Pinky Lai

If there’s a time that inspired Pinky in the process of getting into designing cars, that would be his teenage days in the 60s. “My first connection with four wheels was actually a skateboard. It was one of those made with a thick piece of timber with very standard wheels and rubber joints, nothing sophisticated. It came to be during the Hippies era when the Beatles, western cultures and movies were popular. And I was probably the first in Hong Kong to go downhill with it, doing slaloms along the steep slope of Chai Wan Road.”

Pinky still remembers the day when he first joined Porsche AG in January 1989 and was eventually given the project to revamp one of the greatest marques in automobile history, the Porsche 911. “I did the whole line-up of the 996, including the Coupé, Cabriolet, Targa and Turbo. I also designed the first generation Cayman as well as the second generation Boxster.” But it was the Porsche 911 that dominated Pinky’s long-term service in Stuttgart.