They were thanksgiving nights and lively meetups to start the new year fresh and on the right happy foot—an enduring automotive company’s own unique way of saying a relieved “goodbye” to a particularly challenging year and an eager “hello” to a 2021 filled with potentials. The AC Motors Automotive Group of Ayala’s wholly owned industrial technologies group AC Industrials held four consecutive online appreciation nights for members of the media from January 12 to 15. Themed according to the best-trending activities home-bound Filipinos found themselves engaged in to cope with the “quarantine year of 2020,” the online parties were grouped into the “Fitness Night,” “Movie Night,” “Plantita/Plantito Night,” and “Retro Night,” with each theme carrying with it the corresponding activities, costumes and backgrounds for participants.
The events were meant to express AC Motors’ appreciation for the media for helping the organization weather a difficult 2020 bookended by the twin disasters of the Taal Volcano eruption and the ongoing Covid-19 global pandemic.
The appreciation nights also served to kick off AC Motors’ 30 th year by providing the participants glimpses of its plans not just for 2021 but for the next four years.
In his welcome remarks, AC Motors automotive group President Antonio “Toti” Zara III revealed, “As a show of our confidence and commitment to the industry, our distributor brands are working on at launching at least six models (in 2021). We are also planning to open six company-owned showrooms across our five auto brands in addition to franchised appointments.”
Furthermore, Zara stressed that AC Motors would “work towards achieving at least a 10% share in the automotive market by 2025” despite the setback of the 2020 pandemic.
“We acknowledge that the local market still needs to recover from the devastating effects of an ongoing pandemic. But history has shown the resilience of our automotive market, time and again, through all manner of crises – and we are confident that this time will be no different,” Zara said.
Last year, during the strictest of the series of community quarantines enforced by the government in order to stem the spread of Covid-19, AC Motors’ companies applied fundamental changes and innovations in order to adapt to the new normal of business and service operations. Such changes and innovations included the thorough digitalization of its practices, and the launch of its “one-stop-shop” AC Motors website www.acmotors.com.ph.
AC Motors began as Ayala Automotive Holdings Corporation, through which Ayala helped bring in the Honda brand and launched the Philippines’ first Honda dealership in 1991. It did the same in 1996 with the Isuzu brand. Afterwards, in a span of less than 6 years, from 2013 to 2019, AC Motors acquired exclusive distributorships for three more world-renowned brands, starting with the German Volkswagen brand in 2013, the Korean Kia brand in January 2019, and finally, the British Maxus brand of LCVs in June 2019.
AC Motors now finds itself in that unique industry position to evolve rapidly from a distributor and dealership business into an enterprise that serves the diverse mobility needs of a fast-growing Philippine market.
Zara attests that, ultimately, it is the Filipino motorist for which AC Motors exists.
“Through all these times, whether facing challenges or opportunities, we at AC Motors have always placed our customers—the Filipino motorists—at the front and center of our plans. Our unwavering commitment to serve our customers and provide them the products best suited for their needs have kept us moving, adapting, growing, and innovating.”
