Start Your Engines 1.0

Hello again from Southeast Asia!

Singapore is a hotbed for cars. Luxury sports car, to be exact. There are perhaps more Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Maseratis on the streets of Singapore than in any other city on the planet, even possibly Los Angeles.

If you take a look at my attached photos you can see what I mean. These photos are from a parking lot for Millenia and Centennial Towers, which are corporate office buildings that house companies like TD Securities, Toronto-Dominion Bank and my husband’s trading firm, Think or swim Singapore.

These guys drive these machines to work every day and leave them parked in the hot sun all day as a showcase in the small lot outside Millenia Walk.

Of the roughly 20 spaces, more than half are Lambos, Ferraris, Porsche Panamaras (my personal favorite because it has four doors), Porsche 911s, Boxsters, Carreras and Turbos—many of them custom. There’s even a custom Lotus with fins, as well as a fair share of high-end Mercedes and BMWs.

Yes, they are “car people” here.

The interesting and crazy thing is that these cars cost substantially more than in the United  States. A BMW that costs $70,000 in the U.S. costs about $450,000 (car, taxes and COE) here. A Volkswagen Jetta goes for around $208,000 (car, taxes and COE). The high end sports cars here cost more than a million dollars. And it costs money to own a car, and I don’t mean $25 license plate registration. A COE, Certificate of Entitlement (that’s the key word), is a government tax on cars, because it is quite a luxury to have a car on this small island. COEs currently cost $75,000 for cars with 1.6 Liter engines or smaller, over 1.6 liter engines COEs currently cost $97,000. We believe they do this not only to make money, as the government here quite smartly runs more like a corporation, but also to limit the amount of cars on the road. If everyone could afford a car then the streets would be a disaster of traffic and parking issues.

Having explained all that, you can gather there is a tremendous amount of wealth here. Singapore has one of the highest concentrations of millions per square mile in the world. That means that more people here are loaded than most other places in the world. And the culture here is very showy. The taxi drivers—who will tell you everything you want to know about cars and about life in Singapore, bar none—say cars are a status symbol here that harks to their Chinese heritage. A taxi driver the other day just told me it’s common for some of the ultra-rich here to have several cars parked outside to showcase their wealth.

The unfortunate downside of having these powerful cars on the road is terrible accidents. Several months ago, a Ferrari driver, a taxi driver and passenger were killed when the Ferrari hit the taxi going 160 MPH.
The taxi was at a light. The light changed to green and as the first taxi moved the out of control Ferrari careened through the intersection. Shocking. Here is a link to the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhKaedPTtTg

You can hear the taxi driver whose car took the video, say “Lucky, man,” when he realizes his delay in moving into the intersection saved his life.