By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE 1.6-LITER LS Chevy Optra wagon stands all by its lonesome in its market segment. The only wagon in the country that carries a submillion price tag (P869,000 for the automatic, P829,000 for the manual, to be exact), it’s also probably the only wagon that’s not ashamed to highlight its “mama’s toy” character.

It certainly knows where it’s going: right to the school zone and PTA meetings, where functionality and safety are more important than tuner-delight performances.

For a 1.6-liter engine powering a 1,190-kg body (for automatic), the heaviness makes up for its stability and loads of safety features. It has dual airbags, standard antilock brake system and four-wheel disc brakes.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

CAR manufacturers seem to shrug off successive oil price increases as just part of the inevitable, and hope that Filipino buyers would do the same. And from the looks of it, things are still going the carmakers’ way, as new car launches continue left and right, and buyers aren’t just window shopping.

The newest car launch was courtesy of General Motors (featuring its new Chevy Aveo hatchback). This is to be followed by other launches of Mitsubishi (public launch of the new Lancer EX), Motor Image Pilipinas’ Subaru (launching the full-sized SUV Tribeca) and Nissan (introducing the Livina MPV).

In April, the auto industry registered a year-to-date growth of 14.8 percent compared to the same period (January to April) last year. There were 39,981 units sold, of which 11,078 units were sold in April alone.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

BRING it on!

Now that could have been a cute takeoff for a fun motoring article, except that at almost P50 per liter (and counting), the cost of fuel is no longer a laughing matter. And the next time legendary ol’ Tito Poch utters this now-famous sentence, it may be to face a rioting mob of motorists fed up with the rising cost of the rice-gasoline cocktail. Intoxicating thought, isn’t it?

For those who haven’t gone to the extent of installing their cars with LPG tanks, or at the extreme dumping their old (or new) gas guzzlers for some two-wheeled fuel misers, they may be holding on to the hope that, perhaps, changing some wasteful driving habits may do the trick of squeezing out a few more kilometers out of that last precious drop of fuel.

Some car manufacturers, understandably, are willing to help. Honda Cars Philippines Inc. (HCPI) recently held the motoring media edition of a fuel-efficiency driving competition on a combination of city and highway driving. This turns out to be a bold move on the part of HCPI, which cited a survey that most Honda owners still preferred performance over fuel economy.

Here’s Mario Marasigan, the director for the Department of Energy’s Energy Utilization Management Bureau, and HCPI president and GM Hiroshi Shimizu signaling the start of Honda Challenge Cup.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE LAST strip of confetti from the Manila International Auto Show, attended by over 77,000 visitors, has barely been swept off the spacious hall of the World Trade Center, and yet the fireworks begin again for another car show, the Trans Sport Show 2008 at SM Megamall. But that’s another story fit for restoration enthusiasts.

These two exhibits, spaced so close to one another, just show that Filipinos’ thirst for new cars isn’t quenched by “rice-ing” fuel and food prices.

So what exactly were the MIAS machines that made us forget, albeit for a while, the growl in the stomach, for the roar of the engines?

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

OH, you lucky devil, mister or miss sole winner of the biggest lotto jackpot in this small corner of the world. Two hundred forty nine million pesos is truly a mind-boggling amount, and we’re sure you’d want to do a million things with that moolah. But we’re also equally certain that the first thing you’d want to buy with your “hard-earned” cash is some decent wheels, wouldn’t you?

So, before you run to the nearest showroom and clean out everything that’s on display, check out first the latest cars introduced by the leading carmakers. Hey, Inquirer Motoring won’t tell you to save your money (you’d probably laugh your head off if we said that), but what we could probably help save you is time.

The new Honda Accord and the new Mazda 6 — direct competitors and both former grand winners of Car of the Year Philippines — have been launched by their respective manufacturers Honda Cars Philippines and Mazda Philippines.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

CITY drivers who are used to driving in slow speeds eventually become unable to handle faster country driving.

Austrian Herbert Grunsteidl, BMW AG certified product trainer who recently visited the Philippines for the “Torque: A BMW Xpo Driving Experience,” told Inquirer Motoring that all over the world, this has been a problem with drivers constantly being stuck in slow-moving traffic jams, and who suddenly feel at a loss with which speed to go in the next corner where there is less traffic.

Grunsteidl explained that country driving uses a different driving mindset from city driving.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

POLITICIANS can make all the noise and mudsling they want. Car buyers are just going to roll up their windows, turn up the volume of their car stereos, and drive quietly away to the relative peace and quiet of their own home and workplace.

During this politically charged first quarter of 2008, at least, that’s what the auto industry observes as the general attitude of many of its customers. The appetite to buy hasn’t been spoiled the least by political volatility.

The recent vehicle sales report prepared by the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines Inc. shows the Pinoy car buyer unmindful of the political noise with a continuous double-digit growth trend for the industry during the first two months of 2008.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

TIMES are hard, And some carmakers may be neglecting their technicians-the heart and soul of the casa business — but does that give a struggling or underpaid casa mechanic a license to, well, fool you? Let’s turn the question around: Will you give the opportunistic mechanic a good enough reason to put one over you with your cruelty or gullibility?

The truth is, not all casas are equal, and not all casa mechanics are honest. If you do an informal survey of your trusted friends (those who do tell objective tales), chances are they will share with you a number of several horror stories, and not of the paranormal kind, but of the purely human ones.

Some mechanics the Inquirer Motoring has talked to said they had yet to encounter colleagues cheating their customers, and as long as there is no proof, they would consider these tales as just tall ones, pure hearsays. You be the judge, dear car owner.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

DUE to space constraints, Inquirer Motoring can only print one sob story this week. In the hope that car manufacturers and the motoring public would learn a lesson or two from these real experiences, we share with our readers what others were unfortunate enough to have lived through. All names have been changed to protect their privacy.

Edgar dela Cruz was visibly pleased when the sales agent handed over to him the keys to his wife Kathy’s brand-new 1.8-liter automatic transmission sedan last July 5 at a Shaw Boulevard dealership. But as soon as he opened the car’s door to savor the look and feel of a brand new car, he almost literally smelled a ratty deal had taken place. Edgar noticed that the car seats and sidings were no longer covered with plastic, as was customary with straight-off-the-factory deliveries, and he recalled that the interior “smelled like an old book in the library.”

He initially refused to accept the vehicle, and asked the agent for another unit. No other stock was available, the agent reasoned. Edgar, too eager to deliver the “brand new car” to his wife, settled with the unit and took the vehicle home the next day.

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By Tessa R. Salazar
Philippine Daily Inquirer

(First of two parts)

INQUIRER MOTORING receives letters and phone calls from readers relating their casa (manufacturers’ service center) horror stories from time to time. Usually, it’s the complainants’ word against the car manufacturer. In the hope that our motoring public (and other car manufacturers, as well) would pick up a few lessons from these “sob stories,” we will be printing them — sans real name and company name of the parties involved, of course.

The aberrant alternator

Adela dela Cruz (not her real name) relates that her five-year-old, 2-liter 4×4 A/T SUV engine suddenly turned off and wouldn’t restart. Thinking that her two-year-old battery conked out, Dela Cruz changed it. To her dismay, the battery indicator, let alone the engine, still wouldn’t turn on.

Dela Cruz brought her vehicle to the casa and was given a quotation of P42,566 to cover the cost of the labor and parts for replacing what the shop said was a problem involving the entire alternator assembly

The technical department explained that the vehicle’s alternator assembly malfunctioned. She was told that since the warranty had lapsed, she had no choice but to shoulder the cost. She later found out that the alternator wouldn’t malfunction without a cause.

“We tried to gather information from friends and friends of friends who owned the same car model, and true enough, from inside sources, they had had several complaints that year involving the same parts,” she said.

In an e-mail to Inquirer Motoring, she wrote that the cause of the problem was the defective design or placement of the alternator — the reason the new model’s design had been changed. She added that what the other owners did with those that had the same problems fixed by the casa was to put an insulator to merely delay its inevitable malfunction.

Dela Cruz added that the engine manufacturer claimed “a four-year lifespan of an alternator assembly was acceptable and normal.” She retorted that her other SUV, which was already 10 years old, still had its original alternator running well and never replaced, and her friend’s SUV, also 10 years old, still had its original alternator assembly intact.

Dela Cruz lamented that she has had to resort to the media to air her complaints, as her calls to the Department of Trade and Industry consumer complaint hotlines and her e-mails to DTI NCR have never gotten a response or even an acknowledgment.

Hot under the hood

Another complaint comes from an owner of an overheating eight-year-old mini SUV (odometer reading: 55,000 km).

After driving it into the casa for the routine 55,000-km checkup and to have the overheating fixed, she was informed by the customer service staff that the additional work would cost P78,700.

Included in the cost was the replacement of the front shock absorbers, and some other work which she claimed the same casa had already completed last year. She recalled that her bill reached over P40,000 last year for such replacements.

She was then faxed a revised quote, deleting the cost of the front shock absorbers, reducing the total additional cost to just over P64,000. By then, however, she said she was already becoming suspicious, so she informed the casa’s customer service via SMS to hold all the work for her SUV, for which she received an SMS (text) confirmation.

A friend recommended another service center in the Alabang area. There, she got a quote of P14,530 for the radiator assembly replacement, compared to the casa’s P37,783.22 charge for the same work. She made an appointment to bring her car in first thing in the morning the following day.

The Alabang shop’s customer service representative explained the work they did on her SUV, showed her the replaced radiator and the new one they installed. She was told that radiators had an average life span of four years. Hers lasted almost eight years.

She was also told that her front and rear shocks, indeed, needed to be replaced.

“Considering I just drove 10,000 km in the 12 months since the shocks were replaced — I cannot understand how I could have busted my shocks that quickly unless I got substandard, defective shock absorbers in the first place. And how can I get substandard parts from the casa. Am I not paying premium just to make sure I do not get ripped off?” she asked.

Her final bill at the Alabang service center, which included radiator, coolant, hose clamp, shop materials, labor with pressure test and with VAT included was P8,548.59. The entire radiator assembly didn’t need to be replaced, after all.

This complainant sent Inquirer Motoring the detailed list of parts quotations from both the casa and the Alabang service center. Both claimed they were using original parts.