It’s around 8 p.m. and the nighttime air is whipping against my face, with my hands firmly grasping the roof bar. The wind, vigorously buffeting around my ears, is a pleasant accompaniment to the twinkling of the stars above. I’m standing on the floor in the back seat as my fellow motoring scribe Ian Magbanua takes us down a quiet winding road in Alabang. No, it’s not a fancy sports car, nor is it a shoot for a music video. It was just my way of enjoying the fresh air more thoroughly as we took

When you’re the number-one automaker in the Philippines and you’re celebrating your 35th anniversary, nothing less than the best will do. In the case of Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP), it’s kicking off over three decades of local operations with the Toyota GAZOO Racing Festival, which will be held on Aug. 23 to 24, 2023 at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila. GAZOO Racing (GR) is the Japanese automaker’s motorsports division, producing not only championship-winning racing cars, but also high-perfor

Honda Cars Philippines Inc. (HCPI) made serious waves when it launched the updated 2024 Honda City with a life-saving feature. All City variants now come with the carmaker’s excellent Honda SENSING active-safety suite, which includes adaptive cruise control, lane-keep assist and collision-mitigation braking. These not only prevent you from crashing in the first place, but also make long journeys much easier. This made the City the first-ever subcompact sedan in the Philippines to offer this high

Disclosure: Chery Auto Philippines lent us a Chery Tiggo 8 PRO 1.6T for eight days with a full tank of gas. Additional fuel and toll fees were paid by the writer using his personal money. Jetour Auto Philippines likewise invited the writer to an all-expense paid trip to China which included a visit of the Chery Auto manufacturing facilities. Something about the tag “Made in China” turns many car buyers off. Geopolitics aside, Chinese-built cars have long suffered from the negative impressions th

In 2019, a viral video of the Japanese Emperor's convoy stopping to give right of way to an ambulance made the rounds in automotive media. Many claimed that the amusing scene would only happen in Japan. How preposterous to expect the highest dignitary in the land to give way to an ambulance carrying one insignificant commoner, right? Well, right, but also wrong. It’s true that, in many countries, heads of state and dignitaries take precedence on the road for security reasons. But seeing that doe

Toyota Indonesia has reached the 2 million export sales mark in early February 2022, 35 years after the company first started shipping cars overseas, and 4 years after surpassing 1 million cumulative exports in 2018. At the same time, the company will begin exports of the Toyota Fortuner to Australia in March 2022. Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, was present at the commemorative ceremony held at the company's Karawang, West Java assembly plant. That said, the company is also locally-assemblin