Motoring industry veteran Ricky Tay calls time on his 40-year career for a well-earned retirement, hands the reins to Dr Kurt Leitner 

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SINGAPORE 

Mr Ricky Tay, 66, the ex-managing director of Volkswagen Group Singapore (VGS), recently announced his retirement, which marks the curtain call on a 40-year-plus, international career in the automotive industry, including stints in China, Japan, and Taiwan. 

As of December 1, 2022, Mr Tay has handed over his directorial duties over to Volkwagen Group Singapore’s other MD, Dr Kurt Leitner. VGS is unique in having (or had) two MDs with each covering specific business departments. 

Mr Tay began his career in 1979, with his first stint abroad in Taiwan, in 1986, where he ran an Alfa Romeo dealership. This included, according to his anecdote, selling the Italian cars to less-than-savoury characters who would bring their cars in for servicing with bullet holes and suspicious damage. 

Eye-opening beginnings aside, he spent the majority (22 years) of his four-decade auto industry career with Volkswagen. He was previously Regional Manager for VGS in 2000/2001, then went on to help develop the brand’s dealership network in China, as Shanghai Volkswagen’s Deputy Sales Director. There, he helped the company achieve a sales average of 400,000 units per year, including setting a record of 441,000 units in 2008. Following that in 2011-2012 Mr Tay took the helm of Volkswagen Group Malaysia, as MD, then became Group Managing Director of Volkswagen Group Import (China) from 2013 to 2015. 

In 2016, Mr Tay took on the MD role at VGS, becoming the company’s first Singaporean boss – and voluntarily ‘downgrading’ his title in order to work back home. In 2017, VGS’ business reporting was switched from Volkswagen AG to Porsche Holding Salzburg (Volkswagen’s official distributor). Mr Tay continued on as co-MD responsible for retail, marketing, aftersales service and customer relations, with Dr Kurt Leitner the MD in charge of Finance and Admininstration, IT, and HR – as explained in detail in our story.

When quizzed by CarBuyer, Mr Tay said he felt his most proud achievements as co-MD here was turning around VW’s brand perception, and reintroducing the Skoda brand to Singapore. As we noted in our story from 2017: “The company once received no letters of praise from customers, but now has 10 of them for every complaint. VW owners once had to wait at least three weeks for a servicing appointment. That has since been shortened to three days.” More recently, Mr Tay was instrumental in reintroducing the Czech brand Skoda to the market, where it subsequently enjoyed its best sales year in history. 

Under Mr Tay’s directorship, VW also weathered the Dieselgate scandal, which at one point saw almost 1,000 cars held in warehouse ‘limbo’ for more than a year due to type-approval difficulties, and in the past few years, the Covid pandemic.

CarBuyer congratulates Ricky on his long, fruitful career, and even more on his hard-earned retirement.

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