The men who died, both in their early 30s, were sitting in the rear.

The driver, a man in his early 40s, and the two other passengers, both girls in their late teens, escaped with minor injuries.

The collision wrecked the electric grid box, cutting off power to nearby shophouses for five hours.

One of those who died, Mr Lin Jian Yan, 32, had told his family on Sunday evening that he was going to the Orchard Road area to meet some friends on his day off from his work as a bouncer at a club.

When he did not return home at 5am, his family was initially not worried as he sometimes stayed over at a friend's place.

But they felt something was amiss when he failed to call home the next morning and did not answer phone calls from his mother at around 11am.

His sister Doris Lin, 34, said: 'Before we could call him again, we got a call from the police informing us that something had happened to him.'

Mr Lin was a fitness enthusiast who often spent his free time exercising at the gym or swimming.

His mother, Madam Wang Kui Lan, 64, said in Mandarin: 'We don't know who he was with at that time. We called some of his close friends, but none of them was with him.'

Read the full story in today's edition of The Straits Times