Simply Staggering

"Live rich, die poor; never make the mistake of doing it the other way 'round."
--Walter Annenberg, American publisher, philanthropist and diplomat

Chris is supervising today's Blip - he's become somewhat of a self-made expert on high-performance sports cars and high-end luxury vehicles - in short, he knows a lot about a lot of amazing cars! To say I'm impressed by his skill would be an understatement; Chris can identify any car off the top of his head, no matter how obscure the model, what the nationality or brand, and regardless of the price tag or year of manufacture. He's like a walking automotive database - and Hong Kong is the ideal place to hone his skills!

His fascination with cars started long before I knew him, of course. Like most young men, he became interested in super sports cars the first time he got his hands on a Car & Driver magazine. He loved high-end cars so much that right out of college he got a job selling Porsches at a dealership in Georgia just so he could drive the demo models - and make some headway with the ladies in the process!

Over the years Chris has owned many different rides, his favorite being a 1988 Turbo T-Bird named Thor. He's owned Ford and Toyota trucks, Broncos, Expeditions, a Fiat Brava, a "gorgeous" red Mustang T-top, a Datson 280ZX and a 1962 Chevy Nova Station wagon he bought for a dollar. As his car-purchasing expertise ascended (along with his salary), he bought a Lexis RX350 and even owned a '96 325i BMW for a short time (before he moved to Denver and realized the Bimmer just wasn't cut out for Rocky Mountain winters!)

But nothing in all his car-purchasing, car-selling, car-driving experience, nothing in those hundreds of car magazines he's avidly studied through the years, nothing could have prepared him for the incredible display of the world's finest and most expensive automobiles that breeze by us every day in Hong Kong. It's like they opened up a car magazine and emptied the contents onto the streets and into the parking lots of the city - Hong Kong is a veritable showroom of the world's finest automobiles, offering up examples of the best automotive manufacturing available on the planet.

Ferrari. Pagani. Lambo. Mclaren. Porsche Panamera. Bentley. Rolls Royce. Audi R-8. Aston Martin. Range Rover. To put it in perspective, BMWs, Mercedes and Porsches are so plentiful, they might as well be Toyotas! And every car is so well taken care of, it's hard to believe they haven't been driven right off the showroom floor!

I took this shot of a Ferrari 458 Italia in the parking lot right outside our building - Chris, of course, is completely up to speed about this magnificent machine, being a fan of Evo and Car, the latest and most prestigious car magazines out of Britain which circulate in Hong Kong. This particular model Ferrari was released in late-2012 and we've already seen a couple of them growling along the streets of Hong Kong's nicest neighborhoods, but this little beauty could not have been more than a day or two out of the showroom window!

I'm not a big car buff, but I've gotten very educated about high-end cars over the past several years. The thing I find most telling about these vehicles is that they're a stark example of the kind of money being made in Hong Kong and China these days. This car, for example, costs roughly $260,000 (US Dollars); but in HKG the car costs double that because of the import tax imposed on the purchase. That means the person who owns this Ferrari spent half a million dollars on this car - and I would venture to bet that it's not his only vehicle. To me, that's simply staggering.