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I HAVE
yet to drive it, but I have this feeling the
second-generation Forester, Subaru’s brand-new babe,
will really prove to be another winner in the
discriminatingly picky SUV segment.
Subaru
has been around for quite a while now and it has built a
reputation worldwide as a brand comparable with the
world’s giants in the business. No wonder Toyota has
bought shares at Subaru not too long ago.
“You go
anywhere in the world, and you’ll hear nothing but
praise for any Subaru model,” says Pocholo Ramirez, the
living legend of Philippine motor sports, who waited
hours just to be able to ogle at the new Forester on
curtain time.
My
brother’s first car was a Subaru; he bought it some six
months after he migrated to Toronto, Canada, a while
back.
The
launch of the all-new Subaru Forester last week was
already a winner, what with a blockbuster show unfurling
the macho machine at Edsa Shang’s wide-as-a-football
field Isla Ballroom before a crowd that packed every
nook and cranny of the venue.
The
affair was star-studded, as usual. This beloved dude of
the motoring media, Subaru’s tyro Ariel de Jesus, sure
has mastered his business of luring the crème de la
crème from the automotive beat for almost every gig that
he’s authored or coauthored, dating back to his
memorable days at Toyota Motor Philippines under the
wings of motoring moguls Vince Socco and Danny Isla.
Always, Ariel amazes us with his uncanny ability to
collar even the snootiest from among our ranks.
With
James Bond as motif—complete with Bond’s exotic girls
reincarnated in tights gyrating provocatively on-stage
to announce Forester’s arrival—the glitzy night was
highlighted by the usual light-mannered, upscale-style
monologue delivered impromptu by Subaru’s No. 1
salesman, the dashing, Singapore-based and
American-schooled Glenn Tan.
Glenn,
30, has been the top honcho of Motor Image since 2001.
Under his baton, sales of Subaru have recorded a steady,
if not sharp, increase in Asian sales—to include data
such as 4,100 units sold in 2006, and 6,600 units sold
in 2007.
“When
Subaru launched the Forester 11 years ago, it redefined
the industry,” Glenn told his audience. “Here was a
vehicle that defied all labels and definition, enhancing
the comfort and safety of cars with greater function and
capability. It has since become an icon of safety,
dependability and versatility.”
The
all-new Forester that’s for sale in the Philippines has
two variants: Subaru Forester 2.0X and Subaru Forester
2.5XT. Both are in four-speed automatic transmission
with Sportshift and each comes with Subaru’s trademark
symmetrical all-wheel drive.
I hope
to tell you more about them soon.
Meanwhile, take a bow, Sensei DJ-san. Well done, as
usual.
****
NOT long
after Honda had announced it would unleash its own
version of an electric car in 2009, Toyota was not to be
outdone.
On July
7 Japan’s Toyota Motor Corp. said it plans to add solar
panels to its popular Prius hybrid early next year to
power the vehicle’s air-conditioning system.
The twin
moves by Japan’s automotive leaders come in answer, of
course, to the worsening oil crisis gripping the world.
There simply is need to seriously address the seemingly
unabated rising of gas prices and one way to do it, for
sure, is to minimize—if not completely eradicate—the use
of fossil fuel to run our cars.
The
Nikkei economic daily reported that the Prius will be
fitted with rooftop solar panels on its high-end models
as part of a complete design makeover.
Once
this breakthrough project materializes, Toyota will be
the first major carmaker to use a solar-power generation
system on a mass-produced hybrid vehicle such as the
Prius.
Toyota
rolled out the Prius commercially from its assembly
lines in 1997 as the first petrol-electric hybrid,
consuming only a liter of gas for nearly 50 km. Its
redesigned version in 2003 could run nearly 100 km to a
liter.
It is
likely that the third-generation Prius will be let loose
in 2009, the year picked by Toyota to produce some
450,000 Priuses for the Tokyo market alone—up by an
astonishing 60 percent from 2007, according to Nikkei.
I can
believe that. The Prius is so smashingly successful
that it’s become the benchmark for which every hybrid in
the business is to be conceived of.
With the
use of solar power, it won’t be long when wind will also
be tapped, finally, to help run a vehicle.
Indeed,
a car’s dependence on gas will soon be over.
****
Pee
stop:
Oh, yes, speaking of Pocholo Ramirez, let’s all rejoice.
And praise God once more. Pocholo tells me he’s cured
from his cancer—minus the benefit of a doctor of
medicine.
“I call
my doctor ‘Mister Quack’ because he’s not a doctor,
really,” says he. “He told me to eat raw pancreas and
raw liver every day and, in barely five months, my
cancer was gone.”
You
better believe him.
“I lost
my two wives to cancer, and they had chemo and
everything,” says Pocholo. “I still want to live so I
skipped the chemo, went to my Mister Quack and, thank
God, I’m still alive.” |
