THE role of light trucks has evolved over the last several years to put the vehicles once considered strictly utilitarian into an entirely new class that is a bit hard to define: Not exactly a car, not exactly an SUV, and certainly not exactly a truck in the classic sense, but a sporty amalgam of all three.
Whatever it might be called, the modern light truck is popular, with stiff competition among the usual suspects Ford, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Isuzu having created a big market in the Philippines, and even attracting a few upstarts like Mahindra.