Harabas

Driving along Otis St. over the weekend, I somehow trailed an old familiar silhouette from afar.  I managed to give chase and upon reaching the Quirino stoplight, my suspicions were delightfully confirmed--it was a Harabas Asian Utility Vehicle (AUV) which was released by General Motors in the early seventies.  This specific unit I saw is probably one of the last surviving (and running) vehicles of its kind.  The driver was kind enough to give me permission to take a photo, as I explained to him that during my student years, I was a struggling car salesman for GM & Isuzu. 

To give you a brief background, the Harabas was one of the first locally manufactured AUVs under the ASEAN car production program (the Ford Fiera and the DMG Sakbayan were the other two).   As an engineer, Kongkong was quite involved in the development and assembly of this vehicle.  Compared to the AUVs built today, it looks like small and crudely made, but then again, you have to consider that except for the engine and the drive train, the whole vehicle was locally designed and produced!  The second generation AUVs already included the Isuzu KC-20, the Toyota Tamaraw and the Chrysler Cimarron.  Over the years, the workmanship and the construction of the AUVs have evolved to what we have today (Mitsubishi Adventure, Isuzu Hi-Lander & Crosswind, Toyota Revo & Innova).

The phrase "pang Harabas" in the vernacular means that you will use something for rough and unglamorous (even reckless) usage.  This means that the product or material has to be able to adapt to tough environments and that it has to have a "cowboy" attitude--not needing polished refinery to uplift the ego.  The root of the lingo can be traced to the Kenkoy pre-war comic strip (Harabas was his family name), and the concept was solidified with the reputation of the Harabas AUV!  The vehicle was meant to be a workhorse.

If you look at it in the context of the local car industry, the Harabas was an experimental effort to get the jeepney into mainstream vehicle production.  Unfortunately, however, the AUVs today are mostly built in Thailand and Indonesia, because by the early eighties, the Philippines had lost its pole position as the ASEAN center of car manufacturing (in the sixties and early seventies, the manufacturing might of the Philippines was second only to that of Japan).  By the late eighties, the Malaysians had come up with the Proton, and today, the Chinese and the Indian car manufacturers are releasing new models that rival those of the Koreans and the Japanese.

Sayang!