Ex-Porsche chief designer Pinky Lai Ping on dejection, rejection and thinking five years ahead

I grew up in Quarry Bay. There weren't many tall buildings and wasn't much traffic, so we played on the streets. I was a bit of a rebel. The more my dad forbid me to do things, the more I would do them - and get beaten up for it. So we didn't have a good relationship. But, fortunately, I was spoiled by my mum; she was my backbone. I was bad at school, especially at Mandarin - I was bottom of the class. We started learning English in secondary school, and it was there we had to choose our English name. I picked Pinky because my Mum used to call me Pinky instead of Lai Ping.

I got into designing cars by accident. After graduating from secondary school, I did lots of different jobs: working in stockyards and shipyards for three years, welding, metalwork, woodwork, drafting. For a while, I was at the Hong Kong Telephone Company drafting cables. Then I got a job at Jens Munk, an interior design shop on Wyndham Street, which is where I grew to appreciate European furniture. These pieces had a certificate saying "credito di architetto". I thought they were designed by an architect.

At the end of the 1960s, I was sharing a house on Lamma with some Hong Kong University architecture graduates; they were planning to tour Italy and Germany. I was thinking about starting my career from scratch, again. I thought I had wasted all my years up until then, not achieving anything, not getting properly educated. So I saved enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Rome. When I got there I realised furniture was not designed by architects, and that I'm not into architecture, but industrial design. My then girlfriend helped me find an industrial design school in Rome. I ended up being the only foreigner there; I was lucky all the professors spoke English. They accepted me based on my interior design drawings.

After graduation, I wanted to work in Germany. That's where I had met my wife, I knew some German from summer jobs there, and I liked the German work ethic. But no one replied to my applications except Ford in Cologne. Once I walked into the interview I knew I was in trouble. They had two huge design sketches that were so colourful, so realistic. At the Italian school, you didn't learn to draw in colour - only technical drawings in black and white.

I showed them my final project, a city bus. The guy asked me, "Have you worked for Toyota or Honda before?" I said, "No, I'm coming straight from school." They couldn't give me a job but did offer a full two-year scholarship to study at the Royal College of Art, in London. I was so upset, frustrated; I had just graduated from school and they wanted to send me back! I didn't take it seriously. And then one rainy Sunday, I opened the door and there was a big envelope from Ford, with an air ticket, and all the registration done for the Royal College. It was already mid-September so I arrived late.