When Your Lamborghini Doesn't Hold All Your School Supplies…

Steph Willems
by Steph Willems

That’s the sound of a sad trombone playing.

Dodgy offshore tax havens get a lot of press lately, but what about mass movements of capital to friendlier shores that hide in plain sight? The New York Times has a heartbreaking story today of young Chinese adults in Vancouver, Canada who just can’t figure out what to do with all that cash their fathers earned.

They do know one thing it’s good for: obscene quantities of ultra-high-end cars.

Like a lawyer talking about his new watch (which costs more than your friggin’ car, maggot!), these kids know how to show off their coin. Designer clothes and electronics are nice, but this People’s Privilege Army knows that a Lamborghini, Bentley or Rolls-Royce in your university parking spot makes a bigger splash.

The west coast city — or living bank vault, whatever you prefer — has become the go-to place for affluent Chinese businessmen and officials to dump their money — and kids — into high-end real estate. Foreign ownership of new condos rose 95 percent in Vancouver over the past five years, according to the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Tossing your money across the Pacific means the all-seeing Communist government back home can’t confiscate (or discover) their earnings, but the trade-off is a city where an average home sells for $1.2 million (USD) and there are 18 year olds in Aventadors and Continental GTs revving at every stoplight.

They’re known as “fuerdai” — a Mandarin word that essentially means “young and affluenza-afflicted” — and they’re pushing registrations of super-luxury vehicles through the roof.

The members of a local six-figure car club are 90 percent Chinese, and young enough to be carded at any bar.

“They don’t work,” Vancouver Dynamic Auto Club founder David Dai told the Times. “They just spend their parents’ money.”

Ground Zero for all the rolling excess seems to be the campus of the University of British Columbia (one needs an education to take over daddy’s job once he retires/gets arrested/croaks, you see). Student parking lots are normally filled with rustbuckets and wheezy hand-me-downs, but this campus boasts enough glitz to put a Monaco yacht convention to shame.

There’s even a Tumblr page that documents the sightings. Cheekily titled “The University of Beautiful Cars,” the social media outlet carries the tagline “Struggling Vancouver students need new Porsche.”

One of the student commuter cars pictured on the Tumblr page clearly belongs to someone interviewed in the article. Jin Qiao, a 20-year-old student who couldn’t say what his father does for a living, boasted about his two Mercedes-Benz SUVs and Lamborghini Aventador Roadster Galaxy, the latter done up in an interstellar-themed wrap job.

Well, that’s gotta be it at the top of the page. The photographer pointed out that the Lambo carried a “new driver” sticker and had a parking ticket under the wiper. Bummer on getting dinged by the parking cops, man.

Money can’t buy you happiness or fulfillment, but it can buy a gigantic pile of nice stuff. And European luxury automakers need to put food on the table like anyone else.

This song goes out to the fuerdai:

Steph Willems
Steph Willems

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  • Stryker1 Stryker1 on Apr 13, 2016

    If I was a young, Ferrari driving, affluent Chinese expat student, I wouldn't do anything except walk around the university, tell middle class white students to "check their privilege", and then watch the cognitive dissonance literally kill them.

  • VenomV12 VenomV12 on Apr 13, 2016

    That's what I don't understand about these vapid, cultureless rich kids like the Chinese and Arabs, they spend all their time on social media buying and showing off their expensive stuff and it doesn't really make sense. If you and all your friends have the same big houses, the same expensive cars, the same expensive clothes, etc etc, who the hell are you impressing? How many Rolexes, or Chanel bags can you buy or own before you have bought everything and are bored to death? At least do something helpful in life and decent like Bill Gates does and Sean Parker just did and do something to help and better mankind before you die instead of just being a useless, superficial twat who just buys expensive sh!t all day.

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    • Ronnie Schreiber Ronnie Schreiber on Apr 14, 2016

      @Lou_BC Compared to the cost of a Gulfstream, a 100'+ yacht, or another home, $300,000 for an exotic car is almost an impulse purchase. That's what's driven the explosive growth in the $100,000+ car market. Fifteen or twenty years ago the high-end car market used to be about 3,000 units a year. BMW (Rolls-Royce) and VW (Bentley and Lamborghini) figured out that there are a lot more than 3,000 people in this world who can easily afford a big buck car. Ferrari alone sells about 7,000 cars a year these days. McLaren has capacity for 4,000 units and they expect to be at capacity once the 570S/540S goes on sale. That's one reason why I'm not sure that I'd characterize Koenigseggs and Paganis as production cars. They build about a dozen Koenigseggs a year. I bet the Metalcrafters shop that makes concept cars for auto manufacturers makes more than a dozen complete cars a year.

  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
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