said Young said while there has been "a lit­tle tight­en­ing" in the sec­tor, "cars are be­ing sold."

On the is­sue of re­sale val­ue as­so­ci­at­ed to au­to­mo­biles, Young many con­sumers didn't think five years down the road when mak­ing a pur­chase, so they don't get the val­ue they ex­pect­ed.

"With Hon­da ve­hi­cles you have a very strong re-sale val­ue be­cause the ve­hi­cle is de­pend­able," he said.

Young said own­ing a car in T&T is an il­lus­tra­tion of how well an in­di­vid­ual is do­ing and there are many fac­tors that make a car some­thing an in­di­vid­ual would want to buy.

"When peo­ple turn 17, the first thing they do is go get their li­cense. It's a part of our cul­ture. Cars will al­ways sell. The sales may take a dip, TT (the sec­tor) may con­tract be­cause things are tight, but there are still heavy sales. The mar­ket has grown. There are more play­ers in it, so you push hard­er now for you space, but its' there," he said.