Now in more bad news, the good ship Felicity Ace has gone down off the Azores with its fleet of Lambos, Porkers, Bentleys and numerous iPad holders cleverly disguised as cars with electric batteries that started the fire on the Mitsui OSK-owned Panama-registered car carrier.
The 73.5m Belgian tug Bear was towing the FA when the stricken ship simply turned turtle and headed to the bottom, which is a 3000m voyage straight down. Of course the area that the FA selfishly choose to sink in is a marine sanctuary and our thoughts naturally turned to the pristine waters and coral reefs, tuna, sharks and dolphins and whales. But in good news, ace reporter Adam Corbett of TradeWind News tell us: “The loss of the ship at sea may save the environmental costs of disposing of the wreck and its cargo of luxury cars.” Phew.
Of course Mitsui OSK ships are no strangers to Davy Jones’s Locker. A few years back another of the Japanese company’s ships, the MV Comfort, broke in two off the Yemen coast and went full ahead down. Well that’s not completely true. The back (to use the technical term) went for a dive immediately and the front section followed a few weeks later. Don’t let me scare you, but in a move guaranteed to bring bad luck, the folks at Mitsui’s Tokyo head office (just a five-minute walk from Toranomon Station Exit 3) changed the ship’s name five months before the split. What was the Comfort’s old name? MV Russia!
Talking of Russia, just like everywhere else in the world the local Ruski car brands are being done over by foreigners. While the very commie Lada Granta (made with the help of Renault) is the bestseller in the motherland (mainly in the Norm vs the Luxe model), Hyundai, Kia, VW and Skoda dominate the top 10. China’s Great Wall is opening factories faster than the Felicity Ace went down and Chev, BMW, GM and Ford are all there although the Yanks have paused things for a while.
Of course there’s a bit of a moral dilemma here given Russia is Renault’s biggest market outside France, but don’t worry do-gooders, both Renault and Hyundai stopped production on March 1. Yup, for a chip shortage. They start pumping cars out again next week. While FIFA, the governing body of soccer, has finally given Russia and Russian players the boot (sorry), F1, after some prodding, has cancelled the Ruskie GP but is allowing Russian drivers to keep competing. Can’t alienate important audiences.
Before the hostilities, my favourite commie car was the Lada Niva, designed in 1977 and hardly changed since. As online car broker carwow.co.uk says about the 2022 Lada Niva: “It’s so shit it’s good”. Not that you bring yourself to buy one now but there are a few old Nivas for sale at around $15k or 1.2 million roubles here in no-car-of-any type production land.
Anyway, as usual, it was the tsar of the BMW fixing-up caper, the official royal portrait painter to the House of Romanov, the Michael the Terrible of the very poor state of South Australia (local readers don’t forget to vote informal in the election in a fortnight to stop politicians getting into parliament), Michael McMichael who came up with the answer. Strangely enough he was aided in this eureka endeavour by the chairperson of two large Australian public companies (who will remain nameless less shareholders think he has caught Val Putin’s frontotemporal dementia). “Comrades we can rescue the Porkers, Lambos, Bentleys but not the iPad carriers and save the environment in the Azores and make a motza for ourselves,” Mick and the chairperson said as one.
“Remember back in 2009 when the lads, lassies and others from the local diving club pulled a 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster from the bottom of Lake Maggiore where it had been waiting for 40 years. Remember we said a lot of effort for a rustbucket that’s maybe worth $100k? Best guess was someone would pay $80,000 for the rusted hulk and then spend a million doing up what was left of it. But no, California financial services Dvoryanstvo, Pete Mullin, paid $600,000 for and has it on display in its own darkened room at home.’’
Pete, also a rare Italian pig farmer, is president of the US Bugatti Club and owns one of two 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantics (the other one’s owned by Ralph Lauren). Pete once said to me: “Johnny, be careful in the classic car business. Remember the old saying: ‘In the thirties, the Mercedes-Benz factory built 25 special Roadsters, but only 30 of them survived’.”
Staying on the rare jewel theme, two cars to keep any eye on at this weekend’s Sydney Harbour Concours and auction. The first is the king of Pink Diamonds, John Calleija’s 1965 Aston Martin DB5 on show after an eight-year resto. Naturally being in the bling trade, John has a bespoke and bejewelled 18 carat solid gold gear-stick set with custom cut diamonds. The gear knob opens up just like the original Bond DB5 to reveal a special Astar cut red rhodolite gem eject button. With all that gold I hope he doesn’t feel gilty. (Sorry.)
Up for auction is one of this column’s favourite Covid-free person from the West, Pete Briggs. Briggsy has been downsizing his collection of late and last night you could have bought his beautiful 1904 Napier L48 Samson. One of one, the world’s most successful race car of its time, the first six-cylinder race car, good for 164km/h, three owners, driven by Briggsy to a hill climb win at Goodwood and a class win at Pebble Beach, the Napier will probably go back overseas for somewhere around $2m. Pete bought the car from legendary Australian auto genius Bob Chamberlain, who had restored it from a barn find to a classic.
And it’s sorry again. Have fallen behind in answering emails.
[email protected]
