Victor Ma

In the crowded metropolis of Hong Kong lives a man who knows more about off-road vehicles than possibly anyone else on earth.
In the crowded metropolis of Hong Kong lives a man who knows more about off-road vehicles than possibly anyone else on earth. He has raced the Dakar Rally, torn apart priceless vehicles just to see how they work, written a book called The 4x4 Bible, and taught off-roading skills to locals. His name is Victor Ma, and while you may not have heard of him before, he is the King of Off-Roaders.
Type his name into Google and you'll find the mysterious collector mentioned dozens of times in 4x4-related articles and forum threads, but you'll be hard-pressed to find anything more.
Despite being widely renowned in China as the foremost authority on all things off-road, Ma has remained largely a mystery to the western world. Until now.
Last year, as my brother Mike walked to the subway, he spotted some cool vehicles in the window of a shop in Fo Tan, an industrial area in Hong Kong. Curious, he popped in and met a man whose enthusiasm for four-wheel drives impressed Mike so much that when I visited over Christmas, Mike told me I absolutely had to stop by. So I did.
That man was Victor Ma. His shop is enormous compared to most in Hong Kong, though it looks tiny in the shadows of buildings that seem to span high into infinity. From the sidewalk, the windows gave an early glimpse of the priceless gems that lay within; a Lamborghini LM002, one of only about 300 ever built, a Porsche 930 turbo sat in the corner, a retro Fiat 500 rested on a hoist, and a bunch of old-school banana bikes and a familiar black shadow filled in the gap.
Modestly dressed, with a confident stride and a very deliberate way of speaking (to make sure his English conveys what he wants to say), Victor immediately showed an electrifying enthusiasm for our visit. We were there to talk with him about 4x4s, and it was obvious from the moment I met him, that there was nothing on earth he'd rather do.
Though I was keen to have a look at that black shadow I had seen in the window, Victor didn't immediately take us into his main lair. Instead, after a short chat, he walked us to his parking garage across the street, where Mike and I saw a handful of genuine off-road legends.
Among the gems (which were all right-hand drive): a couple of Mercedes G-Wagons, a Jeep CJ-7, a Toyota J50 Land Cruiser, a World War II Ford GPW and a Haflinger, the latter of which is one of the most interesting off-roaders ever.
It was assembled in Austria after World War II, and sports a rear air-cooled flat twin, portal front and rear swing axles, locking differentials, and a wild topless, cabover design. Victor says it may be one of the best 4x4s ever built, and though that's obviously hard to prove, I'm inclined to believe him.
From the garage across the street, Victor took us to some small dark bays adjacent to the main shop, where we saw his Ferrari 512 TR Testarossa on jack stands.
It was when Victor discussed the Ferrari that I learned just how meticulous he was when it came to maintaining his vehicles.
He told Mike and me that he takes the supercar almost completely apart every eight years for maintenance, telling us later that lack of proper repair work—specifically not taking care of hoses and lines—is the reason you see so many supercar fires.
He went on, explaining that while he has the car apart, he changes the engine's piston rings (since the flat-12 tends to wear the bottom sides of its rings more than the tops), camshafts, all of the car's suspension bushings and every oil line.

Victor likes his cars to look good, but more than anything, he's most proud of is the way all of his vehicles run. This pride in his mechanical work became even more apparent when Victor showed Mike and me what sat in the other dark bay beside the Ferrari and G-Wagen.
"It's a 1944 NSU Kettenkraftrad HK 101," he told us. He had rebuilt it himself. When I complimented the vehicle's impeccable condition, Victor—beaming with pride for his work—offered to fire up the old water-cooled Opel motor. "Sure," Mike and I said, as we got comfortable in our positions, expecting him to need some time to break out the starting fluid or pump the gas.
But no, he turned on the ignition, applied just the right amount of choke, touched the throttle and bumped the starter. Just look how quickly this thing fired up:
The engine sounded fantastic, and Victor even beeped the horn to show us just how well buttoned-up his machine was. "I actually took this thing off-roading in Yeun Long recently," he told us, at which point Mike and I looked at each other wondering if Victor was kidding.
"Does this guy really off-road a 1940s Nazi motorcycle tank in Hong Kong?" we asked ourselves. We abandoned the thought as this strange workshop tour continued.
After showing us the garage across the street filled with off-road gems like the Haflinger and Ford GPW, after telling us about his regular Ferrari Testarossa teardowns, and after showing off his beautifully running NSU Kettenkraftrad, Victor finally took us inside his main garage.
Once in the garage, I had to ask what the mysterious black figure was in the corner. Victor, almost as if anticipating my request, was already walking over to the vehicle; he snagged the tarp off the hood, and exposed the sheetmetal for my unworthy eyes to see.
It was a Beetle. But, as Victor pointed out, this actually wasn't technically a Beetle, it was an ultra-rare 1941 Type 877 prototype built by Porsche. He showed a palpable enthusiasm for this little four-wheel drive World War II Kommandeurwagen, describing its history and features in so much depth, I frankly couldn't keep up.
After his energetic tour of the One Of Five Left In The World, Kubelwagen-based 4x4, it became clear to me that of all cars in Victor's collection, German ones from World War II were his favorite. In fact, as Victor later pointed out, he's written a number of in-depth articles about the engineering behind these historic vehicles.
Victor, a man who's obsessive with making sure his machines run properly, decided to fire her up for us. This one did take a little squirt of starting fluid and some cranks, but once fuel got into that air-cooled motor, she ran great—like all of Victors machines:
After talking Mike and my ears off about the rare World War II prototype, Victor showed us this:
It's a rare Lamborghini LM002, which was based off of Lamborghini's Cheetah concept built by U.S. defense contractor Mobility Technology International in the late 1970s. The LM002 didn't go into production until about ten years later, after the U.S. Army basically told Lamborghini to pound sand with its rear-mounted Chrysler powertrain.
Lamborghini fixed that powertrain issue by putting a V12 Lamborghini Countach motor up front, but the SUV never saw any real military use. Instead, for some reason, the Italian car company put the SUV into production between 1986 and 1993, making it the first four-wheel drive Lamborghini ever.
Why on earth did he buy it? To learn, he said. To take it apart and figure out how it ticks, which gears are inside it, and what kind of differential it uses. It was the only way, he said.

Mike and I glanced at each other, and our eyes grew wide with astonishment. Here's a guy who bought a priceless Lamborghini—a vehicle that most owners would probably be too scared to even touch—just so he can dismantle it and gander at its mechanical bits. This whole thing just seemed unreal. But then we walked into Victor's office.
Victor's office is the workplace of a genius—someone who eats, sleeps, walks, breathes and lives off-road vehicles.
Zoom into that picture above, and you'll spot randomly assorted toy car models, dozens of history books about World War II-era 4x4s, assorted off-road parts, and repair guides for vehicles Victor doesn't even own (there's a Jeep XJ/MJ repair manual under that Takigen hardware catalog.)
I even spotted some CAD drawings up on the wall behind his computer of old 4x4 parts that Victor had to have made, since they are no longer in production.
Mike and I sat down with Victor in his office for over four hours talking about Victor's rich background with off-road vehicles. He told us that, when he was only 17, his mother wanted to send him off to the UK to study engineering with his close friend. But Victor refused, saying he instead wanted to run a 4x4 shop.
Part of the issue was that, even at that young age, Victor had a lot of vehicles to take care of, including a Suzuki 800cc 4WD soft top, three Land Rovers (including one designed for firefighting), and several motorcycles. He couldn't go to the UK, he said; he had to make sure his cars didn't die.
Despite his mother's disapproval, Victor was determined to make 4x4s popular in Hong Kong, as at the time, he told me, off-roaders were really only a thing in Japan. So Victor opened up a shop in Yuen Long in 1987, and now, after 30 years and four moves, he's got a nice big shop in Fo Tan, and plenty of clients.
Victor's contributions towards popularizing four-wheel drive in China and Hong Kong are nothing less than staggering. Though Googling his name in English may not turn up many results, if you type in his Chinese name, you realize the magnitude of his work.
The video above (and article) shows the "four-wheel drive king" fighting against the Hong Kong Transportation Department's strict laws like the one banning importation of seatbelt-less vehicles, no matter their age. Unwavering rules like this one, Victor recognizes, thwart old car culture in the Special Administrative Region of China, and Victor continues to fight to prevent that.
But more than just fighting to keep classic cars alive in a culture that, by and large, values modernity above all else, Victor's number one contribution to four-wheel drive culture in China and Hong Kong is his teaching.