'WHO are these sexual inadequates anyway?,' a girlfriend asks me when I tell her I've been up since 5 am with about 30 Hong Kong men, on a cold, wet and awful airstrip in Sek Kong, test-driving the McLaren F1.
At $6 million - exclusive of import tax - it is the world's most expensive sports car. And so, of course, the men gathered to drive, to feel, to experience the Big Mac, aren't your run-of-the-mill 'sexual inadequates'. They are some of the richest men in the territory. This doesn't impress my girlfriend. 'So did they go on about how it throbbed and pulsated under their touch?' she says.
She is poking Freudian fun with good reason. Who has not heard of the correlation between the size of a man's car and its inverse relation with the size of his, shall we say, stick shift? Or that any man who would spend $6 million on a car should consider diverting some of his funds into self-esteem therapy instead? It is the morning of the test drive. And after a bus ride from the Grand Hyatt, we are silently freezing in a Sek Kong hangar. I am told that although less than 10 people in Hong Kong can afford the McLaren F1, more than 50 'hot' prospects have been invited to dream, to drool, to lust over it. Word has it that Dickson Poon, Felix Kwan and Charles Kwan are seriously considering a McLaren for their own garages. Taking the hot seat today Derek Wong, of Stelux Industries, Asin Ghosh, of Watson's Distilled Waterand Alan Li's son, Sean.
'Each invitation was hand delivered,' a McLaren spokesperson tells me. 'Faxing a man of this calibre would have been completely unacceptable.' I've seen the McLaren in colour photographs, and while the words 'sleek' and 'ergonomic' spring instantly to mind, it is certainly not the kind of vehicle I would choose to wheel to the market. Too cold. Too high-tech. Too male.
Admittedly, it does have a vaguely appealing James Bond feel to it - which is why I am surprised to find that among today's prospective buyers, James Bond look-alikes are conspicuously missing (and presumably still in bed). Instead, I find the sweet, the old, the fat, the timid. And let us not forget, the rich.
Among this gathering of Y-chromosomes, there is one other woman, the wife of an Indonesian car buff who flew all the way from Jakarta just to view the car. Idly picking at the hors-d'oeuvres, she gives me a look of gender recognition and then, as if this is a secret handshake for our sorority of two, she yawns.
'Oh, it is really very early in the morning, but this car is worth it,' says Hong Kong solicitor Patrick Chung, his eyes gleaming with what looks like lust. Mr Chung, most aptly described as innocuous, sports a silk tie printed with antique racing cars. Healready keeps eight cars in Hong Kong - two Porsches, two Ferraris, one Maserati, one Mercedes-Benz, one BMW, one Silver Cloud Rolls Royce - with two more Ferraris on order.