Wellington Cheng Soong: Success of Achievements

There is this very interesting office in a Makati building which a man transformed from his official office to a private museum-cum-memorabilia center.

Wellington Soong, or simply Willie to his friends and Kuya Willie to me, considered himself out of the local auto industry that he loves very much but still very well informed on what’s going on around. He devoted some 25 years for his passion for motoring from 1997 up to 2022.

His office at the ground floor of the ENZO Building in Gil Puyat Avenue in Makati continues to house some of his ongoing businesses. But he had already transforming it into a private museum for his tons of memorabilia — from motoring up to his exploits around the world. He simply calls it the Wellington Centre.

The Centre can easily accommodates around 17 cars and various memorabilia items that are either housed on glass cabinets or art works that are simply hanging on the huge walls around.

That office was assigned and given to him by his very close friend Enrique Zobel when the latter bought the building in May 1984 for P9-million then. It was during the time when Zobel was already planning to get out of the Ayala conglomerate. 

I met Kuya Willie when I first visited the place during his Jaguar Land Rover distributorship days. It’s not the luxury vehicles which attracted me most in that office, but rather a horse artwork by noted Filipino artist Robert Balajadia. That piece, which is still there hanging in one place of his office, has a rich history that dates back when the horse of former Amb. Danding Cojuangco’s wife Gretchen won a stakes race. 

That sparked the start of our friendship when he later learned that I have 5 pieces of Balajadia’s artwork then. The late Robert Balajadia is close friend. Having the birth sign of a horse, Kuya Willie had also an extensive collection of things with horses in it. 

The Centre is almost complete but Kuya Willie said that he will have it extended when a current office there is vacated soon to give more ways for his other memorabilia.

There’s a wall there where a distinct sign of RACKS is hanging. He was the original owner of it as he is the one who coined the name which means “Real American Country Chicken Style” and it became a very popular one. He had already sold it long before. RACKS is the product of various failures for Kuya Willie to get hold of any international franchise such as McDonald’s, Haagen Dazs, and Popeye after years of futile efforts.

The highlight is of course his modest collection of Ferraris and Maseratis. “No, in all my life I haven’t bought a brand new car, except for this Ferrari MC20 (which was delivered to the Centre only last September 2022). That was the only one,” according to Kuya Willie. 

He doesn’t have any regret in exiting the local motoring industry, which he described as having a “paradigm transformation today.” “It’s good that I have exited after those ‘transactional betrayals’ to my greatest relief. To me, it validated the saying: In life there is no such thing as an accident and everything happens for a reason with a purpose,” he said.

Kuya Willie had just finished a 280-page coffee-table book that chronicled his life journey together with his late wife Maureen. It is entitled “Knowing When To Exit.” On Nov. 6, he will be honoring the birth anniversary of Maureen and dedicate the book in her honor together with some friends that he had through the years.

There’s this quotation from him about success that he described as a whole: “When people ask if I think I’ve been successful, I say that I’ve always shunned the word “success” – because in our real world, the definition of success is normally how money you have, how much land you have. It’s always measured based on material possessions, and I have always felt that wasn’t my way of measuring success. It was more on the success of achievements, pursuing a goal, believing in it and making it happen!” ANDY SEVILLA