Is there Toolapalooza time at our favourite shop, named after the expression other rally drivers use to describe the old bloke and me, Total Tools? I don’t know. TT didn’t send me the email.
Will TT knock $400 off the price of a Stanley Air Compressor Silenced 2.75HP with a 50 litre tank? I don’t know. What about a Clutchpro Clutch Kit, which includes at no extra cost SMF & CSC, KAN27663, for $16,951.55 (mention this column and they’ll knock off the 55c)? That’s $3k less than last week. Will Anthony Heraghty, group managing director and chief executive officer, have to issue a profit warning? Will he go back to his old job as group general manager of underwear for Pacific Brands? I don’t know.
What I do know its Lawlapalooza time for former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn, 69, of Beirut where he has been stuck for four years because of Interpol Red Notices issued by Japan and France (a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action). This week CG told the world he is suing his old company for more than $1bn in a lawsuit in Lebanon. He’s accusing Nissan (formerly known as Kaishinsha Motorcar Co., DAT Jidosha & Co. and Nihon, and owner of Prince – think Gloria, Skyline, Homy and Cherry) of defamation, slander and libel, and fabricating material evidence.
If I can summarise Carl’s story, a story that would be longer than Mark Proust’s 3000 page bio ‘‘A la recherché du temps perdu’’ that reflects on the loss of time and the pursuit of truth and meaning in the world (much like this column), it basically goes like this: Carl was No.2 at family-controlled tyre maker, Michelin, in 1996. He went to Renault that had missed out on the merger merry-go-round that had seen Daimler and Chrysler become Stellantis, and was facing obscurity. Nissan was already obscure (aka bankrupt). Renault bailed it out and Carl turned it around, bought 34 per cent of Mitsubishi and became CEO of Nissan as well as Renault. And got two pay cheques. And Nissan bought him a $12m pink house in Beirut and renovated it for $20m.
And he also turned around his lifestyle. This included Nissan paying for other apartments and houses and extensions in places like the beach at Rio and Paris. Lots of travel on company private jets including buying one, a Gulfstream G650 for $100m.
The problem for Carl and Nissan both was a company named Zi-A Capital BV in Clogland. The board was told Zi was to be a Nissan venture capital play but, as the Wall Street Journal reported, it “became the vehicle through which Nissan would buy additional homes, including the one in Beirut, through multiple layers of shell companies registered in offshore locations”. No prizes for who was playing Nissanisbuyingmehomeslapalooza.
At the same time the Japanese were worrying that Carl was subtly leading a French/American cultural takeover of Nissan and that Carl was deferring his compensation to hide how much he was really being paid. In 2018 things got so nasty that Tokyo’s prosecutor office arrested Carl as he got off his private jet. The TPO accused him of having underreported his declared remuneration to the Japanese stockmarket authorities from 2011 to 2015 and put him in the slammer. Carl gets out on bail and gets put back inside and so on. Eventually he gets sick of being tortured in solitary and realises nothing good is going to happen to him in Japan, so he hires a former Green Beret to help him escape to Lebanon in a guitar case. Which he does very successfully.
Despite living in a nice flat in the 5000-year-old city Carl is not happy. So, he sues Nissan, telling us by psychic internet and guitar case: “I have the intention get my rights back, to repair my reputation. I am going to dedicate all the time necessary for the truth to prevail.” Well, there’s five minutes of your reading life you’re not getting back.
In Pebble Beach in a few months Dave Gooding will be selling a 1972 Alfa Montreal with Coachwork by Bertone. The Montreal comes with a V8 and not many electrical issues or oil leaks. Just under 4000 were made and prices are rising. Expect to pay $200k and put up with lame jokes like: “I just saw an Alfa Romeo driver using his indicators correctly on the freeway. Twice. Should I report the vehicle as stolen?”
In Australia my feeling (because it’s hard to get real results) is that the collector car market, at least at auction, is slowing. Really good cars are still selling but many are going overseas, like Chris Wallace’s James Bond Aston Martin DBS Vantage 6. Chris bought the Lazenby Bond green machine from the factory. “Used in one of those dreadful James Bond Movies the managing director said as he gleefully took my £2450.” The car then went to chemical engineer Sigi Zidziunas in Melbourne whose business partner ran into the back of it in an identical Aston Martin. He took it to the hospital in 1986 and it was released in 2008. Now back in soap dodger land. By the way, Goulburn’s George Lazenby, 83, is living in Los Angeles and sells a nice range of merch including hoodies, tees, aprons and bay clothes with the immortal line “This never happened to the other fella,” spoken by James Bond (George) on a beach in Portugal at the beginning of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service after the person he rescues, Diana Rigg, drives off and leaves him holding her shoes.
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