An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

ANSA Mo­tors Ltd has opened a state-of-the-art show­room for Jaguar Land Rover ve­hi­cles on Rich­mond Street in Port-of-Spain.At the launch of the new show­room on Tues­day, sec­tor head for ANSA Mo­tors, Jerome Bor­de, said the brand was ea­ger to push on de­spite lin­ger­ing chal­lenges fol­low­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

“COVID has not left the au­to­mo­tive busi­ness. You would see in the news mi­crochip chal­lenges, sup­ply chal­lenges from lo­gis­tics that all busi­ness­es face, yet we com­mit­ted to this. The com­mit­ment is be­cause we be­lieve in the fu­ture of this busi­ness and the cus­tomers that have stuck with us, which is what keeps us go­ing,” Bor­de said.
He ex­plained that those sup­ply chain chal­lenges have been es­pe­cial­ly dif­fi­cult for the Land Rover brand, but he ex­pects that there would be a re­cov­ery.

“Even­tu­al­ly every­thing will sort it­self out and it didn’t de­ter us from in­vest­ing in what we did here to­day. That is be­cause we know at some point our busi­ness will sta­bilise and that we will be able to do every­thing we are ac­cus­tomed to do hope­ful­ly,” he said.
Bor­de said the open­ing of the new show­room is not just a con­tin­u­a­tion but an evo­lu­tion of ANSA Mo­tors’ com­mit­ment.

“It stands as a tes­ta­ment to our growth, as well as to the crafts­man­ship, in­no­va­tion, and at­ten­tion to de­tail that de­fines every Jaguar and Land Rover ve­hi­cle. These brands are more than just cars; they are a tes­ta­ment to the pur­suit of ex­cel­lence, ad­ven­ture, and mod­ern lux­u­ry,” Bor­de re­marked.

Asked by Guardian Me­dia if car prices are go­ing up, Bor­de said that car prices will in­crease es­pe­cial­ly elec­tric ve­hi­cles, due to the tech­nol­o­gy that is used in them. On the oth­er hand, he said the pub­lic can al­so ex­pect prices de­creas­es in some cars.
“There are bet­ter ship­ping freights avail­able and com­mod­i­ty prices are go­ing down. So, there is go­ing to be a bal­ance at the end of the day, but let’s be re­al, every prod­uct has its life cy­cle and cars in my life­time haven’t gone down by much,” he out­lined.
When asked about the price range of the Range Rover ve­hi­cles, Bor­de in­di­cat­ed that it starts from $600,000.

“You can build as ex­pen­sive as you want. This is a pre­mi­um brand, there is a mar­ket, and there are peo­ple, who have spent their life­time work­ing, in­vest­ing and cre­at­ing wealth, and would like to en­joy prod­ucts for them. The Range Rover is the top of the crop and ob­vi­ous­ly, it is go­ing to be the most ex­pen­sive com­mer­cial ve­hi­cle you can buy,” Bor­de said.
Al­so speak­ing at the launch was Mex­i­co’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Jaguar Land Rover Raul Peñafiel, who said the vi­sion of the brand is to be­come the cre­ators of the most de­sir­able mod­ern lux­u­ry brands in the world for the most dis­cern­ing cus­tomers.

“Dig­i­tal will con­tin­ue grow­ing but for a lux­u­ry brand it is fun­da­men­tal to con­tin­ue hav­ing a be­spoke phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment to in­ter­act with our clients, as this show­room is,” Peñafiel added.