On the new Clark-Subic Highway with the Mitsubishi Strada

For most Manileños, driving to Subic is a pain. Starting from Makati, you have to survive the hellhole that is EDSA for anywhere from 1 to 1 1/2 hours, then exit Balintawak onto the North Luzon Expressway. All the way to San Fernando exit, you get to drive on a world-class highway in exchange for a rather hefty toll fee, then it’s back to a provincial, two-lane "highway" where you then have to give up 1 to 2 hours of your life passing slower jeeps, dodging errant buses, and wondering if the destination is really all worth the stress and cost.

I mean, Subic doesn’t even have a nice beach for swimming, right? Alright, maybe there is, but the bottom line is that driving to Subic ranks right up there on my personal preferences list with paying for gas. It’s one of those things we as writers have to do in the name of work, but if someone else will do it for us, we’d be happy to let them.

So, imagine my feigned excitement when our Motoring Editor smooth-talked me into joining Mitsubishi’s Ride n’ Drive of its hot-selling Strada pickup truck. "Can you drive to Subic?", he asked. Eh, okay. In a truck? Uh, okay... "In the Strada." Whew, okay then. See, most of us in the motoring beat are car guys, not truck guys. If God and the folks at Mitsubishi were extremely generous, we’d be Riding n’ Driving something more in line with our tastes, you know. Like an Evo, for example. Or even an Eclipse. But this is the Philippines, and while hot sports cars make for good copy, trucks are where it’s at for Mitsubishi when it comes to sales volumes, so the Strada it would be.

Besides, most of us had driven the Strada before, and found the ride to be agreeably civil for a truck. Trucks, as you know, are built to be workhorses, and perhaps because of design limitations or the evil designs of the National Coalition of Product Planners and Engineers (if there is such a thing), we’d come to expect harsh-riding, bump-n’-grinding trucks from every manufacturer wanting a slice of the lucrative pickup truck market. Not so the Strada, which while not quite a revelation in suspension comfort, can subjectively be argued as having the best ride yet among compact pickups. And proof of this would be the Subic trip’s slated route for the Ride n’ Drive: the ongoing Subic-Clark-Tarlac Expressway Project.

It’s quite an impressive undertaking. A project of the Bases Conversion Development Authority, the expressway will link the three provinces via two Subic-Clark and Clark-Tarlac sections, both of which will be 4-lane asphalt concrete pavement and with the regular conveniences like complete lighting, modern drainage, and the like. The Subic-Clark section will measure 50.5 kilometers and will have 2 interchanges and 3 major bridges, while the Clark-Tarlac will be 43.27 kilometers long with 6 interchanges and 1 major bridge.

The price tag? Well, the contract amount for Subic Clark is a mere P12,698,816,313.94, while the Clark-Tarlac will ring the cash register at P8,270,800,220.11. That’s VAT-exclusive, so the next obvious question will not be whether there’ll also be a service charge and should we give a tip, but whether the money is actually going somewhere productive. Based on what we saw, we’d guess it is.

Saddling up in our Stradas, we got onto the unfinished Clark-Tarlac highway (64.8007% complete as of January 24) on a blustery Thursday morning, not really expecting much beyond fields of lahar as far as the eye could see. Popping the Strada into 4WD-High, we went through several barrios and tight single-lane trail before finally getting onto the highway.

And there, on top of that as yet-unpaved road with Subic far off on the horizon, we began to see the future of the North. Over streams and rivers the highway would have to cross, we were already beginning to see the first stages of bridges. Hills that got in the way of the road had been carved through, and while the project is currently running through miles of open ground with little to zero population, one can expect businesses and subdivisions to pop up in several years along the route in the classic development model of "If You Build It, They Will Come." By BCDA’s estimates, the drive from Clark to Subic via the new highway will cut around 30 minutes from the regular Manila-San Fernando route.

Through these several hours of moderate-speed driving, the Strada performed flawlessly and transparently, the 2.5-liter common-rail turbodiesel humming along, 4-wheel drive giving piece of mind, and stereo giving us nothing but cheesy music from "Heart 1035". Actually, I and my companions were too engrossed in conversation to actually notice one crucial thing: we were behaving as if we were in a regular, smooth-riding car and not a kidney-thumping, vertigo-inducing, leaf-sprung truck. After we’d had lunch in Subic and it was time to drive back to Clark to retrieve our personal vehicles, we didn’t mind the drive so much either, dozing off at the back this time and thankful that the cabin was roomy enough to sit like normal people and not like circus animals as other trucks seem to do.

Fellow contributor Manny de los Reyes, however, noted that the ride at the back was nauseous compared to the front, perhaps because rear passengers have the leaf-spring suspension very near their backs; a design necessity that tends to emphasize the oscillations of the suspension. In any case, we made it back to Clark in reasonable shape and time (at one point hitting an indicated 150kph on the highway, not that we condone that sort of driving...). As a smooth and civilized pickup truck, the Mitsubishi Strada may well be the best compromise yet. As for that new highway, when it’s finished (and it will be, very soon), there’ll a faster, safer, and less stressful way to get to Subic.