Supercars in Hong Kong: all revved up with no place to go

This city is a major market for supercars - the kind often found revving, roaring and moving at walking pace along the roads of Central.

Given the gridlocked nature of Hong Kong Island, it's a curious destination for such vehicles. But, it seems, there is no shortage of small men with large egos and even larger bank accounts.

If you were one of the few local collectors who expressed an interest in the McLaren P1 hyper-car - all 375 have now sold out - you'd have needed more than HK$9 million. And you wouldn't even have been able to register it on local roads because it's a left-hand drive.

If that sounds crazy, Tesla recently announced that its latest electric supercar, the Model S P85D, is fitted with an "Insane" mode that allows the car to go from 0 to 100km/h in a mere 3.3 seconds. That's almost less time than it takes for a Hong Kong cab driver to pull away from you when you say "Kowloon side".

Performance stats, though, are everything in the world of over-age boy racers. It must be comforting to know that their impeccably engineered Ferrari has 320 brake horsepower or 398 lb-foot of maximum torque while waiting at traffic lights on Queen's Road Central.

It offers me no joy to see a Lamborghini or Bugatti, capable of speeds in excess of 300km/h, being effortlessly overtaken on the inside by an old lady pushing a rusty trolley piled high with cardboard.