Eason Lin: Hooked on Classic Cars

Prestige ventures deep into the New Territories, where confirmed Petrolhead Eason Lin has set up Car in Life, his Business devoted to the sale, sourcing and restoration of old – and often rare – automobiles.

Photography SEPFRY NG

It could be just about anywhere in the low-lying flatlands of the New Territories, that all-too-familiar confusion of container and truck parks, flyovers, scrapyards, wetlands, urban farms and allotments, interspersed here and there by village houses and, punching out of this ramshackle landscape as if dropped there at random, clusters of tower blocks. Somewhere beyond Yuen Long, we turn off the road and gingerly negotiate our way along a narrow concrete track lined with corrugated iron sheets, until on the left side we come to a large shed that looks newer and neater than its neighbours. Is this it, we wonder?

We get out of the car and peer inside the shed’s half-open door. Right in front of us stands an old Shell Petrol pump and a tyre gauge painted in the same yellow and red colours – and beside them sits a beautiful grey Mercedes-Benz W121 190 SL roadster, resplendent with gleaming chrome and white-walled tyres, the “poor man’s” 300 SL from the 1950s, though no less desirable a set of wheels for all that. Oh yes, this is the place all right.

Founded around three years ago by Eason Lin, a self-professed “young boy” who says that until then his only work experience had been a six-year stint with Tesla, Car in Life is a veritable Aladdin’s cave for petrolheads – though in fact it’s much more than simply a place in which to wander round and gawp. “Mostly,” says Lin, “I do import and export with classic cars and also some consignment, helping clients to sell or source cars, as well as some logistics. Although we’ve been in business for three years, we only moved into this new showroom this year, so now we have some maintenance and servicing capabilities – and we can also handle things like shooting commercials with classic and foreign cars.”

And what a showroom he has. “As you can see,” Lin explains, “I’ve separated the cars up, so on the right-hand side are what I call true classics, up to 60 or 70 years old, while on the left is what I call modern classics, from the 1980s onwards, which include some that I might even call future classics.”

Aside from that gorgeous 190 Merc, which we’ll get around to a little later, the right side of the showroom is also lined with a lovely old Morris Minor, a pair of MGBs, a mid-’70s W123 Mercedes and a Triumph 2500TC of the same era, a rare Jaguar XJ Coupe and a Daimler Sovereign-badged XJ saloon. There’s a ’60s “Harry Potter” Ford Anglia, complete with its American-style backward-slanting rear window, and – rarity of rarities – a fabulous Pininfarina Fiat 130 Coupe from the early ’70s, a stunningly elegant machine of which fewer than 4,500 were built (and in the carrozzeria’s own facility in Turin, at that), a reminder of the time when Fiat had just taken over Ferrari, and aspired to build big, beautiful and bespoken automobiles, as well as micro cars for the masses.

“I love old cars, vintage and classic cars,” says Lin as he surveys the collection. “I love stick shifts, manual transmission, anything mechanical. The classic car is different. It has soul, personality. Sometimes they work well and sometimes they give you problems, but every car has its own special characteristics and a language that’s unique to itself and the brand.”

I ask him about the Mercedes 190, which he tells me is on consignment from a client, who’s one of only two owners in Hong Kong. “The first owner was also the owner of one of Hong Kong’s famous noodle brands; he brought the car in from Japan and kept it for many years. It’s only partly restored, but it’s been serviced here in Hong Kong by [the importer] Zung Fu. I’m taking care of it for him – and it’s quite high pressure.

“The Morris, the [W123] Mercedes, the Fiat and the Ford Anglia are owned by us,” Lin adds. “The Morris, for example, is open to offers, but I’m not rushing to sell it, because I’m most concerned that the owner will be able to take care of it. And it’s really interesting, because this is a Hong Kong car, which was owned by an old man since the early 1970s, and we fully restored it. It even has the original licence plates from when the car was new. So if someone buys it, I’ll give the plates to them because I want them to stay with the car, which they’ve been with since the very first day.”

And that devastatingly beautiful Pininfarina Fiat? “It’s quite rare to see a 130 Coupe in Hong Kong,” says Lim with
colossal understatement. “Why I love it is because this is the most honoured period for Fiat. They’d just bought Ferrari, the V8 engine is similar to that of the Dino 308 and even the design is similar to Ferrari. When most people think of Fiat, they think of small cars – the 500. They don’t know Fiat built such large cars. We brought this one in from the UK, and it’s also open to offer – as are all the cars here.”

Although Car in Life is a Business, Lin is so passionate about what he does that he even considers turning his showroom into a place where Petrolheads like him can gather to talk about camshafts and conrods, stick shifts and steering racks. So if you love automobiles like he does, pay him a visit – and if you can guarantee a good home for one of his classics, make him an offer. You might just find yourself driving home in the car of your dreams.