Bylines Walter C. Villa

‘Nissan of a gun, these cars are amazing!’

THE 40-MINUTE shuttle bus ride from Tokyo Big Sight to Nissan Global headquarters was a sneeze—if you’d compare it with Manila’s urban congestion at 9 a.m. While I was torn between basking in Tokyo’s multilevel road network,…

Nissan is shining

IF SUPERMAN were to ask Bruce Wayne to build him a supercar, the Nissan Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo in space-age Martian red would be it. It has the radical length and stunning form of Batmobile as…

Nissan’s heritage of motoring greatness

AFTER a deep breath and a moment of pause, Ryuji Nakayama of Nissan Zama Heritage Collection narrates in broken English the prominence that is Nissan R390 GT1.…

Nissan unveils three concept cars for the future

    Text and photo by Walter Villa   IN A SERIOUS bid to be the dominant force in auto technology in the future, Japan’s No. 2 automaker Nissan unveiled three concept cars in the ongoing the…

Rolling with the times

“The sexiest Rolls-Royce ever built,” coined by Rolls-Royce Motor Cars CEO Torsten Mueller-Oetvoes, may hit you as some sore figure of speech as an oxymoron or a paradox thrown stressfully for flamboyance or exclamation point.   But…

Trailblazer Drive Series visits Baler

HOW DO you improve on a test drive experience?…

Thoughts of Pico in a Mini Cooper

It’s a decision I am glad I did not have to make.…

Taal and green: Taking the new Ford Ecosport for a spin

THE EPIPHANY hit me just a few meters before reaching the lip of Taal Volcano’s main crater lake—not the often-photographed Binintiang Malaki, the conical mass on the island’s right side if you are viewing one of the…

All-new Mazda3 first drive: baring its fangs in Baler

  With recent improvements of the 116.37-kilometer Baler-Casiguran Road in Aurora, Baler beckons irresistibly not just to surfers, beachcombers, filmmakers, travelers, backpackers and weekend warriors these days but also to the most jaded motoring journalists.   What…

Cobra on the fairways: meet the world’s meanest golf cart

  “POP UP the blinkers.” Isa Suarez, Ford Philippines’ communications manager, and I just passed by the fleet of white golf carts and several caddie girls with all eyes fixed on our Ford Shelby GT500 golf cart…