I HAVE discovered from the sidelines during the recent launch of the all-new Hilux at Clark, Pampanga, an all-too revealing facet on the ever-surging sales of Toyota vehicles nationwide. It is this: Toyota’s spectacular showing in the first half of the year, selling 57,717 units already.
If trends continue—a sustained economic growth, coupled with a seemingly unabated rising domestic demand—Toyota might yet hit its projected 120,000 units sold for the year. The current ballpark figure aim, according to Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) President Michinobu “The Rocker” Sugata, is 110,000 units sold by year-end. The all-new Hilux, monikered “King of Pickups” by truck enthusiasts, is even pegged to sell 900 units a month—a rather rosy picture for the model that hit the market in 1993 and has now sold close to 57,000 units.
And at the rate sales are being realized the last six months of 2015, hugely backed by new models being unleashed in an almost ridiculous regularity and car loans being liberally relaxed to feed on the growing buying power of the public, it has become increasingly clear that the targeted 320,000 total vehicle industry sales for the year could be crashed beyond our wildest imagination.
For Toyota’s part, Sugata-san said that the Vios will remain TMP’s best seller as “it continues to draw in the numbers” based on all car segments sold combined.
It is worth noting, too, that Vios has been used as model for Toyota’s bid to enter the government’s Comprehensive Automotive Resurgence Strategy (CARS) Program, whose targeted P27 billion serves as incentives for tax cuts and tariffs for vehicle assemblers and auto-part manufacturers joining the venture.
Under the CARS road map, the industry hopes to churn out 600,000 vehicles, generate 200,000 jobs at the minimum and spur economic activity to an estimated tune of P300 billion. That would redound to a gross domestic product of about 1.7 percent. With its Vios, Toyota has taken the lead once more. When will the other car companies follow suit, I wait with bated breath.
Vision Petron on
I have always loved the arts, especially painting. As a kid, I drew a lot. My first position in campus journalism was being the artist of our high-school paper. But I also wrote poetry and fiction, embellishing every poem and short story I wrote with an artwork beside it. Soon, our adviser appointed me literary editor, too.
Needless to say, I had wanted to become a painter someday. It didn’t happen. It did to my son. And the missus was happiest; she had also dreamt of becoming a painter. “My parents discouraged me by saying there was no money after I finished my fine arts degree,” she said. Just like me, she also became a journalist.
But, for our son, after college—with a master’s degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines to boot—he would go back to his first love: basketball. He is now an assistant coach for a Philippine Basketball Association team and does painting on the side (he has done three one-man shows, with one in the works).
Indeed, life’s a beach—the castles there are all temporary.
Anyway, in this light, I make a pitch for the 2015 Vision Petron, the painting competition for students aged 16 to 28 enrolled in a university, a college, tutorial art, photography or video class. Entries are in painting (oil and water-based media), photography, T-shirt art design and video-making.
In its 15th year now, Vision Petron is offering P70,000 each to six winners in painting (oil/acrylic, water-based media), P30,000 each to six runners-up and P5,000 each to 18 semifinalists.
For photography, it is P50,000 each to six winners and P25,000 each to six runners-up. For T-shirt art design, it is P50,000 each to three winners and P5,000 each to nine semifinalists.
It is also P50,000 each to three winners in the video-making category of the contest with the common theme for all categories, “Lakbay Kasiyahan: Our Journey of Happiness.”
All first-prize winners will receive trophies and runners-up plaques made by National Artist Napoleon V. Abueva in the contest, where judging will be based on content and concept, 40 percent; originality, 30 percent; and technical execution, 30 percent.
Deadline for submission of entries is on August 20 at Petron bulk plants nationwide, or August 28 at the Vision Petron Project Secretariat at Studio 5 Designs, 28 Paseo de Roxas corner Jupiter Street, Bel-Air Village, Makati City. Go to web site www.visionpetron.com or Vision Petron Facebook page for more details.
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PEE STOP. Sharing star billing with hunk Tom Cruise and sultry Rebecca “Thigh Killer” Ferguson in the brand-new blockbuster offering of Mission Impossible—Rogue Nation is the iconic BMW M3 series. The car performed a la Oscar with its fantastic stunts so that after the movie, Karl Magsuci, who masterfully emceed the short but sweet BMW pre-premiere showing presentation to the warm applause of an elite crowd, led by Asian Carmakers Corp. (ACC) Vice Chairman Demosthenes “Bobby” Rosales and ACC President Maricar Parco, said, “These Hollywood dudes—indeed, they always have money to burn that they don’t care wrecking a car as expensive and as iconic as the BMW M3.” By the way, Tom Cruise was also the movie producer.