Motormouth: May the Force be with the motoring media Jedi who defects to the dark side - a car company

The car journalist who joins a car company is both a Jedi master who has fallen and a corporate Darth Vader rising to fulfil his destiny.

In the past, there had been great disturbances in the media Force whenever top/popular motoring journos on the little tropical planet of Singapore were hired by the local outposts of automotive empires. 

One of the first to jump ship (or jump out of a moving car in this case) about three decades ago was a respected gentleman in Singapore’s motoring media industry, who was poached by the long-time Porsche agent to handle their public relations. He did a good job until he couldn’t do it anymore due to health reasons, as far as I know.

Some other motor journos in later years were also headhunted by car companies, which believed that these professional petrolheads would be firing on all cylinders when they apply their skill set to push whatever make-and-models they pledge their allegiance to. 

These fellows were compensated handsomely for their efforts, of course.

A brilliant senior journo who joined Volkswagen’s own dealership here and turbocharged its media engagement like a GTI engine. A talented junior journo who tried his hand at group corporate communications with a conglomerate whose businesses include the distribution of Nissan and Subaru vehicles. A wonderboy wordsmith who was versatile enough to sell Renaults, market Skodas, and roadmap Nissans. A brave young writer who relocated from Woodlands to Shanghai to help Ford with its media matters there. 

Even yours truly became a car company employee at one stage. 

After clocking 23 years (1995-2018) as a motoring writer/editor/photographer with various magazines, I was recruited by Motor Image Subaru to oversee regional product planning for its Asia markets - Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for my circle of friends in the creative community who had enough of my corny wordplay), I managed to make a clean U-turn from the corporate jungle like a muddy but mechanically robust Forester changing course and rejoined the motoring media as editor of Motorist, which has a super app and all. 

Not so super was my failed attempt to be an automotive author who ventured into the corporate world and stayed the course, climbing up the ranks from senior manager to general manager as an excellent ex-journo who knew my stuff and worked wonders for the home-grown car company whose products were reviewed by me in my previous job.

May the Force be with the next motoring media Jedi who defects to the dark side by joining a car company.

Do or do not, there is no try - but this Padawan is trying to get turbo parts for his first lightsaber.

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