Edward Ho arrived in Australia in 1972. He finished Year 12, earned an electrical engineering degree, spent a few years in the family business, realised it wasn’t for him, and went back to engineering for about 11 years.
“In the early 1990s, I had the opportunity to start a business in the IT industry, just as the sector was beginning to grow rapidly,” he says. “Looking back, the timing couldn’t have been better.”
He built it into an IT hardware distribution company selling PCs, notebooks and the rest, ran it until 2009, and retired. A wife, two kids, three grandkids, the youngest of them two months old.
“Outside of work, I’ve always enjoyed driving and exploring Australia by road. Now that I’m retired, I have more time to combine my passion for driving with travelling and creating memories with my family.”
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In March he took delivery of a McLaren 750S. In the five months since, he has driven it roughly 16,000km around the border of Australia, with his wife in the passenger seat for every one of them.
“The goal is to drive approximately 16,000 kilometres around the entire border of Australia,” he says. “It’s not just about the destination, it’s about experiencing the journey, seeing parts of the country we’ve never visited before and enjoying every kilometre together.”
On 5 July the car was parked in the gravel beside the 90 Mile Straight sign on the Eyre Highway, the 146.6km of unbroken bitumen that’s the longest straight road in the country.
Two days later, white sand and turquoise water somewhere on the southern coast, a bay so empty there are two vans and a single person in the frame. A fortnight after that, a boat pushing through a tidal race between cliffs in the north-west. He’s since made Cairns and is running back down the east coast towards home.
The 750S is a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8 making 552kW and 800Nm, built around a carbon tub, engineered to attack a circuit. It replaced the 720S with roughly 30 per cent new or upgraded parts.
It costs $585,800 before on-road costs as a coupe, or $654,600 for the Spider, which puts it above a Ferrari 296 GTB, a Maserati MC20 and a Porsche 911 GT3 RS. There’s no rear seat and no boot to speak of, which is worth remembering every time you picture two people living out of it between roadhouses.
Ho’s assessment of it as a touring car is not one you’d expect.
“The 750S has been fantastic on long drives. It’s comfortable, capable and makes every day on the road enjoyable. The highlight has been seeing some of Australia’s most beautiful landscapes from behind the wheel.”
Cars at this end of the market have quietly stopped being cars. They’re allocations. They arrive, they get garaged, they get photographed, and they get moved on with four figures on the clock, because every kilometre costs real money at resale and every person in the market knows it.
Spend any time around this world and you’ll hear owners discuss their odometer the way other people discuss a share price. Delivery kms is a selling point. Sub-5,000km is a selling point.
Ho has been doing the opposite for a decade. His previous McLaren, a 570S, did almost 39,000km.
“It was a brilliant car to own and enjoy,” he says of it. “I’ve always loved driving, so owning McLarens has been a fantastic experience.”
His 750S will finish this lap somewhere north of 16,000km before its first birthday. By the standards of his own segment he is systematically destroying his own asset, and there’s no evidence he has thought about it for a second. Which is rare and respectable.
Asked about the trip, the only mechanical issue he raises across the entire journey is one cold morning leaving the Blue Mountains at five or six degrees.
“I noticed the vehicle’s estimated range started dropping quite quickly from around 350 kilometres. Once the engine reached its normal operating temperature, everything returned to normal and there were no further issues.”
That’s the whole list. The 570S before it had one recurring fault, occasional trouble starting, which McLaren Melbourne sorted out. “He refreshed the ECU and quickly resolved the issue, and the support I received was wonderful.”
Two cars, 55,000km between them, one ECU refresh, for a brand that has spent the better part of a decade wearing reliability jokes.
There is one running cost he’ll admit to, and one he’s quietly pleased about.
“The fuel bill for a 16,000-kilometre journey certainly adds up, but thankfully I haven’t received any speeding tickets!”
Across the Nullarbor, in a car that does 0 to 100km/h in 2.8 seconds, that’s its own kind of achievement.
Ask him why he went and the answer has nothing to do with the car.
“I’ve always enjoyed road trips, and after retiring I realised there was no better time to take on something I’d always wanted to do. My wife and I are both still fit and healthy, and we wanted to make the most of this stage of life by creating lasting memories together.”
Ask him what he’s learned across fifty-four years here and it’s the same vibe.
“One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that there really are no shortcuts in life. The harder you work and the more effort you put in, the luckier you seem to become.”
