More than just driving flashy cars

Iñigo Roces

hoose a job that you see yourself doing every day.

For The Manila Bulletin’s (MB) Motoring Section editor Iñigo Roces, his first step toward the automotive industry originated from this advice, which he got while choosing a career path.

Cars have been close to Roces’ heart even as a kid. He remembers riding in his father’s Volkswagen Beetle and collecting toy cars, which he keeps until now.

He said his teachers also told him that he was doing well in his writing assignments. It gave him an idea that he could write for a living. His teachers encouraged him, so he took up Creative Writing at the Ateneo de Manila University. “It just seemed a natural choice,” Roces said. When he entered the industry about 12 years ago, he recalled that it seemed very small, with writers somehow knowing each other.

When he received an offer from MB, he accepted it right away. From then on, he had been submitting stories weekly. Three years later, he was offered the editor’s position.

While the motoring beat might appear to be dealing only with cars, Roces said that it is in fact an interesting one.

“On the surface, it just looks like it’s only about cars, but we deal with a lot of it—traffic, trucks which transports a lot of goods, factories which employ thousands of people, and of course the products of these factories,” he said.

Roces said that it is an interesting time to be covering the motoring beat because changes are coming up—new brands coming to the country, with the Philippines pegged as a place to manufacture not just cars but also motorcycles.

“There’s lot of good news for the Philippines. Not just new vehicles but also new jobs, factories, and facilities,” he said. “It’s very interesting to learn all that and I’m just glad that MB has a space where we can update people about these.”