My mom taught me an adage that was passed on to her early in life: “Lahat ay mahal kapag wala kang pera. Lahat ay mura kung meron. (Everything is expensive if you don’t have money. Everything is cheap when you have.)” I am reminded of this wise old saying after our finances were reduced when we shifted our magazine business ...

While waiting for its new 383-cubic-inch (6.2-liter) small block Chevy V8 engine and 700-R4 four-speed automatic transmission in October 2013, our 1971 Chevrolet Camaro RS project car was inundated in five-feet-high flood waters during the height of the Habagat monsoon rains while parked outside the garage-workshop of V8 maestro Ben Lim in Cainta, Rizal. Ben jokingly called our Camaro a ...

When we last saw the 1973 Volkswagen Beetle 1600 of Ildefonso “Fons” Caluag, it was getting a thin coat of body filler prior to it receiving its base paint. The painter assigned to work on the Bug by Johnson Tan, the proprietor of JSK Custom Paint and Auto Works, was all praises with the VW’s straight body and minimal rust. ...

When we got the 1973 Volkswagen Beetle 1600 of our family friend and VW enthusiast Ildefonso “Fons” Caluag, our initial assessment is that we just needed to continue the paint wash-over that was abandoned by an unscrupulous journeyman painter. We got a wash-over sponsorship from Johnson Tan, the proprietor of JSK Custom Paint and Auto Works, and we had the ...

Ildefonso Caluag is a certified Beetle fanatic. He owns two Volkswagen Bugs – a green 1974 Super Beetle 1303 S and a cream 1973 Beetle 1600, which he loving refers to as his “baby”. Fons, as he is known to his friends, narrated that he sold his slightly used locally-assembled 1980s VW Brasilia and with the proceeds, bought the ’73 ...

Our 2002 Chevrolet Tahoe LS sat almost undisturbed for a couple of months while we test drove and reviewed a string of brand new cars such as the Ford Ranger Raptor, GAC GA8, BAIC M50S and BJ20, Porsche Cayman and Macan Sport. We started our Tahoe once in a while to charge its new Hitachi car battery, which we installed ...

In June 2013, we took our 1971 Chevrolet Camaro RS project car to Ben Lim’s workshop in Cainta, Rizal in eastern Metro Manila. In July, the engine bay was devoid of the original 307/327 V8 and Turbo 350 3-speed automatic transmission and was waiting for a newly assembled 383 and refurbished 700R4 4-speed automatic with overdrive. Then, sometime in October ...

In our previous report, we mentioned that we weren’t confident with all the cheap fixes we did to our 1986 Mercedes-Benz 500SE project car. We realized that we can’t fix our top-of-the-line German luxury car with run-of-the-mill parts and service. So, we dug deep into our pockets and took our 500SE to a German car specialist workshop. On January 22, ...

If you missed Part 1 of the Project Car series on our 1971 Chevrolet Camaro RS, here’s a short summary: Power Wheels Magazine Editor-in-Chief Lester Dizon bought the car in January 1996 and started working on it piecemeal, as his budget will allow. It went through a nuts-and-bolts restoration at MSG Garage in February 1998, displayed in April at the ...

  From 1979 to 1991, Mercedes-Benz produced the W126 series as its top-of-the-line Sonderklasse (Special Class or S-Class) model. It achieved several awards including the Wheels Magazine “Car of the Year” in 1981; the U.S. Highway Loss Data Institute “Safest Passenger Car of the Year” in 1988 and 1989; the third-ranked luxury vehicle in J.D. Power’s 1990 Initial Quality Survey ...