It's Illegal To Be A Car Enthusiast: Hong Kong's Underground Car Scene | Capturing Car Culture

I'm going to do my best to explain how difficult it is to be a car Enthusiast in Hong [Music] Kong if you're driving a modified car of any sort in Hong Kong and you pass a police officer there's a very high chance you will get your car impounded for something as little as having aftermarket wheels it's worse if you are driving a Japanese import even if it's stock you will get harassed how do you know they were get IDE here you know your English is very impressive I'm I'm not the guy despite all this car culture in Hong Kong is bigger than it's ever been and there's nothing that can hold it [Music] back it's been almost 10 years since I stepped foot in Hong Kong and I've always told myself I would come back to do a deep dive into the car culture it worked out perfectly for us because a few Gearheads reached out to me after they saw our Singapore Hagerty series and they wanted to show me what the modifi i' scene was like in Hong Kong as always we hit the ground running with a rooftop photo [Laughter] shoot [Music] look at this scene it's just so beautiful it's so Grand with all of these nice cars being lit by all the buildings and it's a little bit Misty it's a little bit foggy so there's kind of like this warm atmosphere of beautiful light that's kind of bathing just all the cars so I'm getting a bunch of stills don't know what other cars are coming it's a bit of a surprise it's kind of like a rolling car show right now of all these cars going up this ramp what a wonderful day we have this very famous 240Z in Hong Kong car culture if you check out the plate it actually says devil Z they really Pride themselves in these plates this NSX has red line as a license plate how cool is [Music] that so how is it that there are modified cars at all well these guys that showed up to the meat are always on edge because legitimately at any time they could get their car taken away and it's normal to them I was told that cars get impounded even if they had a DVD player or sometimes for a stock Wing I don't know about you guys but I couldn't drive my car in fear like this after getting some incredible shots on the rooftop we decided to go to a very popular spot where the locals go to hang out with other car enthusiasts hey [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] woo how does a shooting location like this exist like you guys are like eh whatever well we see it every day well we come here all the time but this is the first time we park it this way this oh by the way this parking lot they always C the cops so finger cross [Music] okay it was good to shoot with some available light but what I ended up doing was one of the guys brought a light wand I didn't bring my type S light and we just did some super quick light painting with the Celica and also the basai blue R34 GTR like this is quintessential Hong Kong car culture and I'm really happy that all these guys brought out their beautiful rides this is what it's about just hanging out seeing new places meeting new people this is car [Music] culture nice Richard [Music] nice just to give everybody an update we drove I don't know like 30 minutes to the Hong Kong side we were actually just across there and we were shooting here with the city and everything but now we're going to try to get a shot from behind the city from the hills and somebody brought a Sentry so we're actually going to take this up the hill and that way I can get a shot of this but look look how nice this is I'm in a [Music] century [Music] [Music] talk about shooting spots these guys know all the best shooting spots I can't believe how far you can see here look at this so I I kind of want the 32 33 34 we can do that shot right now oh here comes the 34 ready [Music] there we have it got the trio 32 33 34 pretty cool I don't know what it is about the city it's just so special no matter where we go it seems like there's so many good angles to photograph cars I can't wait to see what we're going to do for day two and three and four and five oh I think we have to go we have like a 30 minute time here okay cuz they will call we ended up shooting three episodes for this series and we followed three individuals Eugene Adrien and Rocky in this episode we follow Adrien and the ridiculous lengths he has to go through just to enjoy his cars we met up with Adrien and he brought out his prized rwb Porsche there's only a couple of them in the country and it was only appropriate because there was a Supercar meet that night Adrien got a text message that said the cops heard about the meat and they're in the area pulling everything over instead of risking his rwb getting impounded he called a tow truck to take his car home while we headed over to Ocean terminal car park for the meet it turns out that BMW got towed just because of its work Wheels what's crazy is as soon as they left a bunch of modified cars just passed by if they were maybe just 2 to 3 minutes earlier they all would have gotten pulled over hey if you like what you're watching do me a favor go check out the hagy drivers Club 24/7 roadside assistance with flatbed towing subscription to our award-winning magazine and more sign up today links right down here in the description the meat itself was incredible but it was shortlived as we got kicked out of the car park so instead we went on a cruise just like Singapore Hong Kong is very small it's only about 100 Mil in width in Singapore they would drive to the airport and back as it was the longest road in Hong Kong they had something similar but instead of the airport they would drive to Disneyland and back [Music] we met up with Adrian the next day to check out some of the local roads that he enjoys [Music] driving cops hope you don't chase me uhoh cops all right don't worry they're gone well they're over all right so we're on this to run in this r33 GTR and this cop's following us now let's see what happens should I hide my cameras Oh what is he coming yeah he's coming oh oh my God I think we're safe so this is so cool the guys actually brought us to their local to road which is a Canyon Road it's the longest one it's the twistiest one they have it's pretty much the only one where enthusiasts actually come to drive so you start at the bottom which is right here it's right next to this Cafe where a lot of people meet up and then you go all the way to the top and then you stop at a park something like this is super rare but they enjoy the heck out of [Music] it [Music] [Applause] [Music] it felt so good to enjoy a little bit of authentic Hong Kong food most tourists go to Hong Kong just for the food culture and they're definitely not wrong I made a point to check out the street food at one of the last remaining diong restaurants these are fullblown restaurants that are literally on a sidewalk and more and more of them are getting closed down there's just a few left the next day we had a chance to try out the complete opposite of street food which turned out to be a 10 course Feast of a tasting menu the restaurant was called Test Kitchen and our friend Vincent own the place of course he was a big car nerd so parked outside of his restaurant was a Toyota a86 straight out of anld I got in the driver's seat and drove to our next destination which was a Tokyo style underground meet hey see you tomorrow oh okay see you tomorrow nice car morning you guys do you know them no I have no idea who they are oh [Music] okay we are in a legitimate underground meet here and there's just so many cool cars there's some Euro there's some JDM there's some old school I'm going to check out as many as I can I'm going to shoot a bunch of pictures and there we [Music] [Music] go damn look at those forearms bro [Music] we had a chance to catch up with our buddy Rocky who arranged most of these meats for us while in town I wanted to pick his brain a little bit about why he goes through all this trouble even though the authorities hate car culture in Hong Kong what compels you to take on the responsibility of Hosting these meets somebody has to do it I think the first thing is passion I love cars the second thing is I love my friends through these car meets I've met hundreds and hundreds of people now we've become very very good friends I think these two are the most important factors the passion and the [Music] people what makes you want to share this car culture with the world because you guys are obviously living your best life despite the challenges that we've found out over the past couple days you you guys are still enjoying car culture why do you want to share this with the world because I think Hong Kong can really match the world in terms of the passion and in terms of the culture and the variety that's why I wanted to share with everyone what we've got basically while the underground JDM meat was fun it was nothing compared to the largest JDM meat the country has ever seen it was located at Sunny Bay oh no oh no oh oh you got to film this dude you got to film [Music] this yo as soon as we showed up the police were already there impounding cars they pulled over a Honda NSX R and hounded the owner for deleting his airbag even though the NSX never came came with airbags to begin with it's almost like you want to just warn the drivers to like stop where they are and just back up up the street so they don't get pulled over let's see if they're going to let this Lambo go oh oh no don't fall over the l oh see okay so they they let the lambo go but they got the NSX they hate JDM Cars they hate JDM [Music] Cars they hate JDM [Music] Cars bro are you okay yeah what happened nothing he just talked to me I didn't really respond so what what did they ask you uh they didn't really asked me anything cuz it's his car so I just told him oh the owner is behind me [Music] oh buddy oh buddy Richard get him are you the guy no I'm just a tourist a tourist I'm a tourist how do you how do you know there's something here yeah um we were just driving what we were just driving no I mean the drive to be honest tell me the TR I don't really understand your question to be honest to be honest how do you know they were GA together here today and you will come to take the photo for them or you can come to take a photo for the cars how do you know they were great [Music] idea you know your English is very impressive I'm I'm not the guy to talk to man I wish I had answers for you but I just don't you don't but how how do you know you you came here today just like you know you just know oh my God a come on man don't give me hey hey the problem isn't me the problem are these illegal [Music] cars there were well over a 100 JDM Cars a third of which were stopped by the police as they tried to get into the meat many of them were impounded despite all the police presence people still showed up in force they didn't even care that they were risking getting their car taken the police took it a step further and they pretended like they were leaving but instead they just set up a roadblock a few kilometers away at the only exit from the island our friend Adrien showed up this time with an R32 but he didn't even bother driving it there he had it towed there how ridiculous does this sound you have to get your car towed everywhere you go because you don't want to get it impounded Adrien takes it even a step further to drive the vehicles that he wants there's a classic car club in Hong Kong that holds a few official meets every year we just happened to be in Hong Kong during one of their annual Gatherings which was at a golf course one of the main reasons why he joined the club was because they're actually very close to the Hong Kong government and they give out these moving permits that allow you to drive a left-and drive vehicle just for a few days out of the Year these are the kind of Hoops that they have to jump through just to drive these vehicles the thing that really blows me away is that these these individuals are not actually doing anything bad they're not doing any takeovers we're literally just gathering in a parking lot just hanging out not doing burnouts we haven't heard one rev all day they really really just do not like this kind of hobby but despite that these guys just push [Music] on so why can't the police just enter the parking lot and impound every single car well they have to draw the line somewhere they actually can't enter private property so many owners just end up taking public transportation home and they left their cars all day they either picked it up at the dead of night or the next morning it just blows me away what Great Lengths these people go go through just to enjoy cars it would be so much easier if they had another [Music] Hobby

Channel: Hagerty

Views: 632,495

Keywords: Hagerty, Classic Car, Classic Cars, Hagerty Drivers Club, collector car, enthusiast car, collector cars, subaru, wrx, sti, hong kong, modified, supra, toyota, mitsubishi, lancer, evo, ferrari, mercedes, acura, honda, nsx, senna, nissan, GTR, vortec, v-tec, exclusive, undeground

Id: 4wdSBpakvnI

Length: 21min 16sec (1276 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 10 2024