Me And My Car: Technopreneur and his expensive passion project – Audi’s V10 wagon

SINGAPORE – I am not familiar with the sartorial preferences of Mr Brian Tan, 43, but I am certain that whatever trousers he wears must come with deep pockets.

Mr Tan is a former wealth manager who co-founded a successful kids’ tech start-up, myFirst, seven years ago. It develops and sells devices, such as cameras, phones, tablets and 3D pens, to safely introduce young children to the universe of electronics and connectivity.

And the basis of my deduction about the depth of his pockets? His choice of wheels – a cherry-red, 17-year-old Audi RS6 estate with a 5-litre twin-turbocharged V10 engine borrowed from the Lamborghini Gallardo of that era.

The running costs of this 580hp monster are enough to make a grown man cry.

The annual road tax for the car is about $8,000 after the surcharge imposed on cars that are more than 10 years old. That supercar-derived power plant has an unquenchable thirst too, gulping a litre of premium-unleaded petrol every 5km.

And this is without factoring in the repair costs, inevitable with a 17-year-old car, but even more so with one as tech-laden and complex as the RS6. In Mr Tan’s words, the car “is not temperamental, but when stuff breaks, it does so spectacularly”.

By way of example, he vividly describes an incident which occurred on Sept 25 after he returned from a two-week work trip.

“I was entering a driveway to an office building in the Central Business District when there was a loud bang and the car started shaking. I thought a bomb had gone off. Then I realised the radiator fan had broken and shattered. It punctured the radiator, and coolant was just pouring all over the floor, along with bits of fan plastic.”

That hissy fit resulted in the RS6 being laid up for about six weeks to wait for parts. As with many older cars, parts are increasingly hard to find and can take weeks to arrive.

Over the course of Mr Tan’s nine-year ownership of the RS6, some big-ticket items he has stumped up for included a replacement electronic control unit ($7,750), an alternator ($5,600), and front suspension arms and linkages ($5,400).

He is as happy-go-lucky a guy as you will find, but even he quietly admits that the RS6’s expenses are a drain on his finances.

Despite all this, he remains committed to the car, which he sees as a passion project for which he is prepared to make sacrifices.

You would expect nothing less from a die-hard Audi loyalist. The RS6 shares garage space with a 2011 Audi A6, which is used by Mr Tan’s 43-year-old doctor wife. The couple have a seven-year-old daughter.

Mr Tan previously owned a 2008 Audi A6, which remains in the family and is now driven by his sister. He credits his growing-up years for his devotion to the marque.

“My parents drove Audis and Volvos, so when I passed my driving test, the first car I drove was my granddad’s Volvo. This was when Volvos were square boxes. It was a solid car, but it wasn’t exciting to drive at all. Then, with more driving experience, I was allowed to drive the Audi, and it was a sea change. The engineering is just on a different level.”

As for why he chose the RS6, which is an ultra-rare, high-performance variant of the A6, the draw of such a beast to a petrolhead is not hard to fathom.

He first encountered this particular car around 2011 at the workshop while servicing his own A6, and recalls that “it looked really stately. I watched videos about the engineering that went into the RS6, and it was amazingly well engineered, but buying an RS6 at that time was just way out of budget”.

In 2016, Mr Tan’s wife was returning to Singapore from her medical studies in the United Kingdom and they needed another car. Mr Tan found the very same RS6 listed online, this time at a reasonable price of around $140,000, and the rest is history.

At that point, the car had covered around 80,000km and was in good condition, save for an engine oil leak and a faulty electronic control unit, which left the car in the workshop for six weeks awaiting a replacement.

In the intervening nine years, the RS6 has covered more than 100,000km and is used daily when Mr Tan is not travelling overseas for work. For safety, he has upgraded the brakes – a prudent move, given that the car weighs over two tonnes and hits 100kmh in 4.5 seconds. Otherwise, the RS6 is unmodified.

Mr Tan enjoys the unlikely sports-car-level performance from such a large family wagon. “Most people don’t know what car it is, and I like it like that. Only people who know cars know,” he says.

He makes good use of that cavernous boot too, with the RS6 frequently serving as delivery van for his start-up’s electronic products.

Mr Tan says his two canine pets like the space as well – “the doggies can just jump right into the trunk”.

What’s in the boot?