Me And My Car: Businessman musician is a die-hard VW Golf GTI fan
SINGAPORE – Mr Brinal Chua made a 30-year career out of sprucing up cars to make them look and go faster.
After selling his business early in 2024, he left the fast lane to focus on making music and helping the less fortunate.
But the 57-year-old’s itch to tinker with cars did not go away.
He drives a black Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk 5, which he bought in 2011 for around $75,000 when it was three years old. It is his second Mk 5 out of five GTIs he has owned. The others were the Mk 6, Mk 4 and Mk 1.
Mr Chua’s latest GTI has been fitted with nearly every possible aftermarket part: from body-kit to the brakes to the ABT quad exhaust.
The engine has been tuned to make 256bhp, up from 197bhp. A new infotainment set is on the way, equipped with Android Auto phone pairing.
The car looks new for something which has clocked more than 210,000km. But it was the Mk 1, which Mr Chua owned in 1989, that sparked his love for the German hot hatch.
He missed driving the manual-transmission car so much that he bought a 2006 Porsche Cayman S with a manual gearbox in March.
The Cayman was in the workshop on the day of this interview. Mr Chua is trying to restore the coupe – which was modified by its previous owner – to be closer to how it looked when it left the showroom 18 years ago.
“It’s a bit ironic, considering what I have been doing for 30 years – trying to change a car’s looks or improve the drive,” he says.
But he did allow himself a new set of forged wheels, which are on their way to Singapore from Taiwan.
The 18-inch alloy wheels and brake caliper were from Autovox. ST PHOTO: HENG YI-HSIN
In Mr Chua’s previous business, he represented aftermarket brands such as ABT, AC Schnitzer and Brabus. He even made parts such as alloy wheels and brake calipers under his Autovox brand. Some of these parts are in his 2008 Mk 5 GTI.
He recalls former football star Fandi Ahmad as one of his customers.
One day, Fandi took a BMW 320i Baur convertible, which Mr Chua had been working on for five months, for a spin. After 45 minutes, Mr Chua became worried.
“I paged him several times to call me back,” he recalls. “I thought he had had an accident on the road.”
The footballer was, in fact, so smitten with the BMW that he offered to buy the car immediately when he returned.
This is Mr Chua’s fifth Volkswagen Golf GTI. ST PHOTO: HENG YI-HSIN
In October 2023, Mr Chua sold his stake in the business to his partner. “I felt that it was time for me to move on,” he says.
The sale was completed early in 2024.
Married with no children, Mr Chua says he is willing to advise those who want to start their own auto parts distribution business.
He is, meanwhile, spending more time on his other passion – making music. He wrote his first song when he was 16, and has performed on stage and entered songwriting competitions overseas.
He is also the lead singer of Always July, a band he formed with four friends in the 1990s. They have performed at places such as Hard Rock Cafe, Timbre and the Esplanade.
They have also released three albums, the most recent one in 2022 called After The Fall – a reflection of the challenges in doing business.
“I decided to make changes to my life, learn from my mistakes and adopt a more positive mindset,” he says.
Besides music, Mr Chua is looking to build playgrounds for children in the region. He helped build three between 2015 and 2022.
The first playground was at a Christian orphanage in Yangon. He had the idea when he was travelling to Myanmar twice a month for work.
He did not know how to build a playground, but he was experienced in cross-border logistics as part of the distribution business. So he found a supplier in Bangkok and got the parts of the playground transported by truck to the orphanage.
He remembers the joy on the children’s faces when the playground was assembled.
A second playground was built in a monastery in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in 2019. A third one in Sual, the Philippines, was built in 2022.
What’s in the boot?
Mr Brinal Chua continues to write songs after his first one when he was 16-years-old. ST PHOTO: HENG YI-HSIN
- Jumper cable
- Acoustic guitar
- Music albums released in 2004 and 2014