"Haitian Pride": Bus made in Haiti
It was in May 2006, at the packed inauguration of President René Préval, that Jean Paul Coutard had a dream which he was determined to make a reality: he was going to build Haiti’s first home-produced bus.
The son of a commercial truck driver who’d inherited his father’s love of all things mechanical, Coutard recalls how he’d always regarded it as, in his own words, “a national insult” that Haiti had to import its buses from the Dominican Republic – especially when he saw them used on big occasions. So, as the new president took office, Coutard set himself a challenge – he would build the bus and call it “Haitian Pride”, symbolic of the country’s ability to stand on its own two feet.
To the amusement of his family and friends, he was deadly serious, and his first step was winning a scholarship to Canada to study body design. He worked part-time during his studies and used the money to buy various bus parts he had shipped to Haiti from the UK, Australia and Canada.
In the meantime, a perfectionist, he redrafted the plans for the construction more than 20 times – making sure that when the time was right, nothing would be left to chance. It was perhaps not without symbolism too that it was after the earthquake of 2010 that Coutard returned home to begin work on his bus at the family firm, Coutard Motors.
It took him more than two years, but in 2013, there it was, air-conditioned, with 57 reclining seats and all mod cons – “Haitian Pride”, the work of a unique entrepreneur.
Jean Paul Coutard
Source: Digicel entrepreneur
