Reminiscences of a Eurocar-inspired youth

MANILA, Philippines - Six years ago, my personal car was a pearl white 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer MX. I bought the car when it was less than a year old and had less than 8,000 clicks on the odometer. As such, it had virtually brand-new car reliability. It had a fairly energetic 1.6-liter engine mated to a state-of-the-art continuously variable transmission (CVT) with six speeds of manumatic bliss.

This drivetrain was responsible for helping me achieve the best fuel economy I’ve ever seen in a 1.6-liter engine-automatic transmission combo – despite my heavy-footed driving. Not only that, the car had nice plush light beige leather seats, lots of wood trim on the dash and console, reversing sensors, and my personal favorite, a 7-inch LCD monitor that pops out and plays DVDs from a dash-mounted Pioneer head unit.

I even upgraded the wheels with 16-inch Concept Ones and 50-series Goodyear Eagle F1 tires. (I didn’t want to sacrifice the car’s supple ride by going with 17-inchers and 40- or 45-series tires.) I was lucky that the car already sported an original set of front and rear spoilers, side skirts and even a rear under-bumper apron when I bought it.

But after only a year of absolutely trouble-free ownership, I sold the barely-two-year-old car and bought... a 9-year-old Volvo. Time to have my head examined, right? The words “money pit” are already probably forming in your brains right now. Why would any right-brain-thinking person swap a nearly brand-new and fully dressed up Japanese car for a bone-stock European car that’s more than seven years older – and one that has a questionable maintenance history (me being the third owner already)? Why, indeed.

Well, you can blame my left-brain thinking – and my father and grandfather – for that. You see, at the tender age of five, I was already being indoctrinated into European car ownership. We weren’t filthy rich, mind you. Not by a looong stretch. My parents and grandparents were just hardworking middle-class citizens – which meant that we didn’t have a garage full of brand-new BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes. (And, no, they didn’t harbour any biases against Japanese cars; in fact, we’ve had way more Japanese cars than European cars over the years.)

That first European car, in fact, was a 1971 Opel Rekord Coupe. My father bought it when I was five. He then followed that up by bringing home his first company car (well at least the first one I could recall as a child) five years later. It was a 1975 Mercedes-Benz 200 (the W115 series). He bought it when it was barely a year old in 1976, the year I turned ten years old.

This car would make a major impact on my life, as I still remember the day my dad just stopped this car on the side of the road inside our village one afternoon and made me take my first – and impromptu – driving lesson. I was 16 then.

The car had a 4-speed manual transmission and no power steering. Surprisingly, the steering wasn’t very heavy and the engine made so much torque (plus the clutch pedal was light) that it was almost impossible to stall the engine even for beginners.

Four years later in 1980, my dad bought a VW Kombi. It would be the “school bus” to me and my two brothers for half of our grade school and our entire high school lives. Like a lot of people who’ve owned an air-cooled VW for a fair length of time, we experienced engine fires – three times in our eight years of owning it. It’s hard to forget those memories, especially when you, your classmates and the family driver are all screaming for the fire extinguisher. (We always had one ready after the first fire.) But we loved that little bus to bits.

Another four years later (in 1984, the year I graduated from high school), my dad decided to treat himself to Stuttgart’s finest: a Mercedes-Benz 450 SE. It was one of the earlier W116 models, a 1973 US version model with the round headlights (but minus the extended bumpers which became standard two years later). It was already a 9-year-old car by the time he bought it; but the big 4.5-liter fuel-injected V8 was so unstressed, it seemed as fresh and robust as the day it left the factory. It was also my first taste of all-power features and automatic transmission.

Still those four German cars wouldn’t have as much of a profound influence in my young motoring life as our next European car, a 1973 Fiat 132. This car was actually my grandfather’s car when he worked as the consul general for the Philippine embassy in Spain in the 70s. He brought the sedan home with him after his term in Madrid ended. The car just languished in our garage for the better part of a decade, partly because my Spanish-speaking grandfather was reassigned to Mexico and partly because parts for the Fiat were hard to come by.

But about a couple of years after I got my driver’s license, I suddenly had a lot of interest in that car. So much interest that even if I could have asked for a new car (my older brother was given a new Ford Laser when he turned 18), I just told my folks that I wanted the Fiat. By that time it was already nine years old and was so infrequently used, we often forgot it was there.

Still I insisted to my flabbergasted parents that I wanted to keep the Fiat. All I asked was to change its paint from boring green to Rosso Corsa – Italian Racing Red. Now why would I want an old car with no available parts when I could have gotten a much newer and easier-to-maintain Japanese car? Left-brain thinking, that’s why. Italian cars do that to you.

Besides, by the time I turned 18, I was so deeply hooked into cars that even in those pre-Google days, I already knew that the Fiat’s engine was designed by the great Italian engine designer Aurelio Lampredi, the same guy who designed the legendary four-cam Ferrari V12s of that era.

Ergo, that Fiat 132 was the Lancer Evo of its day. (Its two-door version, the Fiat 131, had been competing in WRC and took the world title in 1977). While a 1975 Toyota Corona had a 68-hp cast-iron pushrod (non-OHC) engine, 4-speed manual, and four-wheel drum (!) brakes, the even-older Fiat had a 120-hp engine with twin-cam aluminum heads, five speeds, and four-wheel disc brakes. It even had those gorgeous Veglia Borletti gauges and those charmingly unreliable Magneti Marelli electrics. And with its four round headlamps, upright greenhouse and even a discreet dogleg kink in its rear quarter window, it looked a bit like a BMW.

Three years after inheriting the car (and after experiencing intermittently reliable motoring with it), I had restored the car to better-than-new condition – enough to enter it in the 1987 Transhow, the precursor to today’s Trans Sport Show. For a 21-year-old young man, the experience was truly character-building – not to mention wallet-draining.

Equally character-building (and culturally educational) was my dalliance with a French car, a 1979 Renault 20TS. I had always admired these Renaults, which when brand new cost almost as much as a new Mercedes-Benz 200. I got the car in 1991 when it was already 12 years old. It was my first front-wheel-drive car. It was a lot more reliable than the Fiat, and had the advantage of having a local distributor then, Tropical Automotive in Quingua Ave. in Makati, where the current Jaguar service center now stands.

That Renault had lousy handling, but its riding comfort was even better than the Mercedes 450’s. The long-travel suspension typical of French cars simply glided over railroad tracks and potholes. The car’s leather seats were more supple than the Benz’s and backseat passengers absolutely adored its sculpted rear bucket seats and cross-your-legs legroom.

Which brings me full circle to my next European car, the Volvo 850 – appropriately the last pure Volvo model to roll out of the Goteborg plant before Ford bought the Swedish marque. I’ve had it for almost six years now, and it’s been utterly reliable the whole time. It may not have the resale value of its German counterparts, but this only underscores the wisdom in buying a pre-owned model. I still enjoy the comfort, luxury, safety (and even, surprisingly, high fuel economy) that the brand is known for.

So after experiencing German, Italian, French and Swedish cars (plus several Japanese and one Korean brand), is there any one nationality that stands out? Well I can safely say that the Italian car stands out, head and shoulders, above the rest – certainly not in build quality but in sheer (sorry Renault) joie de vivre.

You want solid build quality? Go German. And it doesn’t even need to have a three-pointed star or a spinning propeller emblem on the hood. Riding comfort plus a healthy serving of technical and aesthetic eccentricities? Only the French can deliver. Needless to say, “S” stands for safe, sensible, serious and Swedish.

Of those countries, I’ve only been to Germany and Italy. But after spending decades in these cars, I feel that I know not just the companies that made them, but the very people from the countries they came from.

Since we’re featuring a story on Michelle Yeoh and her road safety advocacy this week, we deemed it necessary and relevant to print your comments regarding road safety, specifically with regards to the tires of questionable quality that our esteemed columnist Ray Butch Gamboa wrote about last week. Here are some of them…

I can almost positively pinpoint those tires that come from China. Those importers – illegal or legal – are to blame! The Government is not doing much about our safety. – makatarungan

You want cheap tires, a number of Chinese manufacturers will be glad to provide them. Most importers don’t want to bring in quality tires because they are expensive, while those that are cheap but inferior in quality easily sell. Blame this on our importers. – erniecgo

I have been using China-made tires for my AUV over the last six years. I change tires every two years regardless of its thickness. Over the last four years, I have been using WanLi and have not encountered any problem (we went to Baguio for six times and used the SCTEX the last two trips). Since WanLi is out of stock, what I have now is Kyoto and I have been using them for more than eight months now and have not encountered any problem. I think it is just the pressure that matters. Air expands, and when your tire is over inflated, it may burst. Another Chinese brand tire being recommended is West Lake.

And if I may say, simply because it is made in China, it is not necessarily inferior. Check the brands in telecommunications – almost all are made in China. Check the Western brands of apparel and they are mostly made in China. God created the world – everything else is made China. – joseinaki