Korea’s pioneering car designer Park Jong-seo is opening the doors to his garage on the entertainment show ‘Neighborhood Millionaire’, revealing a dream-car collection estimated at around 50 billion won.
According to a report from MBC Entertainment, Park joined the automaker ‘H’ during the era of its late founder Chung Ju-yung and went on to earn the trust of successive chairmen, leading the growth of domestic car design.
Over 25 years at the company, Park designed the Scoupe, Tiburon, Santa Fe, Sonata, and Elantra. The episode traces how the Tiburon was born: its shark-inspired curves drew fierce internal opposition, with Park recalling that ‘everyone at the company opposed it.’ One engineer took on the challenge, and the finished car attracted attention from overseas media.
The centerpiece of his collection is a near-life-size model based on a legendary late-1950s Ferrari racing car, with an estimated auction value of about 50 billion won — the same model owned by fashion designer Ralph Lauren. Park wrote to Ferrari’s headquarters and spent four years completing the collection.
In contrast, Park’s everyday life is modest: he still drives a scratched-up 26-year-old car and sits on a workroom sofa patched with cloth, leaving hosts Seo Jang-hoon and Jang Ye-won stunned. Asked about his past salary, he admitted he ‘had no idea,’ joking that ‘without my wife, I’d be a beggar.’
