SINGAPORE – I am not familiar with the sartorial preferences of Mr Brian Tan, 43, but I am certain that whatever trousers he wears must come with deep pockets.

Mr Tan is a former wealth manager who co-founded a successful kids’ tech start-up, myFirst, seven years ago. It develops and sells devices, such as cameras, phones, tablets and 3D pens, to safely introduce young children to the universe of electronics and connectivity.

And the basis of my deduction about the depth of his pockets? His choice of wheels – a cherry-red, 17-year-old Audi RS6 estate with a 5-litre twin-turbocharged V10 engine borrowed from the Lamborghini Gallardo of that era.

The running costs of this 580hp monster are enough to make a grown man cry.

The annual road tax for the car is about $8,000 after the surcharge imposed on cars that are more than 10 years old. That supercar-derived power plant has an unquenchable thirst too, gulping a litre of premium-unleaded petrol every 5km.

And this is without factoring in the repair costs, inevitable with a 17-year-old car, but even more so with one as tech-laden and complex as the RS6. In Mr Tan’s words, the car “is not temperamental, but when stuff breaks, it does so spectacularly”.

By way of example, he vividly describes an incident which occurred on Sept 25 after he returned from a two-week work trip.

“I was entering a driveway to an office building in the Central Business District when there was a loud bang and the car started shaking. I thought a bomb had gone off. Then I realised the radiator fan had broken and shattered. It punctured the radiator, and coolant was just pouring all over the floor, along with bits of fan plastic.”

That hissy fit resulted in the RS6 being laid up for about six weeks to wait for parts. As with many older cars, parts are increasingly hard to find and can take weeks to arrive.

Over the course of Mr Tan’s nine-year ownership of the RS6, some big-ticket items he has stumped up for included a...