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Long before he was known online as “Ferrari Collector David Lee,” David S.K. Lee was simply the son of a jeweler. Born in Hong Kong, Lee moved to the United States with his family at age nine, after his father founded Hing Wa Lee Jewelers in 1965 as a wholesale gemstone and jade business. Lee graduated from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business in 1992 , then went to work for his father’s namesake company — and proceeded to build it into something considerably larger than a family jewelry shop.
Today, Lee serves as chairman and CEO of the Hing Wa Lee Group, a Southern California luxury conglomerate anchored by Hing Wa Lee Jewelers, which operates as an authorized dealer for Rolex, Cartier, and other prestige watch and jewelry houses out of showrooms in San Gabriel, Walnut, and Los Angeles. From that foundation, Lee has expanded into commercial real estate through HWL Development, private equity, restaurants, beverage companies, technology investments, and a growing automotive design and lifestyle business called Monza Design. His estimated net worth sits in the neighborhood of $200 million, though his fame, at this point, may have less to do with jewelry than with what sits in his garage.
The Origin Story: A Magazine Page in High School
Lee traces his automotive obsession to a single moment: flipping through Road & Track as a high schooler and encountering the newly unveiled Ferrari 288 GTO. “The model debuted when I was in high school, and I fell in love with it but never dreamed I could own one,” Lee has said of the encounter. Decades later, not only does he own a 288 GTO — he owns two, one in Rosso Corsa red and one in Giallo Modena yellow, the beginning of what would become the defining conceit of his entire collection.
The Big Five, in Duplicate
Lee’s signature achievement as a collector is being the first, and so far only, person known to own all five of Ferrari’s modern flagship supercars in both of the marque’s two signature colors: the 288 GTO, F40, F50, Enzo, and LaFerrari, each doubled up in red and yellow. Lee refers to the pairing, with evident affection for the bit, as his “Mustard and Ketchup Collection” — a nod, by his own account, to hours spent behind the counter of a 7-Eleven in his youth. The joke has since metastasized into an entire organizational system: Lee sorts his broader collection into color-coded groupings with names like the Relish Collection (a cluster of green cars, including a Daytona SP3 Tailor Made finished in exposed carbon fiber and an SF90 XX Aperta) and the Slurpee Collection (blues and blacks, spanning a Ford Mustang GTD, a Porsche GT3 RS and GT4 RS, and a pair of Rolls-Royces).
It is a cheeky framework for what is, underneath the branding, an extraordinarily serious collection. Industry estimates now value Lee’s Ferrari holdings alone at more than $300 million, spanning more than thirty cars and six decades of the marque’s history, from the early 1960s through the current model year.
The Vintage Side of the Garage
Beyond the modern halo cars, Lee’s collection reaches deep into Ferrari’s classic era. He owns a 1964 Ferrari 250 GT Lusso Competizione, a 275 GTB, a 330 GTS, and a 365 GTS/4 Daytona Spyder — the last of which shares its name, loosely, with the 12Cilindri’s styling inspiration decades later. A 330 GTS from Lee’s garage has even taken Best in Show at the San Marino Motor Classic concours, a rare crossover between his role as accumulator and his standing as a genuine judge’s-eye collector.
The crown jewel of this side of the collection arrived in January 2026, when Lee placed the winning bid of $38.5 million at Mecum’s Kissimmee auction for a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO chassis 3729GT — the only one of the 36 250 GTOs ever built in factory white, a livery Ferrari calls Bianco Speciale. The car carries genuine competition history, having been campaigned in period by drivers including Graham Hill, Roy Salvadori, and Mike Parkes, and contributing to Ferrari’s 1962 GT Manufacturers’ Championship. Lee announced the acquisition to his 1.1 million Instagram followers, calling himself the car’s “newest custodian” — language that, whatever its marketing polish, reflects a collector’s mindset more common among museum curators than typical car buyers.
A Formula One Car, and a Personalized Special
Among the collection’s more unusual entries is a Ferrari F2002, the Formula One chassis driven by Michael Schumacher during a championship-winning season, complete with a signed helmet and race suit from the era. Lee has said that access to genuine ex-works F1 cars is something Ferrari extends only to clients who have demonstrated a certain depth of commitment to the brand over time — a threshold he has evidently cleared several times over.
Perhaps the most personal item in the garage is his Ferrari F12tdf, customized as a one-of-one tribute car bearing his initials, “DSKL.” The commission traces back to Ferrari’s 70th-anniversary program, in which the company selected seventy historic models for modern reinterpretation; Lee’s 1964 250 Lusso Competizione was chosen as the inspiration for what became the 71st and final car in that series, built specifically around his ownership of the original.
How He Buys
Lee has been candid, in interviews with outlets including Robb Report, about how the highest tier of car collecting actually functions — and it rarely involves a paddle raised at auction. “Because important cars are not always bought at auctions but through private sale, a lot of serious collectors have built relationships,” Lee has explained, describing a world in which the most significant vehicles change hands quietly, brokered through trusted intermediaries rather than public sales. For a car like the F2002 Formula One chassis, Lee has suggested such access is effectively earned rather than purchased outright — extended by Ferrari itself to clients whose relationship with the brand has deepened over years, not simply whoever is willing to write the largest check.
Even so, Lee is not averse to a public stage when the right car surfaces. His winning bid for the white 250 GTO came at Mecum’s Kissimmee sale, a marquee event where the auction house reported total sales exceeding $445 million, including six eight-figure cars. Lee has said he assumed the GTO would likely exceed his budget, with many observers predicting a $50–60 million result. “I didn’t think I’d be able to buy it, but I decided to play anyway,” he later recalled. “Sometimes in an auction you can get a good deal. I believe in destiny and this car was for me.”
Beyond Ferrari
While Ferrari dominates Lee’s collection overwhelmingly enough to define his public identity, it is not the entirety of his garage. He has owned a Pagani Huayra, a McLaren P1 GTR converted for road use, a Porsche 918 Spyder, and — reflecting a taste that runs beyond four wheels — Ducati motorcycles, fine watches from his own retail portfolio, and even signed guitars. He has also stepped, occasionally, from garage to racetrack, participating in vintage and classic car racing events where his cars’ historical pedigree is put, briefly, back to its intended use rather than displayed as static art.
Monza Design and a Public Persona
Lee’s automotive obsession has increasingly folded back into his business empire. Monza Design, the lifestyle brand that grew out of a restomod project — a reimagined Ferrari Dino 246 GTS called the Monza Dino Evo 3.6 — now produces racing-inspired watches and eyewear, launched at an event attended by Jean Todt, the former Ferrari CEO and FIA president, who publicly praised the collection’s craftsmanship. Lee has paired that venture with Fermata, a wine-glass label, and a growing slate of beverage, technology, and media investments, including work as an executive producer and occasional actor in short films.
What ties it together is the public-facing persona that made “Ferrari Collector David Lee” a recognizable name well beyond car-enthusiast circles: garage tours, acquisition stories, and detailed walkthroughs shared across Instagram and YouTube to well over a million followers, turning what might have remained a private obsession into one of the more visible collector brands in the world. For a man who once stood in a magazine aisle wishing he could someday own a 288 GTO, it is, by any measure, a rather complete circle.
