'Super salesman' calls time on 100,000-sale career

A SO-CALLED ‘super salesman’ is calling time on his career after notching up an incredible 100,000 car sales over half a century.

Ken Searle, who works for Benfield Motor Group in the North East, started with British Leyland before moving to a new team selling Datsun cars when they first arrived in Britain.

A proud Ken said: “I’ve loved every minute of my career and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

“Nissan’s been a great brand to work with and it’s been brilliant to watch it grow, particularly here in the North East where many of the cars are made.”

Casting his mind back over his long career Ken, who is looking forward to enjoying a relaxing retirement with wife Christine, can still clearly remember his first Datsun sale – a shiny new 100a for a penny less than £1,000.

“Datsun were superb then,” he recalled. “Everything was in the Datsun, whereas you got nothing with another car.”

Ken also remembers the difficult days after Datsun morphed into Nissan and the Sunderland factory was built. “When the factory opened down the road it didn’t really help sales because nobody wanted a Geordie-built car. They all wanted Japanese. The Japanese cars were so reliable and nobody trusted a car made locally.

“But thankfully that soon changed. The factory got better and better and so did the products and soon everybody wanted Nissans again and British-built ones at that.”

Following Ken’s retirement, Nissan GB Sales Director Jon Pollock, paid tribute to the part he played in the company’s success.

He said: “By playing his part in more than 100,000 car sales – the vast majority of them Nissan models – Ken has made a massive contribution to our success.

“Nissan has not always been the huge success story it is today and Ken will remember better than most the tough times and hard days the company went through as it tried to find a foothold in this country.

“It’s thanks to people like him though – the great advocates who have stuck with us through thick and thin – that we now find ourselves in the fantastic position we’re in today.

By Press Association reporter