The Temple of VTEC Asia Organises
The Honda Owners Clubs Visit to Honda Malaysia Assembly Plant in Pegoh Melaka.
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| Cars assembling outside the A.Famosa resort before convoy en-masse into the car-park. |
170 cars, 300 persons. This was the convoy that stretched from the Bukit Jalil Hockey Stadium car-park across the North-South Expressway and to the Alor Gajah toll exit on November 18th 2006 for TOVA's Honda Clubs Visit to the Honda Malaysia Assembly Plant in Pegoh Melaka.
New milestones are devloping very fast for VTEC.NET and November 18th 2006 marks a very significant new milestone for the Temple of VTEC Asia. It is the first occasion where TOVA ventured from being just reporting on events to being the organiser of an event itself. This was the very first event that TOVA have organised and it involved 6 different clubs from Malaysia and Singapore, clubs that I have close contact with over the past few years. From Malaysia, the clubs participating were the Honda Car Owners Club (HCOC), Team-City, Jazz Fit Friends Club (JFF), 8G Civic Owners Club, Honda Accord Variant Owners Club (HAVOC), and from Singapore, the Singapore Honda Club (SHC). In addition, several readers/supporters from Temple of VTEC Asia also participated in the visit as 'guests' of TOVA.
Months of Planning
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| We specially selected 'show cars' to demonstrate to Honda how we enthusiasts likes our cars done. |
TOVA is of course the 'instigator' or organiser for this event. Talks about this event started back in 2005 as I took the opportunity to bring up the suggestion of a visit to their assembly plant at every Honda Malaysia media launch event I attended. Both the Honda Malaysia senior executives, C.E.O. Yasuhide Mizuno and V.P. Kenji Tanaka were very receptive. Finally after several informal chats, I sent a formal proposal for this event to Honda Malaysia earlier this year. My justification for the event was simple. I told Honda Malaysia that I would be bringing along the most active and 'powerful' (as in influential) Honda clubs in Malaysia (and Singapore). While Honda enthusiasts might make up the minority of total Honda owners, following the well-known '80-20' rule, this 20% of owners will exert 80% of influence. This event will offer Honda Malaysia the unique opportunity to meet this group of people; to get to know them and their preferences, and thus the market-place as well.
In order to ease the workload in organising this event, I quickly contacted and roped in the committees of three Honda clubs that I have worked closely with in the past; the HCOC, Team-City and HAVOC. Team-City especially is well known for their ability to organise and run 'killer convoys' in the past. And so they generously volunteered to organise and oversee the most difficult part of the whole event, the convoy of over 170cars from various parts of Malaysia and Singapore to the A.Famosa resort which was where Honda Malaysia specially rented facilities to receive and welcome the participants of the visit. Team-City president Tommy Khoo and his able parking/traffic leader Jimmy Ng contributed the bulk of the work in organising the convoy and also significant parts of the whole event. President of HAVOC Damion Chee helped in the actual day while HCOC committees L.C. Foo and Edward Foo (not related) contributed towards the remainder of the organising chores. Meanwhile president of the JFFC Jack Tan helped to design the banner and car stickers for this visit.
After countless meetings and discussions, the first concrete step towards finalizing the details of this visit, the selection of the actual date for the event, took place on July 1st 2006 when members of the organising committee made a 'recce trip' to the plant itself to work out details like assembly areas, trip distances, convoy plans and so forth. Meeting us at the plant was Tuan Mansoor who was the manager of the Human Resources department. From that meeting, it was quickly decided that the initial proposed date of July 22nd was not going to be practical due to the short time frame. The next available date was on August 26th 2006 and that too was not going to work as it was the weekend of the annual Merdeka Millenuim Endurance race. So it was decided that the visit was to take place on September 16th 2006 as it was the nearest workeable date for everyone.
As things often happens, things did go wrong. The local authority, the Malaysian Automobile Association (MAA) who pretty much controls most of the automobile activities here in Malaysia decided to hold a function on the same day and accordingly they instructed all manufacturers that their most senior management staffs all needed to attend their function. In a show of just how important Honda places their customers, Honda Malaysia's C.E.O. quickly decided that it would be extremely rude to their customers if none of Honda Malaysia's senior managers were around to greet the members during the visit. And so the September date for the visit had to be cancelled yet once again. The double celebrations for the Malay and Indian communities (Hari Raya and Deepavali) meant that the month of October was not going to work and so the visit was postphoned to November 18th 2006. With all fingers crossed and lots of prayers, the organising committees from both my side and from Honda Malaysia sat down to start the tedious process of working out the detailed logistics for the visit.
Key persons from the Honda Malaysia side included Mr. Aizawa (who is no longer with Honda Malaysia), Mr Akkbar, Mr Kevin Lau, Ms Monique Low, and Ms Naniita and they were extremely courteous and co-operative all the time. In yet another show of importance to their customers, Honda Malaysia engaged a professional event management company to run the actual event, in order to ensure that it was run professionally and properly.
As the visit date runs near, meetings, phone calls and emails become more and more regular. The final few meetings involved a large contingent, where I brought together the committees from the Honda clubs involved, committees from Honda Malaysia and representatives from the event management company as we all worked hard to thrash out all the logistics for the visit. And they were not trivial. My original proposal to Honda Malaysia involved at least 600 members and between 250 to 300 cars. Honda Malaysia decided that there was no way they could handle so many people and still ensure that everyone was given the proper attention. So they requested me to reduce the number of participants to only 300 members and the number of cars to 100 only. The reduction in the number of cars was due to the lack of parking spaces at the factory parking lots. There were naturally dissappointments and not a few frayed tempers as the committees from the 6 clubs involved had to find ways to limit participation and still ensure fairness to everyone who registered. Also, lack of experience in organising such a huge event meant that many things were found out or decided late and as a result many things were also done quite last minute and in a big rush. Honda Malaysia decided that insurance for participants were mandatory for example, as there were inherent risks in being present on a factory floor, regardless of how much care is taken to ensure complete safety of participants. An attempt by Honda Malaysia to have custom-made T-shirts for every participants was twarted by the failure of the T-shirt supplier to meet their promise and replacement souveniors had to be found at the last minute. Then because we were unable to meet the limit of 100 cars for the event, Honda Malaysia decided to rent a place at the nearby water-resort of A.Famosa to hold the receiving and welcoming ceremony. This quickly solved the parking problems for us and so we were able to accomodate the nearly 200 cars involved in the visit (which was eventually cut down to just below 180 cars).
170 Hondas On The Road
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| As the first convoy started off, the sun was only starting to rise ! |
The day of the visit saw over 130 cars assembling at the designated K.L. assembly point, the Bukit Jalil Hockey Stadium car-park as early as 5:00am in the morning. When I myself arrived, it was still pitch dark ! Unfortunately it also meant that I couldn't take any photos of the over 130 cars that were assembling there !
Because 130 cars will quickly cause a massive traffic jam wherever we go and to ensure that the visit does not become headline news for the wrong reasons, it was decided very early that the convoy will be done in small groups of no more than 10 cars per group. Each group was to be controlled by a lead and a sweeper car and they will ensure that traffic regulations and especially the speed limits were to be obeyed at all times. Each club will lead and manage their own convoys. It was not 100% successful with a few cars still defiant of the rules. Also there were an unfortunate incident involving 2 cars in one of the groups. A totally incident free convoy with everyone being cooperative would have been perfect of course but as it was the first time a convoy of 130 cars were organised, it can still be considered to be a great success. The key people responsible for running the whole show was Tommy and Jimmy from the Team-City club.
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| The first few cars started entering the car-park |
The first group of 10 cars left the assembly point at 6:30am and reached the destination assembly point at 8:00am. Other groups followed quickly. Those cars/groups which started from other parts of Malaysia as well as the 27 cars from the Singapore Honda Club arrived soon after that. After a quick check-out of the car-park by my parking committee, the first cars started driving into the car-park at 9:00am. As expected, attempting to control over 170 cars into their allocated parking spots was not an easy matter and it took over an hour before all the cars were finally parked. Then it was another huge effort to get 300 persons to group together according to their allocated groups before we would enter the hall for the registration, welcoming ceremony and our lunch, all provided by Honda Malaysia.
Mr Kenji Tanaka, Vice-President and '2nd-in-command' of Honda Malaysia
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| Our specially made souvenior for Honda Malaysa. |
The cost to make this souvenior costed us over a thousand Malaysian ringgit as EBBRO model cars are expensive here in Malaysia. Together with costs to make custom stickers for each participating cars, an event banner and other sundry expenses, the total cost for running the whole event ran close to 3 thousand ! Luckily we had the sense to collect participation fees right at the beginning and what we collected was almost just enough to cover the expenses !
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| One of the last few cars, a JDM EP3 CTR from SHC driving to their alloted parking spot. |
Honda Malaysia grouped participants into 8 groups of 40 each and then hired 8 luxury buses to ferry us from the parking/welcoming area to the factory for the actual visit. The visit involved the bus driving across the factory compound to have a view of some significant structures and buildings in the factory. Of great interest to the visitors was of course the 2 km test-course which is quite a bit like a test-track which ran around the factory compound. A Honda City obliged us by going on its test around this course when my bus was touring the compound. Then it was off to the training center for a special event and finally to the foot-tour which involved visiting the C.V. joint factory and then key sections of the assembly plant itself. The tour was of course finished way too fast but with 8 groups to manage and a deadline of 3pm to meet, Honda Malaysia really had no choice. The 3pm deadline was due to the A.Famosa requirement whom needed their car-park back at that time as they will be opening their doors to visitors to their park starting at around 4pm. In the event, small delays meant that we actually started to leave the car-park at around 4pm and at that time, other cars - visitors to A.Famosa - really did start to arrive. Also, unfortunately no photographs were allowed in the factory grounds so no photos of the actual tours were available.
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As a recognition of the importance of the Honda enthusiats,
Honda Malaysia delayed the launch of the Mugen Civic
to coincide with the visit. |
A Nice Surprise
A few days before the actual visit, I received a phone call from the Honda Malaysia senior product planner whom after chatting told me to expect a 'nice surprise' during the visit. That same day I received a press release from Honda Malaysia announcing the launch of a special limited edition model for Malaysia. Then I received an urgent phone call from the person responsible for the press release asking me NOT to publish the release because Honda Malaysia decided that it has to be postphoned to November 18th. That of course quickly 'spoilt' that 'nice surprise' for me as I immediately knew what was going to happen. Honda Malaysia, as one of their efforts in recognizing the importance of Honda enthusiasts to them, have decided to delay/postphone the launch of this limited edition model to coincide with the factory visit. This is a demonstration of their respect and appreciation to the many Honda enthusiasts who have contributed to their (Honda Malaysia's) milestone of selling and registering over 100,000 units of Hondas since their formation in mid 2000 here in Malaysia.
The car, a very special Limited Edition Mugen Civic was launched specially to participants of the visit at the Honda Malaysia training center. It was especially interesting to observe the reactions of Benny Lok who is the president of the 8G Civic Owners Club when he checked out the extremely cool looking Mugen Civic at the launch. Mr Akkbar was there to officiate the launch. TOVA will cover this limited edition Mugen Civic in a dedicated 'feature car' article in the near future.
All Is Over Way Too Fast
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This photo was taken in the evening when we started to leave the
car-park as visitors to A.Famosa were starting to arrive. These are cars from the HCOC. |
As with all good things, the event was over much too fast. As I was in the first bus, soon I was back at the A.Famosa car-park and being interviewed by some reporters from the dailies (newspapers) that Honda Malaysia invited to cover the event. It was a long wait for the remaining 7 buses to return to the car-park, a demonstration of how tight the timing was and how much work Honda Malaysia had to do to ensure that the event meets the tight deadline given to them. The trip back home was greeted by one of the most heavy thunderstorms I had ever driven in but no-one in my car at least was complaining as they are returning from a most enjoyable and unique experience for them.
For me, it was a most satisfying and proud day as I have finally managed to pull off something few people could do - organize a visit by Honda Owners Clubs from Malaysia and Singapore to the Honda Malaysia assembly plant. While it was extremely tough work, the difficulties were also way below that I had originally feared, thanks to the tremendous work from the various club committees and from Honda Malaysia as well. In the visit itself, HAVOC and SHC had already approached me with a proposal to hold another significant event in the near future. That of course, is another story that is waiting to be told in the future.
Special words of appreciation to all the people who contributed to help make this event a huge success. Any person whose name has been left out was done so unintentionally and by mistake and all due apologies is offered.
Wong KN
November 2006
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