I dropped by at the BMW Motorrad event in San Fernando, Pampanga, last weekend on my way up to Baguio for the second and final week of the Fil-Am Golf Invitational.
What a show that was, indeed, and the people behind the BMW event deserve kudos. Here’s a glass to you, Spencer Yu, for a job well done.
It was a shame I missed Levy Laus by mere minutes. He had to leave for an urgent Mitsubishi appointment, Spencer said.
When was the last time I had shaken the hand of Levy, a certified innovator and a visionary? I have always cherished Levy’s shining stature in the industry since the day I met him—in a plane—during a flight bound for Bangkok.
What a massive events center Levy had built in Pampanga’s prime city. Actually, the center, so huge already, is but a part of the entire Laus complex that sells several of the country’s major branded vehicles.
Practically only Toyota is not part of the Laus vehicle empire and the reason has been that obvious from Day One: Company policy prohibits Toyota from entering into a deal with a company already immersed into multicar dealerships.
Exclusivity, they call it.
It’s like not seeing Starbucks coffee being sold inside a bar/restaurant selling several brands of coffee, such as Kopiko or other three-in-one concoctions. Starbucks would lose somewhat its lofty standing in the brewing business if it decides to engage in a free-for-all with its rivals, whether major or minor, under one roof.
Or seeing a San Mig beerhouse offering other beers not named San Miguel Beer. Simply, it cheapens the brand’s regal bearing.
What was the BMW Motorrad all about again?
It featured BMW’s big bikes, dominated by 1200 CCs. Each unit costs at least 1 million bucks plus—and that’s a good buy already. BMW big bikes are world class and will last you a lifetime. But there are “smaller” ones also, costing at least P300,000 a piece; that’s a steal.
I’ve always been fascinated by big bikes, even as I fell into a river driving a borrowed motorcycle with a lower engine displacement in my high school days in Pangasinan. It was a miracle, indeed, that I had emerged from it in one whole piece. Not even a gash. Never did that experience deter me from wanting to own a big bike.
I almost got one—for free. The spurned donor? Digong.
“You should have accepted it,” said Ken Angeles, the big bike enthusiast from Davao, himself the owner of several big bikes. “He has an array of big bikes, anyway. He likes you, you know.”
Almost once a year, Ken, who owns the famous Yellow Fin Tuna Restaurant in Davao, and his fellow big bike lovers motor from Davao to Laoag City, with a stopover in Baguio City.
“I just love doing it at least once a year,” said Ken. “It’s like romancin’ with nature.”
And why am I here again in the City of Pines?
Well, it was good timing that Spencer Yu’s event coincided with my trip to Baguio on December 9 to fulfill once more a commitment to do a Rules Man job in the Fil-Am Golf Invitational now on its 69th straight year, with Jake P. Ayson as my usual rules partner.
I arrived here on November 28. I drove down to Manila after the Seniors on December 6 and motored back to Baguio on December 9 where I will stay up to December 15, the concluding day of the Fil-Am Golf that has drawn more than 1,300 players from all over the world.
As I said, it’s been more than a decade for me of loving the Fil-Am Golf. As Nat King Cole crooned it, “When I fall in love, it will be forever.” Why not?
PEE STOP In San Fernando during the BMW Motorrad event, it was nice reconnecting again with BMW bigwig Maricar Parco and regular BMW fixture Thea Geronimo, plus the trio of Lui Curitana, Frances Concepcion and Kate Tolentino. Like Spencer, the threesome of Lui, Frances and Kate were also all formerly with Lexus. As the saying goes, Lexus’s loss is BMW’s gain? Also present in the event was Vernon B. Sarne, the former Top Gear Philippines’s editor in chief who was just recently acquitted of the charge of falsely accusing a motorist of having committed a road crime. Cheers Vernon!…Aside from San Miguel Corp., Toyota Motor Philippines is another chief backer of the 69th Fil-Am Golf. Altis and Vios used to be the Toyota cars consistently staked as hole-in-one prizes in the Fil-Am Golf. This year, it is the Rush that is being dangled as the hole-in-one prize at No. 10 of Baguio Country Club and at No. 18 of Camp John Hay. Fore!