Good news readers! Akio didn't get the flick at the AGM this week.

Nup. Despite a lot of huffing and puffing by some big shareholders, Akio Toyoda, kept his job as chairman of the world's second largest car company by both market cap and sales. Now in a very rare occurrence in Japan, shareholders did give him the lowest vote in Toyota's history, which is a bit rough for a bloke whose grandad started the show.

Look, as the one regular reader knows, a week ago five badly dressed people raided the Toyota global HQ. It appears there was a bit of a problem with Toyota fiddling with their cars so that they would pass the Japanese certification standards, and the other "non event" of the Toyota-owned Daihatsu recalling 320,000 cars.

In more good news, the Brad Pitt's Lewis Hamilton F1 movie Apex is due on your screens this time next year. Brad plays an old F1 driver named Sonny Hayes who races Mazda MX-5s after crashing his F1 machine badly during the 1990s. A few years later, a struggling F1 team owner recruits Hayes to join Sauber as its second driver and mentor young phenomenon Zhou Guanyu. The Hamster plays producer Lewis Hamilton and himself in a cameo role.

Can we just take a moment here readers and just talk about the greatest scene in movie history – after of course the car chases in John Frankenheimer's Ronin, Steve McQueen on the hills of San Fran and my favourite, Steven Spielberg's Duel. Of course, the film I'm talking about is the 1990 Ghost. The pottery scene sees Demi Moore at a pottery wheel doing unspeakable things with her hands to some very lucky clay. They begin with hands interlaced stroking the wet clay. He begins kissing her, and she leaps into his arms, the pottery wheel abandoned in the heat of passion.

Now on the subject of Le Mans; last weekend Australian Yasser Shahin won the first ever LMGT3 class victory in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the Manthey EMA Porsche 911 GT3 R. Yasser's story, from pumping petrol to driving a million-dollar missile is nearly as good as Ghost. Exactly 40 years ago, Fred Shahin bought a servo at Woodville Park in Adelaide. Sons Yasser, Sam and Charlie started pumping petrol a few years later. More importantly, YS&C have built Australia's only world-class motor track, The Bend. Last year the Shahin family agreed to sell its OTR convenience and petrol empire to Viva for a lazy $1.2bn.

Anyway, Yasser and the boys and others, finished 27th overall managing to knock off 281 laps while the overall winner, Ferrari, did 311 laps of the 8.5 mile course.

Picking up this week's grunge theme, our car of the week is a Mercedes-Benz 1971 280 SE 3.5 Coupe RHD put up for sale by Aguttes. There is a small issue. It's had a nap in a barn in Burgundy for 15 years. The leathers are beautiful but obviously require cleaning and the exterior could do with a wash.

jc@jcp.com.au