A showroom of options

EK Kanoo is shifting into high gear with its new purpose-built showroom for its leasing, daily rental and pre-owned vehicles divisions.

The new facility in Sitra, nearby the Toyota and Lexus showrooms, aims to offer customers’ greater choice and, most importantly, piece-of-mind, according to general manager, Matthew Nicklin.

Mr Nicklin said: “We adhere to the EK Kanoo philosophy of providing the best service because we want our customers to be happy.

“The facility recently moved from Tubli to Sitra because most of the car dealers are in here and, since we’ve opened, most of the customers we’ve had have said they were just driving past, saw us and came in.”

Kanoo Daily Rental, Kanoo Vehicle Leasing and Kanoo Pre-Owned Vehicles all operate out of the new facility, giving customers a range of options to suit their individual needs.

Mr Nicklin said: “We have vehicles from across the EK Kanoo range from Toyota, Lexus and Motor City. We now do everything on daily rental, from HGVs to SUVs as wells a range of sedans, saloons and compact cars too.

“We build water tankers for some of the municipalities, we do forklifts and we will build, at request, whatever a customer wants, if they want a six-wheel truck with a freezer on it, we build the freezer, we’re open to anything.”

The daily rental business was started in 2011 and has grown from strength to strength, according to Mr Nicklin.
 
“We have 400 daily rental vehicles at the moment. We’re the same size as many well-known daily rental companies already but our fleet is very young and we have the back-up service behind us.

“If customers break down, we have an emergency line with two operators who are available 24-hours-a-day. We arrive on the scene within about 45 minutes of the call for most cases.

“Our service is what makes us special, I’m not saying we’re the cheapest by any means but we go the extra mile.”

And the company doesn’t just go that extra mile, it offers chauffeur-driven limousine services to take you. With professionally-trained drivers, available all day and night within Bahrain and KSA, this niche has proved popular.

“We go into Saudi with a chauffeur, up to Riyadh on customer request,” explained Mr Nicklin. “It’s not the biggest area of our business but it is something we are happy to offer our Daily Rental customers.”

Kanoo Vehicle Leasing (KVL) is the largest fleet leasing company in Bahrain. It supplies, funds and manages company and private client vehicles and according to Mr Nicklin, has large contracts with most of the ministries and large corporations in Bahrain.

KVL offers passenger cars and commercial vehicles from major automotive companies and can source almost any vehicle to suit customers’ needs and budgets.

Meanwhile, Kanoo Pre-Owned Vehicles (KPV) aims to make the buying and selling of pre-owned vehicles as simple, fun and professional as possible. It offers a wide selection of pre-owned vehicles from all manufacturers with a standard six month/15,000 KM warranty, extendable to one year/30,000km.

“We have a solid pre-owned vehicle record thanks to our upfront attitude and excellent service packages,” said Mr Nicklin.

“We service the vehicles only in our dealerships, we don’t service them ourselves so all of our vehicles are guaranteed genuine parts - serviced at the service centres only. All our cars are dealer-only maintained.

“You can pick up a four-year-old Corolla that has only ever been serviced by Toyota. Most people are happy when they’ve bought a car from us that its been fully maintained. Customers can request the records on all the cars that have come back from the leasing company and we’re happy to show them.

“You can probably go out into the market and buy the same car cheaper but, the difference is, I can guarantee what’s happened to it, tell you if it has been involved in any accidents and things like that, because we offer all the information and invaluable piece of mind.

“If a customer comes to us and decides we’re too expensive, they tend to go away for two or three years … but most of them come back to us because after they’ve taken the other car they find out that the service that’s supplied afterwards isn’t up to the same standard.”

The company’s concept is to offer passenger cars and commercial vehicles from major automotive companies, dealer maintained and serviced and build strong friendly relationships with customers through the whole rental period … and even after.