Friends of the Marques

(Conclusion)

LAST

BMW Asian Awardee – Edwin Reyes winning the coveted award for loyal and true lovers of BMW cars in 2017.

This week, we will show why the racing slogan, “What wins on Sunday, sells on Monday,” is still very relevant today. Motor sports help sell cars and build great partnerships between the brand and their patrons.

Forgive us for turning this week’s column into a short tribute to our MP Turbo Team that helped some brands along the way, as well as the multiple champions that we produced in more than 36 years of racing and rallying, both here and abroad. Here is a short summary of those great times with the different marques we had the chance to be associated with.

MP Turbo’s early years

Since there wasn’t any racing after the 1979 global fuel crisis and the tragic local racing incident involving spectators, we turned to rallying as our entry into motor sports. When we started in 1983, we were mesmerized at the local factory teams of Toyota, Ford, Mitsubishi and General Motors/Opel that were joining rallies before.

Autometics of Butch Viola and Boy Saycon and was constantly amazed by it. Since I was too young to drive it, I would just sit on the driver’s seat every day and say that one day I will get to drive one in a rally. That chance only came after college after my parents made it a condition for

Thus, after I graduated BS Biology in UP Diliman, I was able to rally and almost became a doctor. However, my love for cars and anything mechanical was more than my parent’s wish for me to become a doctor. Therefore, I enrolled again for my 2nd degree as an Industrial Management Engineering, minor in Mechanical, in De La Salle University and had good knowledge for making good rally cars and making the business side of it grow.

Rally Lancer

In international rally competitions, the East African Safari Rallies were always the much awaited event for us with the locally available 1976 Mitsubishi Lancer winning a couple of this grueling event with Joginder Singh becoming a living legend in our eyes.

Thus, the winning slogan impressed on me early on and I longed to have the Lancer L-type There were a lot of us in that loved it including one of my mentors in rallying, Tammy Campos who also rallied his own Lancer.

team color and stripes. This even had political undertones as we just graduated from UP and Ninoy Aquino was just killed during those turbulent times in 1983. We would have the Lancer in yellow at the start and then black after the assassination.

Toyota influence

When the local Toyota came out with exciting cars like the Corolla Sprinter, Liftback, DX, and the iconic 1986 AE86 that were being raced abroad and here in our shores, we knew we needed to get our hands on trying them as our 1976 L-type was showing its age in rallying.

When the Audi Quattro came with its wide That again shows how cars used in rallying perked our passion and creative powers to do our own custom designed body kits.

Nissan 240RS Group B

The late 1980’s international rally scene was ablaze with Group B rally cars and the Nissan Group B homologation requirements. We were fortunate to have a few of these powerful brought in by our Filipino rally drivers led by Robert Aventajado, Mandy Eduque, Alex Limjuco and Boy Saycon.

These cars were barely street legal and didn’t have any air conditioning or other amenities of a modern day car. Even though they were expensive back then, people still bought them and became instant classics that demand a hefty price now. We were fortunate to have 2 of them and rallied them here and abroad with good results. It was really a beast to drive and I will never forget those days!

The only problem was that the time of the cars were coming and they would easily beat internationally exciting Group B was banned for being too fast and the last straw was when top rally driver Henri Toivonen was killed in a rally.

Inspiration for the future

Up to now, a lot of people still look for pictures of our customized cars that we rallied before – the Lancer L-type, Box Type, Evo, pictures serve as inspiration for future drivers and enthusiasts that want to have a piece of rallying history in their lives.

We are happy that we were able to help motor - tor sports really help sell cars. We hope to see more car manufacturers join motor sports and our Rally of Champions soon. Godspeed to all!