Saturday 19 January 2013

Who Are The Supercar Owners?

KPO Cafe Bar


















Whenever I walk past the 'KPO Cafe Bar' situated beside Orchard Central, the fleet of supercars parked outside the bar never fails to impress me. I have seen cars like Audi R8, Lamborghini Aventador, Ferrari 458 Italia, Nissan GTR, BMW M3, Maserati GranTurismo and different models of Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, etc parked outside the bar. It subsequently piqued my curiosity on who are the people who own them and I started stealing glances of the customers drinking inside the bar and on the open air balcony.

Here are some of my observations:

  • People dressed in their business attire can be seen drinking at the bar as early as 4-5pm
  • About 30 to 50% of the customers are Caucasians
  • Majority of them are in their early 30s to mid 40s

A first hand GTR already costs $350,000 including COE. Monthly maintenance is probably more than $4,000 including petrol, road tax, car insurance, ERP, etc. And we're only talking about a GTR which costs $350,000 here. What about an Audi R8 Spyder which costs twice as much? So who are these supercar owners? What do they do? How can they afford a supercar?

I feel that there are only a few possibilities:
  1. They are successful executives (lawyers, surgeons, bankers, etc)
  2. They are successful business owners or 2nd generation business owners
  3. Supercar belongs to father/family
  4. They are overleveraged 
However, from my personal experience, not every wealthy person owns a supercar. For example, the owner of a venture capital firm that I interned at drives a humble Toyota Camry despite having a personal net worth of more than $30 million. The father of my good friend who earns more than a million dollars a year and stays in a Good Class Bungalow owns a Audi A4 and a Volvo S80.

Living in a country with the world's highest concentration of millionaires and the largest proportion of wealthy expatriates where 54% of them earns US$200,000 or more,  I will have to work harder, save harder and invest smarter.




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