He even produced a happy-snap of himself as a teenager at a Jersey viewing point, Noirmont Point, using a camera for the very first time and realising, soon after, that it might present him with a career path. Going there would be one priority.
Straight off the plane, at around midday, we headed for the sunny, sandy south coast and Bel Royal, where Jersey’s solitary Kia dealer – the place from which every one of those top-selling Picantos is delivered – was volunteering to lend us a demonstrator for 48 hours or so.
On the way, we called in at the Jersey War Tunnels, about a kilometre of them bored straight into towering surrounding hillsides by slave labour to house a hospital complex that was never completed. When we arrived, the place was still closed for the season (but about to open); it contains exhibits that “show what wartime life in Jersey was really like”. Terrible, according to many accounts.
Bel Royal Motors, a friendly place ownedby the same Le Marquand family for 99 years (and getting ready for centenary celebrations next year), is run by an enthusiastic general manager, Simon Mills, who put the kettle on and explained, while we sipped tea, why the Picanto does so well there.
The narrow roads help, he said, and so does the fact that Ford killed the 47-year-old Fiesta back in 2023. But it was also clear to a visitor’s eye that Bel Royal Motors’ innate commercial energy and the Picanto’s excellent price-to-equipment formula – plus the seven-year warranty – meant the little Kia appealed more to Jersey people than even the recently rejuvenated but notably fatter Renault Clio.
That was a surprise, because French influence is everywhere in Jersey, and part of the secret of its better weather is that it nestles close to the French coast in the Gulf of Saint-Malo.
