Stefan Ah Kuoi Takes Best Classic Car for the Second Year in a Row
4 June 2019, Apia Samoa. For two consecutive years Stefan Ah Kuoi’s 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 has won the the Best Classic Category for the Independence V8 Club Car Show held at Tuanaimato yesterday.
Speaking to Samoa Global News, the 20 year old said he did wish someone else could have won, as he had won last year.
“It feels great to win, but it also feels a little unfair because I won last year and now this year again,” he said.
Twenty year-old Ah Kuoi said that it is his passion for cars that drives him to keep up the maintenance and look after his Mustang well, adding that it is much better than spending money on alcohol and other things.
“The funny thing is, all of us in the V8 club are all like that,” he said smiling.
“We leave our family just so we could be working on our cars;
“Honestly, people might wonder what we are up to for hours, but we are just fixing our cars,” he said laughing.
“People would think we are at the club having a beer and being silly, but we’re just working on our cars.”
He said that having love and passion for cars is a good distraction for them, and helps to avoid getting into other bad habits of life.
“Our love of cars takes away the thoughts of doing bad things and adopting bad habits. This helps us to focus on something good and keeps our minds busy.”
The back-to-back classic car winner says that it can be quite expensive to maintain their vehicles, and he had spent around NZD$20,000 to prepare his car for the show.
“We do spend a lot of money but we enjoy spending money on our cars; spending it on our cars is way better than spending it on alcohol, or to get drunk or buy weed or whatever.”
Ah Kuoi says that there is still a lack of qualified mechanics in Samoa and advises the advancement of education and training in this area.
“I want to say that our people just need knowledge and they can do anything, honestly, our people just need to be trained but we don’t have that here;
“A lot of us studied mechanic overseas, and there is knowledge everywhere;
“But many of the mechanics here they don’t really have that knowledge;
“My advice to everyone out there is to be creative, and keep following your passion.”
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