Brinal Chua

I have spent three decades managing automotive brands across Southeast Asia. In that time, I have seen the same pattern repeat: owners put considerable thought and money into what they put on their vehicles, but the wheel, despite being the one component that connects everything to the road, often gets the least rigorous consideration. In the Philippines specifically, that gap has consequences. The roads here are genuinely variable in ways that most wheel specifications do not account for....

Three decades of working in automotive brand management across Southeast Asia have given me a clear sense of where wheel decisions matter most and where they do not. For a city driver doing highway runs on well-maintained roads with light loads, the construction method of the wheel is a secondary consideration. For a Filipino Fortuner owner running between Metro Manila and the provinces, loading the truck with family and cargo across roads that change character every ten kilometers, that...

The mid-size body-on-frame SUV is a Philippine institution. The Toyota Fortuner has sold over 230,000 units in the country since 2005 according to market data, making it one of the most enduring vehicles in the segment. The Mitsubishi Montero Sport, Ford Everest, and Isuzu MU-X complete a competitive four-way segment that defines how a large portion of Filipino families and professionals get around, from EDSA to provincial highways to barangay roads. Because these vehicles see such varied and...