As an avid car enthusiast, one would be relieved to know that car meets happen across the world, in all sorts of forms, shapes, and sizes. Car meets dedicated to a certain make or model, certain country of origin, and class of car happen all the time.

In Singapore, car meets are a bit of a taboo. First, some much-needed context. The country’s draconian car ownership laws mean that car prices are drastically inflated to reduce the frequency and accessibility of car ownership. These efforts to curb car ownership are an effort to prevent traffic congestion in an island state of six million inhabitants but are only half the land size of London.

This then inadvertently reserves the rights for ownership, COE, or Certificate Of Entitlement, for the affluent and fortunate. A ten-year lifespan for each car means that most people that can afford to own a car, get a practical, grocery-getter. COEs can be renewed but will cost the buyer tens of thousands of dollars just to buy the owner of the car 10 more years of ownership, excluding taxes and maintenance costs. After the 10-year certificate expires, an owner that chooses not to new the COE has to either export it outside the country or scrap it at a salvage yard. Hence, most cars in Singapore are relatively new.

As a result, car enthusiasts in Singapore, are forced to pay obscene amounts of money just to be able to enjoy their cars, whereas their British counterparts would be able to enjoy those same cars at a fraction of the cost. This therefore inhibits many people from owning cars in Singapore where it would be much cheaper to rely solely on public transportation. In Britain, car values have been on a steady decline with Fleetnews reporting a large fall in used car prices 4.2% in the month for three-year-old vehicles in November 2023 alone.

Car Meets

From an objective standpoint, car meets in the UK offer a wider variety of cars to see and enjoy. On top of being able to see cars of a vast range of makes and models, you get to see them in various stages of deterioration, which is something that can be beautiful in itself. Cars aren’t all meant to be squeaky clean and shiny fitted with the best mods. In Singapore, the limited lifespan of a car means that most cars you see on the road are relatively new and generally a bore to look at, much less enjoy.

Take the AC 3000ME that we spotted in Sunderland for example. A car so obscure that we’ve never heard or seen anything about it until that day. A car of that rarity would likely not have escaped the clutches of Singapore’s strict motoring laws.

This is not to say that rare cars do not exist in Singapore. Having attended a few Singaporean car meets myself, rare cars do exist and they are delightful to look at. The governing laws and fees surrounding car ownership mean that these cars are few and far between. In more extreme examples, certain car models are reducing in number by the year, with some models reaching just single digits.

Larry Chen, an automotive photographer and journalist published a video on YouTube about his visit to Singapore and how car enthusiasts there cope with the harsh motoring laws. There are some highly desirable cars in Singapore but they are few in numbers and attainable only to the upper-income brackets of society. I highly recommend the watch.

In summary, car meets in the UK have a wider variety of cars to enjoy and are accessible to people of different tastes and styles. They also have car meets that are organised by the plethora of different car clubs across the country, as opposed to Singapore where car meets usually happen between friends and is, therefore, less receptive to onlookers and non-car-owning car enthusiasts and making their car meet a much more of a spontaneous hang-out between friends than a regular car meet.