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
