Higgins Motorpark – Where vintage quality meets 21st Century business prowess

The presentation was by Proprietor and Managing Director, Michael Barry and General Manager and Director Gerry Halloran as part of the 100 year anniversary celebrations of Motorpark as a main Ford dealer in Galway. The guest speakers were appropriately, the Managing Director and Chairman of Ford Ireland, Eddie Murphy and the Lady Mayor of Galway, Cllr. Terry O’Flaherty.

Car dealerships with real longevity are becoming a rarer breed these days. So it was with interest that this writer attended a  briefing to members of Galway Chamber of Commerce and local City / County Council members at Higgins Motorpark in Galway recently.

And of course Ford Ireland is celebrating a double milestone this year. Following the opening of doors at Higgins Garage in Galway at the back of where Matt Flaherty’s chemists is, 1912 also saw Henry Ford pay his first and only visit to Ireland to explore fulfilling his plans to set up the first full Ford factory outside North America.

He came to Cork, the city which his father had left on a Famine ship in 1847. He chose the site of what was then Cork Racecourse adjacent to the River Lee and the rest is a part of Irish economic and cultural history.

When Henry Ford was in Cork, W P Higgins took the initiative to head down to Cork to meet him, and he secured the Ford franchise for a Galway dealership and a new chapter in the history of Galway motoring and Ford Ireland began.

Higgins Galway wasn’t the first Ford dealer in Ireland, that honour went to Archers of Dublin back in 1907. However, Higgins Motorpark is the longest serving Ford dealership in the country. Eddie Murphy told the gathering that he was reliably informed that Ford sold all of 600 cars a year back then, costing about £700 each. That made it market leader and the Model T was the mainstay of the range.

Fast forward 100 years, through the war of Independence, the Civil War, two World Wars, economic wars, recessions, depressions, the Common Market, the Celtic Tiger, all Irish Presidents and Taoisigh, nine Popes, and Higgins is still at the forefront of car retailing in Galway and indeed in Ireland.

Eddie Murphy and the Lady Mayor both paid tribute to Michael Barry, the Barry family and their staff down the years that have continued this proud legacy for so long.

But history is no safeguard in business. Eddie Murphy said: “Higgins are one of Ford’s strongest dealers for a reason, and that’s because they get the balance right between investing and managing cost, between acquiring new business and retaining loyal custom. Whatever the future holds for us on a macro-economic level, businesses which find this balance will continue to thrive.”

He added: “Our entire business is going through a mighty tough time at the moment, there’s no doubting that. But I’m often telling dealers to concentrate on the micro, rather than the macro. However, bad the economy gets, there will always be scope for the best businesses to prosper. I tell them to make sure they’re one of them. It’s too easy to bemoan the overall economic state, as if we are all equal players in it. We aren’t. We can all work to ensure it’s the other guy who falls, not us. I know they are hard words, but they’re words that will help us get out of this trough. Individual businesses can’t let themselves get brought down by the burdens of the entire country. That helps no one.”

Eddie Murphy also mentioned during his speech that “it’s hard to be celebratory in these times, and it is. But we must celebrate success stories like Higgins Motorpark. We must celebrate longevity and the triumphs that take us through thick and thin. We must do this to inspire others to stay up on the horse when all kinds of crises that you encounter try to knock you off. We salute W P Higgins, Michael Barry and all others that circumvent obstacles and achieve success.”