By RAMON TOMELDAN
Sometimes, when the going gets tough, a protracted cooldown may just work to your advantage. This is precisely what I’ve done during my brief hiatus, a much-needed pause in time and space, a time to sail away, “far from the madding crowd,” in the words of the novelist Thomas Hardy.
But before I bring you up to speed, let me step back in time and tell you a little secret.
My never-ending romance with cars didn’t start with a lightbulb moment. It was neither a product of spontaneous combustion nor rapid oxidation, to use a metaphor. It was an “acquired taste,” my sororal nephew-in-law, Phil Fultz, called it while we sipped wine at a hotel near New York’s Fifth Avenue. That was in 2005.
If by “acquired taste” he meant something cultivated and nurtured, then he had chosen the right words.
My late old man—my hero, tutor, and the fire that had kept my journalistic fervor burning—had a vintage 1960s Toyota Land Cruiser and a 100-cc Yamaha motorcycle.
But I never got farther than the backseat of the vintage LC. I also found the MC too intimidating and risky to ride. I wasn’t even allowed to touch the steering wheel because I was young then. Those trappings of luxury quickly vanished soon after martial law was imposed in 1972.
A few years later, my pent-up passion for cars found a new outlet after I acquired my first “wheels” — a popular term during my post-adolescent years. It was a fiery red Lancer dressed up like a cross between a Mitsubishi Evolution 3 and a scarlet race-ready Ferrari F series. Aficionados would have called it “hybrid,” and I wouldn’t have complained because the word now connotes ultra-modernism, a new concept given “flesh-and-bone” that roared into a running roadster.
From then on, I devoted much of my time to tinkering with cars, mostly in red hues such as ruby, crimson, and purple, and doing a certain degree of modifications. That was a couple of years before the local kings of bling, Sam Liuson and his gang, came out with their flashy and fashionable accessories, burnished the term “modified,” and turned it into a highly profitable business.
The next greatest thing that happened to me was when my late boss, in 1999, gave me the go-ahead to oversee the paper’s motoring page. Brimming with fresh ideas, I did what I was told and helped juice up a newspaper thirsting for revenues. To me, it was a “license to thrill,” to paraphrase the title of the blockbuster Bond movie.
I was handed keys to varying car brands in near-monthly succession, mostly in mint condition, others fresh from shiny, spanking showrooms.
The beauty was that I was often invited to foreign junkets, a frequent flyer traveling first class, and sometimes pampered with luxury accommodations in five-star hotels. I was licensed to thrill, indeed!
Cutting to the chase, my fresh stint with Malaya Business Insight is a reawakening of passion.
Henceforth, I will be doing more editing and writing—a desk jockey, or to put it bluntly, a senior (citizen) deskman—than going to the race-controlled tracks, driving around the probing ground of cars, or scaling the heights of Mt. Pinatubo. I may test drive or cover press events, including new launches, depending on my schedule. It’s called time management.
The new management under Monica Macasaet, the youngest president-COO of an expanding multimedia company, and her brother Toby Macasaet as CEO deserve special mention for opening a window of opportunity for me. My infinite gratitude goes to the Editor-in-Chief, Neri Tenorio, one of the best in the business; Victor Sollorano, Business Editor; and Jun Brum, Advertising Director, who practically rammed down the idea.
It’s good to be back, although many will say, “You never left; you just went on a cooldown.”
This time though, it’s a brand-new world marked by AI, IoT, OTT, and a chockful of other modern initialisms and acronyms that ‘boomers’ and the Luddites will find hard to fathom.
We in the motoring team will have plenty on our plates, given the avalanche of cars waiting to be test-driven and reviewed on their merits and demerits.
“Technical” will be the buzzword because we must navigate through volumes of ideas and press releases written in high-tech jargon to grasp these things fully.
Consider this excerpt from a recent press release: … “The average IP rating for an EV motor is IP67, with IP68 being the highest achievable rating. An IP67-rated component can endure submersion in up to a meter of water for 30 minutes without sustaining damage.
This is not even the hardcore PR. There are far greater and more science-oriented works than what will come our way.
Handbooks or manuals on electric cars, hybrids, and hydrogen-fueled autos seem written only for the techies or the tech-savvy
Even modern data and car reviews are replete with brain-wracking terms that only someone who has these things hardwired into his brain can fully understand.The EV juggernaut appears inevitable, being fancied about as the car of the future, but a close look will raise some questions:
Can the industry sustain the supply of critical minerals such as nickel, copper, and cobalt that are essential for making EV battery packs? What if supplies run out? The twin threats of supply lack and overconsumption persist.
Is there infrastructure to ensure recharging stations are readily available on demand?
What will happen to the outmoded ICE (internal combustion engine) autos?
What shall we do with ICE units, and where should we dump them?
These questions pose more complicated, hard-to-solve problems than any algorithm can resolve.
These issues usher in my re-immersion into the fascinating world of motoring journalism.
At the rate mobility and travel are going, my motoring team will have a lot of catch-ups to do. My team and I will ensure we’re in the mix and in a competitive crowd this time.
