An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

The first au­to­mo­bile in T&T rolled ashore in 1900–a Lo­co­mo­bile Run­about, which was ba­si­cal­ly a two-seat horse­less car­riage pow­ered by a small steam en­gine.Fol­low­ing close­ly on the ex­cit­ing new tech­nol­o­gy trends of the time, there were soon many oth­er cars on the streets when these were still toys of the wealthy, be­ing both ex­pen­sive to ac­quire and com­plex to main­tain.In 1908 Hen­ry Ford in­tro­duced his im­mor­tal Tin Lizzie, the Mod­el T. Cheap thanks to in­no­v­a­tive de­sign and economised pro­duc­tion lines, the first of these cars hit Trinidad in 1912, when a fleet was im­port­ed, by Ylde­fon­so De Li­ma of jew­el­ry-store fame, to op­er­ate as taxis. The fare from Port-of-Spain to Mt St Bene­dict, for in­stance, was $8, a sub­stan­tial sum equal to the month­ly wage of a labour­er. JN Har­ri­man and Co, one of the old­est em­po­ri­ums in the land and owned by the Boos fam­i­ly, sold Mod­el Ts for a while, but in March 1919 a young Eng­lish­man named Charles McE­near­ney stepped in­to the pic­ture and ac­quired the sole deal­er­ship for the Ford brand in Trinidad.

Orig­i­nal­ly a pur­chas­ing agent sourc­ing co­conuts for the Schweppes bev­er­age com­pa­ny, Charles saw the rapid in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of the is­land with its oil econ­o­my as an op­por­tu­ni­ty and be­gan sales on Rich­mond Street in Port-of-Spain in a small way. San Fer­nan­do was the next fron­tier, in 1922, with a sin­gle-car show­room on Mu­cu­rapo Street in 1922; and the co­coa boom­town of San­gre Grande a year lat­er in part­ner­ship with George De No­bri­ga.The Mod­el T, in Trinidad as in the rest of the world, dom­i­nat­ed the roads. Aside from its rugged sim­plic­i­ty, it was of­fered in nu­mer­ous body-styles in­clud­ing pick­up truck, de­liv­ery van and sporty road­ster right up to the end of pro­duc­tion in 1927, when over 15 mil­lion had been sold.In 1931 the Rich­mond Street head­quar­ters was ex­pand­ed but the piece de re­sis­tance came in 1936, when a grand art-de­co show­room was opened on Roy­al Road in San Fer­nan­do. De­signed by John Gup­py, the im­pres­sive fa�ade in­cor­po­rat­ed a V8 lo­go which al­ter­na­tive­ly rep­re­sent­ed a trib­ute to King Ed­ward VI­II or else the mighty flat­head V8 en­gine which made Ford a per­for­mance leg­end.

The years of World War II from 1939-45 were a chal­lenge, since the Ford fac­to­ries had stopped as­sem­bling cars and had turned to mak­ing war ve­hi­cles and im­ple­ments. More­over, spare parts and car tyres were re­strict­ed as im­ports. Af­ter the war end­ed, sales re­sumed and thrived, a new branch be­ing opened in Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go in 1950 with small­er Eng­lish Fords such as the Pre­fect grad­u­al­ly re­plac­ing the Amer­i­can mod­els which had hith­er­to been the main­stay.Af­ter In­de­pen­dence in 1962 a new gov­ern­ment reg­i­men was im­ple­ment­ed to as­sem­ble cars lo­cal­ly. Charles McE­near­ney and Co rose to the chal­lenge and part­nered with H E Robin­son and Co,(im­porter for Rootes and BMC cars) to es­tab­lish an as­sem­bly plant in Tumpuna.Charles McE­near­ney and Co be­came part of the Al­stons Group in 1968. Be­fore its clo­sure in the 1990s, more than 100,000 ve­hi­cles were as­sem­bled at this plant. In 1975 Con­rad O'Brien was ap­point­ed man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, hav­ing be­gun his ca­reer at the firm in 1948 as a sales­man.A new hori­zon rose with the as­sem­bly of the Japan­ese-sourced Ford Laser, which was des­tined to be­come a suc­cess­ful ri­val to the now dom­i­nant Japan­ese brands in the mar­ket. A fur­ther for­ay in­to Japan­ese cars came with the ad­di­tion of the Dai­hat­su mar­que in the 1980s.

The year 1989 saw the merg­er of McE­near­ney and H E Robin­son, which brought the Hon­da, Mit­subishi and Land Rover brands in­to the fold. Fal­ter­ing ve­hi­cle sales in the re­ces­sion of the decade saw Con­rad O'Brien ne­go­ti­at­ing with An­tho­ny N Sab­ga, and McE­near­ney-Al­stons be­came part of the Ansa McAl group.Lo­gis­tic dif­fi­cul­ties in the 1980s saw the Ford name van­ish from the mar­ket on­ly to make a grand resur­gence in 1996 with a re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the brand that paired dy­nam­ic new cars with an ag­gres­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paign, thus firm­ly re-es­tab­lish­ing the foot­ing of one of the old­est ex­ist­ing au­to­mo­tive icons in Trinidad, still un­der the aegis of the com­pa­ny that was one of its ear­li­est rep­re­sen­ta­tives.Charles McE­near­ney and Co still ex­ists as part of the Ansa Au­to­mo­tive Group and has ex­tend­ed its reach in­to Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, as well as be­ing not­ed as the deal­er for many pres­ti­gious brands of ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing BMW (Ox­ford Mo­tors), Land Rover and Jaguar.