If you’re the country’s dominant auto maker and you want to highlight the overall performance of your vehicle lineup, how will you do it? Toyota Motors Philippines did one for the books by flying in a select group of motoring journalists to the island of Palawan.
“This ride and drive will enable you to test the cars while enjoying the good roads and the natural beauty of this famous island,” says Satoru Suzuki, president of Toyota Motors Philippines .
After spending the night in Puerto Princesa, our intrepid group of pen pushers geared up for the 53-kilometer ride to Astoria, Palawan.
Toyota prepared brand new units of the Innova, Hi-Lux and the Fortuner SUV as the participating media men were divided into groups of four per vehicle. For the first leg of the ‘Road Trek”, my group composed of Brent Co of Autoindustriya; Ira Panganiban of Inquirer Radio, Al Mendoza of the Business Mirror and this writer representing The Standard/Interaksyon rode in a Hi-Lux G 4×2 automatic. The fuel efficiency rating which we had to beat in our category was 10.7 kilometers per liter.
Apart from the fuel efficiency contest, the organizers prepared a series of mental and physical games to make the experience a more memorable one. I drove for the first leg, while Panganiban drove the latter part of the driving experience, this time on board an Innova.
At the end of the day, our team managed to rack up an impressive fuel efficiency rating of 16.8 kilometers per liter, with the A/C on full blast and me driving like there’s an egg at the back of the accelerator pedal. The Innova was able to get a thrifty 20 km per liter while the Fortuner V was able to hit the 17km per liter mark.
After the “working” part of this year’s Road Trek, the Toyota convoy drove for another four hours to the Lio airport, where a 45 minutes boat ride awaited us for our final destination in island paradise of Lagen Resort.
For the “leisure” part of the Road Trek, Toyota billeted us at the Lagen Island resort in El Nido. Nestled between a lush four-hectare forest and a calm, shallow lagoon, Lahen Island is one of El Nido’s Eco-Sanctuary island resort. Luxurious bungalows strategically placed along the shoreline with a dense forest and a limerock face surrounding us, we all felt that we were in for some serious fun and play for the next couple of days.
Now on its 12th year, the Toyota Roadtrek is an annual road trip organized by TMPI. This four-day event requires its participants to engage in a friendly competition and stock up some precious points. It also has fun competitions, with this year’s theme requiring all media participants to compete for top honors for social media and fuel efficiency drive contests.
A major component of the Roadtrek is the driving part. Participants traversed the roads of Puerto Princesa and drove for six hours to the Lio Airport. We doff our autoracing cap to the marketing team of Ariel Arias and Jade Sison for their buckets of blood, sweat and tears in pulling off another successful Road Trek event.