Kevin White antique cars

When Mr Kevin White was a young boy growing up in Sydney, Australia, he recalls an elderly neighbour who kept old Studebakers from the 1950s.

“I used to run to the front gate whenever I heard the sound of the Studebaker’s V8 starting up,” he says, adding he would sometimes get to “sit in his cars and imagine the day I would be old enough to have one of my own”.

The 55-year-old fire protection engineer has since amassed quite a collection of wheels. He has a 1933 Ford Hot Rod with a 235 cubic inch flathead V8, a 1939 Lincoln Zephyr Coupe with a 267 cubic inch V12, a 1960 Dodge Matador with a 385 cubic inch V8, a 1966 Valiant Barracuda with a 225 cubic inch slant-6 and a pristine 1960 Chevrolet Corvette C1.

The Corvette has a 229hp 4.6-litre V8 paired with a four-speed manual gearbox. Mr White bought and converted it to a right-hand-drive in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2012.

He imported it to and registered it in Singapore in 2015, but declined to say how much he spent on it.

“I fell in love with the stunning Corvette, especially with all the patina from the years of use,” he says, referring to the car’s oxidised surface. “I could hop in over the doors or from the back without a care.”

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Friends, however, kept urging him to spruce up the car. Early this year, he “caved in”.

“Now that it is so polished and perfect, I constantly worry about damaging it,” he says. “I prefer my cars rough and ready for anything, but unwittingly the Vette has become a garage queen.”

Over the last 30 years or so, he has amassed so much memorabilia that his garage looks like an antique shop.

“I call it my Garaj Mahal,” he says. “I have this fixation on Art Deco, mid-century modern industrial design and petroliana.”

But what he really loves are cars from the 1930s to the 1960s, “especially if they come with lots of chrome”.

He also has a few notable motorbikes in his collection, namely a 1930 BSA 500cc Sloper, a 1954 Vincent Comet 500cc Single, a 1954 Triumph Thunderbird 650cc Twin, a 1960 Norton Dominator 500cc Twin, a 1960 Vespa 150cc four-speed and a 1963 Yamaha 250cc Two-stroke.

But his wife of 29 years, Hilary, prefers a more contemporary ride. She uses a Mini Paceman to commute to town, where she volunteers as a friend of the museum.

Mr White says the Mini is “just too predictable and boring for me because nothing goes wrong”.

He says his wife “enjoys my old cars too and does not mind getting a bit dirty or wind blown”.

“She understands if the old car breaks down or runs out of gas, which happens a bit,” he adds.

The self-taught mechanic says he is lucky because his family lets him indulge in his hobby “even though I spend a lot of my free time fixing my cars”.

The Whites have three sons and a daughter, all in their 20s.

“When you fix something with your hands, it gives you a sense of accomplishment,” he adds.

But he also acknowledges that the hobby entails “a lot of work… maintenance, cleaning, running around and repairing”.

“I’d have to say that I am nearing the height of my collecting ambition because when it gets too much, it ends.”

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This article was originally published in The Straits Times.