Hagerty Video: Crazy Rich Asians & SECRET Car Collections | Capturing Car Culture

Hagerty Video Transcript

We don’t even know if we’re going to be able to use this footage In the first episode we confirmed that if you’re a car Enthusiast Singapore is not the country to live in despite this car culture is alive and thriving in this tiny country of 5 million people it’s hard to talk about Singapore without mentioning crazy Rich Asians where many indulge in designer Goods

Michelin star meals and extravagant vacations on the regular that’s not my cup of tea at all so I was more interested in uncovering the crazy rich Asian car culture at the upper echelon of tax brackets first stop Darren ong’s pristine Evo collection this is crazy it’s

For the passion yeah I see that this is the last EVO 3 on the island yes this used to be yours yeah there’s no other place in the world that has this scene this is crazy so wagon automatic your daily driver and I thought it could be but in the end I

Don’t use it much also Evo 6 this is like a street build yeah and that’s for a track this is a track build with roll cage yeah this is a race inspired build yes so then you don’t normally park these here uh no I don’t I park it maybe on

The other side of the house and the workshop it depends this is just so much to unpack because the thing about Singapore car culture is that it’s not the crazy builds you know it’s not the engine in the front engine in the back it’s what

You guys are able to do which is a lot despite the Hoops that you have to jump through you know and if this existed in Japan or in the US it would already be crazy but the fact that this exists in Singapore and every single one is through registered and

They’re very tastily modified and they’re very clean is what’s surprising to me it’s really incredible to see thank you it really is in Singapore right it’s very hard to buy JDM you have to have a relationship with the owner and then you you probably got a chance

Of buying it just like along the way I I know some friends who own them and they decided not to keep them so they called me up and then I will work out something if I buy all the evils that come to me brother I will tell you that we need a

Part oh because everyone who wants to sell Evo will call me now so I choose accordingly like so something that I that I think is worth keeping I keep it and another thing is these cars while they’re expensive in their own right if you’re acting them in the US or in Japan

They’re probably eight to ten times more expensive here yes I agree not too long ago I saw an auction mean condition Tommy McKinnon probably selling for maybe 100 Grand Sing dollar equivalent in Singapore you probably pay 300K for the same thing or maybe a worse condition so then how much would

Something like this go like a mint Evo I think we’ll go around 180k 180k Singapore dollars correct not forgetting the Coe probably this car left two years ago 180k then by the third year end you need to probably pay like another hundred thousand to continue the life of the car As I mentioned in the first episode a Coe is a certificate of entitlement that lets you register your car for 10 years which means Darren has to spend almost a million US dollars to register the cars that you see in this video since we filmed this the COE prices Rose

From eighty thousand dollars per car for 10 years to 95 000 US dollars we just pulled up maybe 15 minutes ago and this is my first time seeing all this stuff so already we have replica of keichi Suchi as a86 with the green Bonnet Tech Arts everything yeah

Do you get to drive this that often I drove it last night when I went to meet him yeah we went there amazing FD I how many of these are left FD is still quite a quite a bit yesterday you see quite a few already Maybe 18.

This is your track day car yeah yeah it’s a track day car I like it a lot Nismo R35 yes unregistered soon on the road and then R32 GTR is this one registered not yet waiting to be classic same for the NSX what a collection

And this is your house oh yeah yeah I stay here then my niece stays there and my mom stays on the other side your evos are so bright I could see the reflection on your neighbor’s Building from here looks like a temple yeah evil Temple yeah it is With great cars comes an incredible Home garage was a prime example of the ideal JDM car collection hidden in Singapore but what about those with a more exotic taste in transportation Stephen is a self-made man who is a true car Enthusiast through and through we really appreciate car enthusiasts

Like Stephen because he’s an outlier from the traditional hypercar collector unlike many others who hide their vehicles Steven is more than willing to share his unobtainable cars with the local community you’ll find them at local meets cars and coffees and huge Supercar gatherings as a very important member of The Pagani

Club he drove his Huayra throughout various European circuits with Horatio Pagani himself The next day I found myself at Steven’s home we were Amazed by the interior design and the multi-million dollar collections of koi fish furniture and ceremonial teapots if that didn’t blow our minds we were left speechless over his garage you know what this is n’t this he Hyundai this is not a

Hyundai it’s a Huayra I think it’s a Hyundai this is the fanciest garage I’ve ever seen for those of you guys wondering how much this costs to have in Singapore according to Steven it cost him 14 million Singapore dollars at this market rate it’s 10.5 million dollars to get this

Here to get this street registered and he could drive at any time and that’s including like the issues that he was having to get the number plate actually like put on to the carbon fiber because you can’t drill into this bumper you’ll ruin it apparently it was like a

Four month ordeal just to get it legal since he’s gotten this car he’s only put 700 kilometers on it but every single week or so he takes it out to get it out on the road he does a little airport run and the reason why he does the airport

Run is because it’s pretty much like the longest road you can drive in Singapore and then when you come back you get in your Koenigsegg And what what is this place I don’t know who brought you to the wrong place no JDM no problem he does have a Nissan so he’s a JDM guy okay Steven owns the one and only GTR 50 by Italia design in all of Asia this was custom painted in Iron Man colors unfortunately we weren’t able to take it out on the road because it was actually in limbo at a bonded gallery which means it was stuck in customs

Waiting for it to be legalized for Singapore the GTR 50 sells for 1.1 million US dollars who knows how much it actually went for in Singapore just to give you an idea a BMW M3 starts at 370 000 US dollars right now with that much money you can easily buy a

Supercar in the U.S this next segment started off with our friend nian who for whatever reason let me drive his Lexus LFA Is this a Hyundai So good He casually mentioned that he had a friend of a friend who heard we’re on the island this individual wanted to show us his super secret collection so what makes this collection so mysterious many moons ago there was a man of mystery who had one of the craziest car

Collections in Singapore they were all Street registered hypercars and he became a bit of a legend in the local car Community he actually drove his vehicles on the street all the time one day out of the blue he vanished after years of radio silence his people contacted our people

And sent us GPS coordinates to meet at an obscure location where did we just pull up I don’t know the first location was already pretty insane it felt like we walked into a five-star hotel resort but it was actually a single family home and we were only allowed to film the

Front driveway area we don’t even know if we’re going to be able to use this footage but we just got to this gentleman’s house very nice guy and this is like some real Underground like deep deep Singapore car culture stuff that I never thought I would ever

Uncover and also been to yeah and we’re excited it’s 1am yep by the way no sleep no sleep team no sleep yep the first location was already pretty insane we got to chat a little bit and once he realized we weren’t a threat at all

He led us on a drive a few kilometers down the road to a second location where he had more of his car’s store yeah okay okay all right here we go we’re uncovering a lot today yep I’ll stay here [Laughter] we checked out these cars worth tens of

Millions of dollars and they looked like they haven’t been driven since the Mystery Men went quiet on Instagram in fact they sat for so long that all the batteries were dead and everything was super Dusty I know I’ll totally Blown Away totally it’s like I know they are crazy people but this is I was very blown away when I saw your garage in your house this is next level there’s no way to explain this because the empty properties properties right yeah it doesn’t know where his keys are

Oh my God it’s it’s too bad it’s bad we can go we can all take one each it’s honestly it’s a level that I didn’t know existed how about that but are you surprised by this yeah Yeah but there are plenty of these cars in L.A right don’t matter it doesn’t matter to me I I honestly I don’t really shoot hyper cars with supercars what’s that sound Things got even weirder when another Pagani choira pulled up at 2 am with a very special license plate our good friend Ben Cham is our fixer in Singapore and he was actually with his mom who noticed the choir had the identical license plate that was once on her Ferrari f-355 in 1999.

What are the chances of this exact plate circling through different cars over 24 years then ending up at the exact same location on this exact night on a completely different car bye okay I hope you guys enjoyed this really deep dive into Singaporean car culture we just scratched the surface I know

There’s so much more to talk about but we’ll be back I hear there’s so many people that are living paycheck to paycheck just to afford their dream car and we’ll definitely check that out next time we’re there I wanted to thank Ben Yip and Kieran for

All your help on the ground it’s so incredible to be able to travel the world and make friends that are embedded in the culture that we all love foreign