1993 Mabuhay Rally

[SilverHorizon]

Hi Guys,
Share ko lang 'tong nakita kong video sa Youtube "1993 Mabuhay Rallye"



Nagulat ako ganito pala ang car scene dito sa Ph noon.

at Kung me mga pics or story kayo nung era nyan or before kung pwede sana pashare... nakaka excite kasi talaga

Thanks,

[pdspd]

Mitsubishi Galant vr4 with Mandy Eduque/Vip Isada/Robbie Hermoso
Toyota Levin with Jojo Silverio/Paeng Nodalo
Mazda 323 with Mike Potenciano/Clifford Certeza

[donbuggy]

*7:25 - MD Jeepstar team. Hurray for owner type jeeps! :clap:

[baludoy]

bakit nga ba wala ng rallye racing ngayon dito sa atin?

dati ka-abang-abang iyong sa mga enthusiasts iyong mabuhay rallye

[baludoy]

bakit nga ba wala ng rallye racing ngayon dito sa atin?

dati ka-abang-abang iyong sa mga enthusiasts iyong mabuhay rallye

[lowslowbenz]

Wala na halos mga organizers. Or wala na gana. Wala naman halos support from the government for the sport.

Pocholo Ramirez was active way back then. Camwrecker days marami sila rallies, sampaguita rally AFAIK. Then came MP Turbo, the Silverios, the Isada's, the Nodalo's, et al.

Here's an article written by Mike Potenciano for C Magazine, Turbo Time


Do you remember your first time?

Before you green-blooded guys and girls get any other idea on what I am going to write about, let me say that this is a very respectable motoring magazine and not your R18 mag. It’s all about my first column here in C! but most especially, it is about the theme of this column. I will be bringing you back to the good, old days of motorsports when I started in rallying, racing and all the other forms in between.

If I switch to the plural subject form during this write up, its just because I couldn’t have done it without my MP Turbo team, the multitude of friends and sponsors that helped us along the way. So let’s go and hope you enjoy Turbo Time in C!.

To help celebrate my first column, I would like to talk about my first rally car, the 1976 Mitsubishi Lancer, 2-door, which was fondly called the L-Type by aficionados. This car was a hand-me-down from my brother who moved up to a newer car and had the prestigious heritage of being Mitsubishi’s award-winning car in the Safari Rally, driven by Joginder Singh.

During the early years of rallying, we were avid fans of rallying and went to some far flung areas to watch by the sidelines. We even enrolled in the rally school of Lars Carlsson of the GM Rally team here in the country, which was held in the totally undeveloped land now called the Mercedes Village in Pasig. The biggest hamper to our motorsport dreams was the promise that we made to our parents that we would graduate college first before we could race. Even though we loved motocross and street racing then, we never had the chance to really enter a full-fledged race. In retrospect, this was a good trade-off because we could have never attained our present status without the power of education.

Finally, we graduated from our first course in UP Diliman and were allowed to go rallying. The 1983 Maya Industries Rally of Champions, sponsored by our family corporation, was going to be our first rally. Maya sponsored the same rally in the 70’s and was helping to revive the sport after the global fuel crisis in 1979. All forms of racing were stopped by the government and were only permitted in 1982 with the condition that races use alcohol as fuel. This condition proved to be crucial and was also the loophole exploited by the other teams, which we later found out

.Working hard around the clock to make the car ready, we had to finish not only the Lancer but my brother’s Toyota Corolla as well, which was to be driven by Butch Campos. We had to corral most of BLTBCo’s mechanics to put in overtime and find a way to get the Saturn 1600cc engine to run on alcohol. Our guys just knew diesels so we had to do a lot of research through the resource persons and the library for any books written on it. Without computers back then, this really limited our capacity but we never gave up. You don’t know how easy it is now for you guys!

We had to modify the car and engine for it to burn a very corrosive fuel which would have to ingest almost double the quantity while handling the extra stress. Include the fact that we never raced before plus the limited technical knowledge, then you can see it was all shaping up for a recipe for disaster! We had a 120 liter tank in the boot, coil overs in front, watts linkage at the back and a body kit that drew raves then and still revered by the guys who saw it. Our major problem was that the car never had a proper shakedown and had to be pieced together up to the last minute just to make the start.

Miraculously though, we made it to the rally with a great looking car to boot. It was a good thing that we entered car shows then and mastered the art of customizing and building cars for show before we raced. The event kicked off in Makati Auto Cycle near the corner of Buendia and Pasong Tamo. It’s now the Caltex station and that used to house all kinds of accessory shops and was our little Banaue in Makati City and taught us how to be good hagglers to get the best price.

We started near the back of the pack and the good drivers then were GM’s Carlsson, Toyota’s Dante Silverio and Pocholo Ramirez, Mitsubishi’s Guing Alcantara and Tony Mapa, privateers Robert Aventajado (now the nat’l Taekwondo’s head honcho) and Negrense Kikong de la Rama , Nodalo’s Team’s Vip Isada and Paeng Nodalo. Our BLTBCO-Maya Industries Team was one of the newer teams but had a powerful presence. Soon, the rivalries would shape up between all of the above when our team moves up in the future races.

Once we took off that start line, I knew that this was the sport that I wanted to be in. The pomp and glamour given to us made us feel like we were Formula One drivers and showed how hungry people were for motorsports. As soon as we took off, we didn’t know that most of the teams were already draining the alcohol from their tanks and putting pure fuel. This was even done by our other team car but we wanted to stick to the rule to use alcohol. Our principled stand soon reinforced the saying that what will go wrong, will go wrong!

Our electrical fuel pump soon packed up since it was never designed to handle alcohol fuel. We had a spare pump installed but it also died in the boondocks of Quezon. It was a long wait for service to pick us up and when we got to San Pablo City for our rest halt, we were literally spent. The crew got another pump and finally got the car to run but we were already over the time allowed to service the car. We had a token run around Sampaloc Lake the next day as an exhibition run and at least we can say we finished the rally on pure alcohol the whole time.

I don’t recall much of what happened during the event as we spent most of the time on the sidelines. However, that experience taught us a lot about car and rally preparation, and most importantly, what other people will do to finish an event. The best thing is that it was the first time that I got bitten by the bug and for 25 years it is still very much in me. There are so many firsts in my racing career and I believe you never forget your first time. But that’s for another type of magazine. Hehe.

[baludoy]

^ i remember those vr-4 beauts. had a big crush on them before

[lowslowbenz]

^

If you ever come across the coffee table book "Fastlane - Motorsports In The Philippines" by Junep Ocampo ........ read it.

If its for sale, PLEASE PM ME.

I've been looking for a copy for the longest time.

:D

[baludoy]

^ will be on the lookout for that bos