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Parts master: meet Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia, the founder of Euro Car Parts

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Parts master: meet Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia, the founder of Euro Car Parts | Top Gear

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From refugee to automotive parts kingpin – Sukhpal’s life story sounds like a plot for a Hollywood feature film

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Parts master: meet Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia, the founder of Euro Car Parts

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
From refugee to automotive parts kingpin – Sukhpal’s life story sounds like a plot for a Hollywood feature film

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
From refugee to automotive parts kingpin – Sukhpal’s life story sounds like a plot for a Hollywood feature film

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Parts master: meet Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia, the founder of Euro Car Parts

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Parts master: meet Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia, the founder of Euro Car Parts

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
Parts master: meet Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia, the founder of Euro Car Parts

# data.attributes.metatag[].attributes.content
From refugee to automotive parts kingpin – Sukhpal’s life story sounds like a plot for a Hollywood feature film

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When Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia was just 13 years old, Ugandan despot Idi Amin claimed that he had been instructed by God to expel the circa 80,000 Ugandan Asians from their country. They had 90 days to leave.

As a child, Sukhpal had developed a love of cars by accompanying his father in a MkI Ford Cortina to the three Total petrol stations that the family owned in Jinja, a city 50 miles east of the Ugandan capital Kampala. Now, they arrived at RAF Greenham Common as refugees with nothing.

A year later and they were finally resettled into social housing in London.

Photography: Huckleberry Mountain

“Can you imagine the cars that I saw in London at that time? That was the first thing that struck me,” he recalls. “There were Jaguar XJ6s and E-Types, big Mercedes saloons. Everything was here. It was just like a dream.”

Sukhpal spent his teenage years grafting. Paper rounds in the mornings, shop work in the afternoons and evenings. Then, on weekends he would be working at Portobello market on a Saturday and Petticoat Lane on a Sunday.

“The markets introduced me to the idea of commerce, buying and selling, customer relations et cetera, but menial tasks didn’t bother me at all. Cleaning toilets or whatever, I’d do it to make some money.”

He eventually saved enough cash to buy his first set of wheels. Like it was for so many others, it was a Yamaha F1S-E moped at 17 years old.

“One day it broke down outside Dutch & Dutch Commercial in Cricklewood. It was raining so heavily, I ran into the shop to stay dry. I pretended to look at properties, but one did actually catch my eye. It was a car accessories shop that they were trying to sell the lease for.”

In the time it took Sukhpal to source £5,000, the business went bankrupt and closed, but when it reopened under his management he extended the hours and never said no to a potential customer.

“Whatever you wanted, whether it was a spark plug or an engine, it’d be a yes. Then we’d figure out how to get it.”

The shop was a success, and Sukhpal satisfied his petrolhead instincts and topped up his earnings by buying cars at auction, fixing them up and selling them on. He describes it as his hobby.

“I was buying sporty, interesting things like a BMW 320i, a 635CSi, Triumph Stags and TR7s. I had a good network of mechanics who would fix them up, and then I would take them back to auction a couple of weeks later.”

Sukhpal rebranded his shop, changing its name from Highway Autos to Euro Car Parts... you can see where this is going.

“To fast forward a 35 year journey, we went from one warehouse and specialising in European cars to opening outlets in Birmingham and Manchester, then supplying parts for all kinds of cars across the country. We became the biggest car parts distributor in the United Kingdom, employing nearly 6,000 people.”

After selling the business in 2011 for what he describes as ‘a fair price’ (£225m upfront, with a further £55m in potential bonuses), Sukhpal remained on the board until he ultimately fell out with its American owners and left in late 2018.

The plan was to focus on the real estate business that he had started with his three sons, but in 2023 an opportunity arose and Sukhpal found himself as executive chairman of one of his former competitors, GSF Car Parts.

“We’ve owned it for nearly two years now. We grew revenue 21 per cent in the first year, and another 20 per cent in the second year. We’ve injected energy into the business, invested money, changed systems, bought new vans. With us, the people on the ground are the priority.”

This is a man who knows his car parts, which is lucky given the collection of classics he now owns. Alongside a modern BMW i7, Bentley Mulsanne and Ferrari 296, Sukhpal also owns an XK140, an E-Type, many drop-top Mercs, a few Ferraris and a Porsche 911 Targa.

These cars won’t be here forever, because Sukhpal now plans to retire to India, and take his collection with him.

“One of my dreams is to create a rally that goes from the north to the south of India. And generally, if I get behind something, sooner or later it happens. It’s difficult to drive classic cars in India. They’re now allowing the cars to come in, but you can’t drive them on the road unless it’s part of a rally or something similar. I want to meet with politicians to see if we can change that and create even more of a classic car culture in India.

“For now though, I want to drum up interest in a cross country rally and for people to get in touch if they’re keen. I really want to make it happen. I’d love there to be hundreds of cars. That would be a fantastic sight.”

Well, consider this TG’s official expression of interest.

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When Sukhpal Singh Ahluwalia was just 13 years old, Ugandan despot Idi Amin claimed that he had been instructed by God to expel the circa 80,000 Ugandan Asians from their country. They had 90 days to leave.

As a child, Sukhpal had developed a love of cars by accompanying his father in a MkI Ford Cortina to the three Total petrol stations that the family owned in Jinja, a city 50 miles east of the Ugandan capital Kampala. Now, they arrived at RAF Greenham Common as refugees with nothing.

A year later and they were finally resettled into social housing in London.

Photography: Huckleberry Mountain

“Can you imagine the cars that I saw in London at that time? That was the first thing that struck me,” he recalls. “There were Jaguar XJ6s and E-Types, big Mercedes saloons. Everything was here. It was just like a dream.”

Sukhpal spent his teenage years grafting. Paper rounds in the mornings, shop work in the afternoons and evenings. Then, on weekends he would be working at Portobello market on a Saturday and Petticoat Lane on a Sunday.

“The markets introduced me to the idea of commerce, buying and selling, customer relations et cetera, but menial tasks didn’t bother me at all. Cleaning toilets or whatever, I’d do it to make some money.”

He eventually saved enough cash to buy his first set of wheels. Like it was for so many others, it was a Yamaha F1S-E moped at 17 years old.

“One day it broke down outside Dutch & Dutch Commercial in Cricklewood. It was raining so heavily, I ran into the shop to stay dry. I pretended to look at properties, but one did actually catch my eye. It was a car accessories shop that they were trying to sell the lease for.”

In the time it took Sukhpal to source £5,000, the business went bankrupt and closed, but when it reopened under his management he extended the hours and never said no to a potential customer.

“Whatever you wanted, whether it was a spark plug or an engine, it’d be a yes. Then we’d figure out how to get it.”

The shop was a success, and Sukhpal satisfied his petrolhead instincts and topped up his earnings by buying cars at auction, fixing them up and selling them on. He describes it as his hobby.

“I was buying sporty, interesting things like a BMW 320i, a 635CSi, Triumph Stags and TR7s. I had a good network of mechanics who would fix them up, and then I would take them back to auction a couple of weeks later.”

Sukhpal rebranded his shop, changing its name from Highway Autos to Euro Car Parts... you can see where this is going.

“To fast forward a 35 year journey, we went from one warehouse and specialising in European cars to opening outlets in Birmingham and Manchester, then supplying parts for all kinds of cars across the country. We became the biggest car parts distributor in the United Kingdom, employing nearly 6,000 people.”

After selling the business in 2011 for what he describes as ‘a fair price’ (£225m upfront, with a further £55m in potential bonuses), Sukhpal remained on the board until he ultimately fell out with its American owners and left in late 2018.

The plan was to focus on the real estate business that he had started with his three sons, but in 2023 an opportunity arose and Sukhpal found himself as executive chairman of one of his former competitors, GSF Car Parts.

“We’ve owned it for nearly two years now. We grew revenue 21 per cent in the first year, and another 20 per cent in the second year. We’ve injected energy into the business, invested money, changed systems, bought new vans. With us, the people on the ground are the priority.”

This is a man who knows his car parts, which is lucky given the collection of classics he now owns. Alongside a modern BMW i7, Bentley Mulsanne and Ferrari 296, Sukhpal also owns an XK140, an E-Type, many drop-top Mercs, a few Ferraris and a Porsche 911 Targa.

These cars won’t be here forever, because Sukhpal now plans to retire to India, and take his collection with him.

“One of my dreams is to create a rally that goes from the north to the south of India. And generally, if I get behind something, sooner or later it happens. It’s difficult to drive classic cars in India. They’re now allowing the cars to come in, but you can’t drive them on the road unless it’s part of a rally or something similar. I want to meet with politicians to see if we can change that and create even more of a classic car culture in India.

“For now though, I want to drum up interest in a cross country rally and for people to get in touch if they’re keen. I really want to make it happen. I’d love there to be hundreds of cars. That would be a fantastic sight.”

Well, consider this TG’s official expression of interest.

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From refugee to automotive parts kingpin – Sukhpal’s life story sounds like a plot for a Hollywood feature film