UNIVERSITY degrees and a head full of theories are all very well. If you want something done right, however, you sometimes have to open up the bonnet yourself and get your hands dirty. Just ask Mr Tan Siow Chua.

The founder of SC Auto does not have much in the way of a formal education - a primary school-level certificate is about it - but that has not stopped him from building a winning firm that makes luxury buses.

Mr Tan, 49, is famous here and in Hong Kong for his skills in the industry and for easily holding his own against more well-educated suppliers, many of whom are foreigners and fluent in English.

His skills have allowed him to turn his firm from a tiny local player with only a minivan into a regional giant, supplying coaches to Hong Kong Disneyland and Macau's thriving casinos.

He got on the road to riches in 1978, just after finishing National Service where he spent two years training drivers.

Mr Tan saw an untapped market in the transport service business, so he bought a minivan to ferry school children and factory workers.

"It wasn't easy, and I remember working 18-hour days and being very tired," Mr Tan says in Mandarin, recalling how his life was 'squeezed' when he emptied his savings and took a loan of more than $10,000 to buy a minivan.

He was new to the business, so he had to live his life at a hectic pace, running his company's daily operations while repairing and maintaining engines by himself. He remembers repairing up to five to six buses each day.

"I never once thought of giving up. My immediate focus was to grow my fleet of vehicles and to add more customers," says the father of four, who realised his lack of a good education meant he had to work much harder than others.

This meant putting in more 'on-the-job' time to increase his technical knowledge by tinkering with engines and learning the nuts and bolts of the trade from friends.

"I never stopped learning," he says. "I've always been self-motivated; motivation comes from within, not others."

His persistence paid off, and his one-man show soon grew steadily into a company with more than 20 employees.

Today, he has more than 100 workers. By 1995, the firm had about 40 vehicles, including tow and cargo trucks, and the transport service was expanding alongside a bus manufacturing arm that started in 1992.

The bus manufacturing business, however, proved to be a conflict of interest, says Mr Tan. His company was supplying clients with bus bodies, but it was also competing with them for the transport services business.

So, after wrestling with a 'hard decision' that essentially involved a directional shift away from his original business, Mr Tan sold off the transport services arm in 1996.

At the same time, he redoubled the company's efforts on coach design, producing luxury coaches for its casino and resort customers to cater to 'high-value' clients.

The buses his company now makes can be as long as 12 metres and each has up to 49 seats - all made in Singapore.

"When we first joined the bus manufacturing industry, we were the smallest player, and we only had a 10 per cent market share," says Mr Tan, who felt the company would do better to compete on quality rather than dish out discounts on buses.

That belief led him to devise innovative improvements in his bus designs. He once fitted a bus with a rear engine cover that could be lifted vertically to allow better maintenance and repair of engines and air-con units.

"This allowed the mechanics to easily access the insides of the bus, so the repair time could be shortened," Mr Tan explains.

Competitors were quick to swipe his ideas.

"I failed to patent my designs, but I've since learnt," he says, adding that the company now has over 100 designs registered with the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore.

He cites one example: curved windscreens that make buses lighter - and more stable - when travelling at high speeds.

Mr Tan credits Spring Singapore for helping his company with its product design and commercialisation.

He knows he must keep innovating to stay ahead of the pack: "Our research and development department is constantly working."

About 3 per cent to 4 per cent of the company's sales turnover is spent on research and development, up from less than 1 per cent a decade ago.

The firm makes about 100 buses a year, all at SC Auto's base in Senoko.

Mr Tan's English is improving as well, and he tries to make small talk with his foreign business partners, sometimes with unexpected results.

"Once, I told a joke to a French businessman and received no response at all, as the guy was only interested in technical matters," he recalls.

When it comes to dealing with workers, however, he describes his management-style as not 'towkay-like', preferring to keep things casual, sitting and chatting with them at coffee shops.

"I feel there shouldn't be any distance between 'lau ban' - 'boss' in Mandarin - and workers. Without workers, there won't be any boss," he says.