Search the Community

http://motoring.asiaone.com/Motoring/News/...214-252721.html Fri, Dec 17, 2010 The New Paper By Desmond Ng TALK about a speedy exit. A luxury car rental business here has closed its shutters after just about two months into the business. 6Speed - which offered high performance supercars like the Lamborghini Murcielago and Ferrari F430 for rent for as much as $4,500 a day - has ceased its operations. It had launched its business with a party at Timbre @ The Arts House in October. When The New Paper visited its office at Loyang Drive yesterday, the company's signage was no longer there. Its fleet of flashy supercars was also nowhere to be seen. The business had previously rented the premises from vehicle service centre Exquisite Marques, which also operates from that workshop. An Exquisite Marques employee there said 6Speed had vacated the place a few weeks ago. 6Speed sales director Denny Koh could not be reached despite calls to his mobile phone. He also did not respond to our text messages. The company's telephone number was also not in use. A search with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority showed the business as a "live company" and listed a Mr Charlton Goh as sole proprietor. Our searches showed that Mr Goh is a discharged bankrupt. In an interview with The New Paper last month, Mr Koh said that the company had about 120 members who paid between $10,000 and $50,000 for packages to gain access to 6Speed's fleet of 15 cars. This included a BMW 320i convertible, a Porsche 911 C4S and the top-of-the-range Lamborghini Murcielago. About half its fleet is rented out every weekend, he said then. The New Paper understands that a used car dealer had repossessed six of 6Speed's cars because of defaulted loans. Exotic car rental is considered a niche business because of the high up-front costs of buying and maintaining such supercars. Then there are the insurance costs. The annual insurance for such cars is about $20,000 a year, compared to about $1,000 for a family sedan. This is why only a handful of companies here offer rentals of high-performance marques such as Porsches, Ferraris and Lamborghinis. In the previous interview, Mr Koh said that about 80 per cent of his clients were locals. One other car rental company said that four of 6Speed's previous customers called them last week, saying that they had each paid deposits to rent cars from 6Speed. A staff member at the rental company, who declined to be named, said: "Some of their clients called us for help in locating the other firm, saying that they've already paid their deposits to rent the car. And now, they're left in the lurch with no cars. "That's when we found out that they (6Speed) could possibly have ceased operations."