Few would suspect the Hualong Mountain area (華龍山) of Hsinchu County’s Cyonglin Township (芎林) to be home to a world famous classic car factory, but over the past decade, Muscle Car GT has been reproducing parts for classic cars of such high quality that their work has been featured in Hollywood movies such as Gone in 60 Seconds and The Fast and the Furious franchise.
The company started out by making car molds, but MuscleCar chairman Luo Hsiu-hsien (羅修賢) has since revolutionized the world of classic cars, Muscle Car GT sales manager Luo Yi-lun (羅逸倫) said.
The problem with collecting classic cars is that it is hard to find spare parts, Luo Yi-lun said, adding that many collectors often buy five or six of the same kind of vehicle to be able to keep one in a reasonable condition.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
With the company’s experience in making molds, Luo Hsiu-hsien first molded the body of the classic car before reverse-engineering the parts from the new molds, Luo Yi-lun said, adding that the company had solved the biggest problem facing antique car collectors — the lack of spare parts.
The company has highly skilled workers developing the molds and fully automated manufacturing lines for the production of spare parts and the plate metal used in bodies, Luo Yi-lun said.
With the exception of the engine, tires and the transmission shaft the company can make everything needed for a classic car from screws to the plate metal needed for the body, Luo Yi-lun said.
Due to the small number of collectors in the nation and strict regulations, Luo YI-lun said the company had to seek foreign customers, adding that while they had first moved into North America, they now had branches in Europe, Australia and even Japan.
The company has a revenue of NT$400 million (US$13.16 million) per year, Luo YI-lun said.
Luo Yi-lun said that despite the tilt toward foreign customers, the company still tried to make its presence in Taiwan known.
Last year they lent a 1957 pink Cadillac convertible to the pop-music group S.H.E to go to the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Hsinchu County.
We simply want the public to know that there is such a factory in the nation, Luo Yi-lun said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS