Name: Allan Chan
Username(s): grandmasterchan
Age: I guess I’m OG.
Occupation: Car Show Director
Current Ride: 2002 Subaru WRX
Past ride: 1991 VW Corrado G60.
How long have you been in ZuCru?:
Founded it in 1998. Right from the very get go.
First, I’d like to congratulate you on your marriage last summer, how does it feel to be finally married?:
Thanks homie, I was probably one of the last few people who thought that they would be settling down, but when you find the right woman, you know right away. Totally loving the married life, as Homer Simpson said, and I quote: “”it’s like being married to my best friend—and he lets me feel his boobs.”
Tell me your experience buying your very first car?: I think going the VW/Euro route as my first car enabled me to do things a bit different and sway away from the norm at the time. I see alot of similarities between euro styling and OEM JDM styling in terms of less is more. My original first purchase was to be a 1993 black EG hatch as there used to be one in the city that ran on OZ Mitos that always caught my eye. Who knows where I would’ve ended up if I had started with that as my first platform. The Corrado actually enabled me to meet some of my best friends like current Zucru member Phuc and also helped me establish a good friendship with Richie Woo of Marigold’s fame in Winnipeg. Both guys have played a big part in my love for the scene.
Being one of the original ZuCru members, tell me how it all began?:
Back in 1998 my skateboarding friends Tony and Dan also drove VW’s, a mk2 GTI and a Passat. We decided to become a VW car club and named it ZuCru. Our first designs for a logo were done on a notepad that I still have at my parents place. It was pretty ghetto at first as our first real logo was developed on Microsoft Paint. If you look really close, the eyes that are on top of the U in the block styled logo are actually chili peppers that were lifted off of something way back ago.
Eventually I met Phuc who also had a Corrado as we were also members of the Corrado Club of America. From this point on we started expanding with the addition of some of his closer friends, Dennis and Minh. Minh eventually picked up a mk3 Jetta and the modding bug was hitting all of us. Staying true to form we all
tried to keep with the euro way of tuning of subtle mods coupled with performance mods with an emphasis on quality. We had grown exponentially and had new members which were honda based as we were looking to becoming big real fast. However, there was a split in the actions and we had some growing pains but the core stayed together.
Around 2001 things really started to take off. We had a new member in Kevin Chan with his built Civic and started to really participate in shows as a crew. This was the year where Cliff came in after showing off his Jaos equipped Pathfinder and Howard was just starting off with his Talon but eventually coming over to the VW family with a monster swapped G60 Golf. I think that this period in time was where things started to really come together as we had a good core of people who became really great friends in life. We were a bunch of guys who had a drive to succeed as we were all in the final stages of school and beginning stages of our careers. This commonality coupled with a love for cars and the mantra of quality parts instead of low budget knock offs really set our identity. Dabbling into motorsports such as autocross, drag racing and winter autocross increased our outlook for a balance of function and style. To sum it up:
ZuCru:
-Close circle of friends
-No shortcuts in life, work hard for what you want in life, drive for success in all we do.
-love of european and jdm cars.
-Quality proven parts on quality platform cars
-Balance of function and style. Must go with the show!
Most memorable moment in all your years in ZuCru?:
There’s just so many that I don’t think I could pick a most memorable moment. Some that come to mind, car tag on fall nights, when we went into the PCA scavenger hunt as team Strike Force, winning best team at SCN 2004 (that picture is still fresh in my mind), all the Xmas parties but especially the ones where Don and Lamska got inititated one night with the yellow snow and hot sauce twinkie. Can’t forget about Venzon getting an ipecac shot in his underwear. 10 years is a lot of memories.
What factors made you consider purchasing your current ride and why?:
My friends Raymond and Daniel had a pretty legendary Mazda 323 GTX in Winnipeg. They had me sold on turbo all wheel drive cars. I started to read up on them more and more. Came to find out about Mitsu
Evo’s and Imprezas and the mk2 Golf Ralleye. At this time, Gran Turismo came out on playstation and I instantly fell in love with the 22B and EVO IV. To this day, they are my most favorite iterations of these classic enemies and I still think I will own a 22B in my lifetime. I was actually pretty close in 2000 to buying a 2.5RS. However when the 02 WRX was announced for North America, I knew I just had to have one. The tunability and fun with this car still brings a smile to my face when I drive it. Like the VW’s I had driven, the subaru had a certain character. It was a raw kind of feeling that gives you feedback when driving it. Its hard to explain, but I think VW and Subaru owners know it when they drive their cars. Fahrvergnügen is the term.
Why do you think you were chosen to represent Winnipeg for SCN? and what qualifications do you have that others don’t?:
Oh boy, I often wonder about this too as I’m pretty grateful for having the opportunity to do what I love. I think it was a combination of quite a few things to tell you the truth. Knowledge of cars and being in the scene, I didn’t pigeonhole myself with only knowing about 1 genre of cars, I tried to learn about everything be it J-bodies to pure J’d out cars as SCN was looking for people who could also judge at events. Professionalism in terms of treating others how you would like to be treated, being sociable is another characteristic as a big part of this position was networking and being able to converse about more than just cars. Communication skills were also top notch because we would be forging relationships with our market and sponsors, I think being multilingual also helped as everybody on the team spoke at least more than one language. We had people who could speak English, French, Mandarin, Dardic, Malay, Russian and Cantonese. In addition one had to be able to deal with high levels of stress during showtime with an affinity towards detail oriented tasks and the ability to be a leader but also know how to work within a team. Above all being humble and personable were major contributors as well because nobody likes an arrogant know it all.
I hear you’re a HUGE HKS fan and have a sneaker fetish. what’s the deal with that?:
LOL. I guess the deal with the HKS steez is that back when I was in university, there used to be a yellow FD which had a Powered by HKS license plate frame on it. I always wondered if it meant that he was some sort of Hong Kong gangster and it got me remembering those 3 letters. Going again back to my friends Raymond and Daniel, they had everything HKS on their 323 GTX as they were foreign students from Malaysia who were well versed in tuning. All you had to do was open the glove compartment and there was a plethora of HKS electronics sitting in there. Their license plate was “HKS”. I eventually found their products to be quality parts with a heavy R&D behind them. The fit of their items were always bang on. How could you dog quality? I couldn’t. They’ve been doing it for how many years now? Its about as JDM as you can get. You pay for what you get and I’ve been nothing but happy with their stuff.
I think my sneaker fetish developed when I was in grade five. I was into Converse chuck taylors and had a turquoise pair and a fluroscent orange pair. I liked how the orange pair could be seen from 2 blocks away cuz they were so bright. Went on over to some skateboard shoes such as airwalks and copped some Andre Agassi Nike’s in hot pink and black when I hit junior high. I then started up with addias shelltoes as they became retro in the skateboard world. This got me going and to this day I still don’t know how many shellies I have as deadstock. I pretty much buy what looks good in my eyes now and right now I think its all about the dunk SB’s. Nothing too crazy in my collection but I think the Tiffanys are my favorite so much so that I wore them on my wedding day. Shoes make the man, sneakers make the individual.
Most people know you as GMC or grandmasterchan, how did you come up with a name like that?:
This is a funny one and is kind of an urban legend now. It all stemmed from this old school video game called Street Fighter. In its heyday it was played at every arcade, pool hall and corner store. I loved it so much that I even transferred schools so I could play against the best in the city which at that time were located at Daniel Macintyre Collegiate as they all played at the corner store. One day, I had played all day on a single quarter taking on players after players non stop and there was always a crowd around. I beat one opponent going untouched and when I won, the crowd was like “Whoa!!!!” and a kid in the crowd was like, “holy crap, you’re the grandmaster…you’re grandmasterchan”. From that day on, it stuck and I used it as my forum name. The acronym GMC just developed on forums as I guess the name became too long for people to type. To this day I get greeted as grandmasterchan or GMC and it still surprises me.
Can you tell the readers something that they don’t know about you?:
I’m missing all my front top teeth. I had them knocked out in a hockey game via a cross check to the face. If you read the Winnipeg Free Press article a few years ago on my bugeye WRX, the pictures have me not smiling and the reason was because I had just lost my teeth earlier that week.
Any special shout outs you’d like to say?:
I’d like to give props to all of my ZuCru family, Richie Woo, the DTP staff, Team SCP and my wife and best friend Cielo!
subscribe to our feed