01/02/2005 – FORD MAKES HOLIDAY GIFT OF KING RANCH F-150 TRUCK TO LOYAL SAN ANTONIO CUSTOMER TO CELEBRATE F-SERIES SALES RECORD
SAN ANTONIO, TX – Ford Motor Company today celebrated the record-setting sale of its 912,000th F-Series truck in 2004 in a BIG way – with the giveaway of a 2005 King Ranch Special Edition F-150 to a loyal customer in San Antonio.
Willie Zavala, a San Antonio native and Vietnam veteran, got the surprise of a lifetime when officials from Southway Ford and Ford Motor Company presented him with the keys to the four-door, full-size luxury edition pickup truck, valued at nearly $38,000. The presentation was made at the Southway Ford dealership at 7979 Interstate 35 South.
“I never expected this,” a stunned Willie Zavala said shortly after learning the news. “This is a beautiful Christmas gift.”
Zavala has been a Southway Ford customer his entire life. He has purchased seven Ford pickup trucks from the dealership, and thought he was coming to Southway Ford this morning to sign the papers on his eighth truck.
As it turns out, that purchase would have been the 912,000th F-Series truck that Ford would have sold this year, a record for the century-old automotive manufacturer. When Ford officials learned the news last week that Zavala’s intended purchase would set the record, they quickly decided to give him the truck as a reward for his customer loyalty and to celebrate the milestone mark.
Zavala says his wife Irene and adult sons are still in the Rio Grande Valley visiting relatives for the holidays. “They are going to be very surprised when they come home.”
This marks the fruition of a pledge that Ford Division President Steve Lyons made last year when he announced that Ford Motor Company would set a sales record in 2004 for the Ford F-Series, with 912,000 trucks as the goal.
“This is an extremely important day for Ford Motor Company,” said Harold Allen, Southwest Region Public Affairs, Ford Division. “We have reached a milestone goal, and we’re still counting sales of F-Series trucks through the end of the year. There’s no place better to talk about trucks than Texas, especially in San Antonio.”
The F-150 is the only truck to earn the “Truck of Texas” title for two consecutive years (2003 and 2004), as voted by the Texas Auto Writers Association.
San Antonio is one of the top markets in the nation when it comes to sales of the Ford F-Series, the only model with more than 800,000 units sold in the U.S. every year for the past 30 years. Since its debut in 1948, Ford Motor Company has sold more than 28 million F-Series trucks around the world. The Alamo City is home to six of the top 16 dealers in Ford truck sales in the United States.
Source: Ford Motor Company
