The Steeple Times

Tag: London

  • Docked excess

    Docked excess

    Matthew Steeples compares two comparable examples of motoring excess: the “Golden Zebra” and the Fulda Maybach Exelero

     

    In recent weeks I’ve received a number of messages about an $8,000,000 car named a Fulda Maybach Exelero. One of them referred to it as “one of the most over the top cars on the planet” and so it piqued my interest.

     

    The 2005 Fulda Maybach Exelero concept car was inspired by the design of the 1939 Maybach SW38 Stromlinie
    The front of the car is dominated by an aggressively styled grille
    Whilst the rear would most definitely appeal to Batman
    A view from the side illustrates just how long this 5890mm vehicle truly is

    In these straightened times, such a figure seems quite a lot for a car but what, you may ask, makes it so special? Well, for a start it was a one off and commissioned in 2005 by the tyre company Fulda to showcase their Carat Exelero range. Designed for them by a 24-year old student named Fredrik Burchhardt of the Pforzheim Polytechnic Department of Transport Design and built on the chassis of a Maybach 57 limousine, this 2-seater coupé is 5890mm long and 2140mm wide. The vehicle, which weighs a not so insubstantial 2.6 tonnes, has a 5.9 litre V12 twin turbo engine and in testing achieved a top speed of 218mph at southern Italy’s Motodrom Nardo.

     

    In due course the Exelero was sold to André Action Diakité Jackson, a diamond industrialist, for €5,000,000. Jackson allowed Jay-Z to use the car in his Lost One music video before selling it to a “European entrepreneur” named Arnaud Massartic. Subsequently, various reports state that Massartic sold the vehicle on to the rapper Bryan “Birdman” Williams for $8,000,000 in April 2011 but other articles suggest that he failed to pay for the vehicle. Who knows where it is now.

     

    Rapper Bryan Williams (AKA “Birdman”) is best known as one half of the Big Tymers and is also the co-founder of Cash Money Records (http://birdmanstunna.com)
    Birdman in another of his cars, a Maybach 62s Landaulet
    Sir Bernard and Lady Docker
    The ex-London Motor Show 1955 Daimler DK400 “Golden Zebra” coupé with coachwork by Hooper & Company. Registration number: TYL 575, chassis number: 92705 and engine number: 48771.
    The front of the “Golden Zebra”

    Whether or not this piece of “automotive art” is indeed in the ownership of a “bling-king,” there are countless other examples of individually designed vehicular excess but amongst the most extravagant has to be an example commissioned by Lady Docker in 1955.

     

    Norah Docker (1905 – 1983), whose third husband was Sir Bernard Docker, chairman of Birmingham Small Arms and its subsidiary the Daimler Motor Company, spent £12,000 in 1955 creating the “Golden Zebra” coupé on the chassis of a DK400 limousine. She replaced anything on the car that would have normally been made in chrome with gold and upholstered it in real zebra hide. Black, white and gold-trimmed accessories completed the look and amongst them were picnic stools, folding rear seats complete with a cocktail bar and an elephant ivory dashboard makeup table with a mirror, compact, comb, brush, cigarette case and cream jars.

     

    Commenting as to why she chose to use zebra for the car’s upholstery, Lady Docker’s justification, in a quote that Barbara Amiel could only dream of having come up with, was simple:

     

    “Because mink is too hot to sit on.”

     

    The zebra hide upholstered interior of “The Golden Zebra”
    The car even features a golden zebra as a mascot
    Lady Docker, considered a visionary in her design skills by some and as vulgar and brash by others, even thought to include a drinks cabinet within the folding rear seats.
    In the front, an elephant ivory dashboard makeup table with a mirror, compact, comb, brush, cigarette case and cream jars show how much thought she put into the vehicle’s creation.
    Conrad Black and his wife Barbara Amiel have been much discussed in the press in recent days for their “extravagance.” They had nothing on Sir Bernard and Lady Docker.

    The 4.6 litre “Golden Zebra” was to be last of the cars created to Lady Docker’s designs as shortly afterwards, in May 1956, Sir Bernard Docker was sacked from BSA’s board for squandering the company’s cash. In addition to the extravagance of the “Docker Daimlers,” he’d used shareholder money, in a manner that could indeed be compared to Lord and Lady Black’s days at Hollinger, to buy his wife a castle in Wales and maintain a 212ft motor yacht named Shemara.

     

    Daimler forced the Dockers to return the Daimler vehicles Lady Docker had so diligently designed and in revenge she bought a Bentley Continental from the firm’s rival, Rolls-Royce. The “Golden Zebra” and the other “Docker Daimlers” were stripped of their expensive trimmings and sold. In 1966, the car was offered for sale by Daimler distributors Henlys of Chester for just £1,400 and after passing through the hands of several other owners ended up in California.

     

    In 1988, the “Golden Zebra” was purchased by a Daimler collector named John Wentworth. He restored the vehicle to its original glory with the help of experienced craftsmen and even managed to locate Kenyan zebra hides at a tannery in South Africa. Wentworth died prior to the completion of the car’s restoration and in 2006, it achieved £177,500 at Bonhams. The “Golden Zebra” came up for sale again in 2011 for £175,000 in Florida. It is now on display in the Louwman Museum in The Hague, Netherlands.

     

    “The Golden Zebra” was certainly a car that reflected the excesses of the 1950s and the Exelero was without doubt the equivalent for the 2000s. What on earth could usurp these two moving monuments of extravagence next? We are on the lookout.

     

    Watch a video of Sir Bernard and Lady Docker at: http://www.britishpathe.com/video/sir-bernard-counted-out-1

     

    View the Louwman Museum entry for the 1955 “Golden Zebra” Daimler at: http://www.louwmanmuseum.nl/asp/appmain.asp?appactie=collectiedetail&taalcd=en&collsq=5486

     

    View Fulda’s website dedicated to the Fulda Maybach Exelero at: http://www.das-projekt.com/EN/maybach_homepage_en.html

  • Redefining Rachman

    Redefining Rachman

    A different side to Peter Rachman is revealed

     

    Whenever the name Rachman is mentioned, the first things that come to mind are greed, extortion and intimidation. The word is so engrained in such that “Rachmanism” now features in the dictionary, defined as:

     

    “The exploitation of tenants of slum properties by unscrupulous landlords.”

     

    “Notorious slum landlord” Peter Rachman (1920 – 1962)

    Perec “Peter” Rachman (1920 – 1962) was born in Poland and the son of a Jewish dentist. He is best known for having built up a property empire of over 100 mansion blocks in London’s Westbourne Grove and Notting Hill areas in the 1950s where he evicted longstanding sitting tenants and replaced them with prostitutes and immigrants from the West Indies. Due to the relaxation of rent controls by the Conservative government in 1957 and as no other landlord was prepared to take them, he was able to charge these unfortunates whatever he wished.

     

    Rachman came to public attention after the Labour MP for Paddington North, Ben Parkin (1906 – 1969), became vocal about the poor housing conditions of his tenants. Parkin coined the phrase “Rachnamism” in his quest to put a stop to the activities of “rent racketeers” and highlighted him as someone who used violence to maintain control of “his manor.” The MP even went as far as to suggest that Peter Rachman’s death was merely a ploy to distract from his activities and the result was to leave the public engrained with a belief that this landlord was a “manipulative, grasping Jew” who symbolised the moral decay of Great Britain.

     

    Ben Parkin MP (1906 – 1969) on a CND march

    A Radio 4 programme this week, however, highlighted an entirely different side to Rachman. In The Real Rachman – Lord of the Slums, a “barrister turned investigative reporter” named Joshua Levine suggested that those who believe Peter Rachman just to be a sordid intimidator fail to see the true persona of the man.

     

    Levine’s witnesses, who number former tenants and Rachman’s biographer Shirley Green, do describe him as a “chancer” who was prepared to use the system to make money, but they also portray another side of this supposed “figure of evil’s” character.

     

    Nicholas van Hoogstraten (born 1945)

    One immigrant tenant stated: “He was the only one who ever did anything for us” whilst others added that Rachman was “well-liked” and “too soft to be a landlord.” He was a “benefactor” and “jolly” commented others who’d rented from him and a truly notorious modern-day landlord, Nicholas van Hoogstraten, failed to see the opportunist in Rachman at all: “It’s laughable. He had no wealth. It’s an invented moral [mission].” Rachman, equally, was defined as a man “affected” by his imprisonment in a Soviet labour camp in the Second World War by his former lover Mandy Rice-Davis and as someone who suffered true sorrow over the deaths of his family there.

     

    Levine’s examination recounts how Rachman, who drove a navy blue Rolls-Royce with a white interior, was built into a symbol of corruption and moral decay. Rachman, like so many other mythical scapegoats, it turns out only died with only one conviction: parking without lights. The truth, indeed, is often stranger than fiction.

     

    Listen to BBC Radio 4’s The Real Rachman – Lord of the Slums at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ng4h3

     

    Follow Joshua Levine on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/Joshua_Levine

  • Pippa Middleton

    Pippa Middleton

    The sister of The Duchess of Cambridge was paid a £400,000 advance by Penguin for her first book, Celebrate. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, Middleton’s view of her changed circumstances is simple: “It’s been a crazy few years since my sister’s wedding.” Whilst the chattering classes attack her and her family for cashing in on their connections to royalty, she’s also raised thousands for charity and is making her mark as an author. Good for her.

  • Video of the Week: The Queen morphs

    Video of the Week: The Queen morphs

    The Queen’s life in 3 minutes and 24 seconds

     

    This week we must thank Dan Large for having alerted us to an amazing YouTube video showing Her Majesty The Queen’s life in 3 minutes and 24 seconds.

     

    Elizabeth II

    Created by “an old retired guy who likes to play with computers” named “HerBunk” and using the technological wizardy of FantaMorph, the video has attracted nearly 6,000 likes and 300 dislikes. We look forward to hearing what readers of The Steeple Times make of it.

     

    Watch the video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8nJhG1xE5o&feature=share

  • Wafic Saïd

    Wafic Saïd

    This billionaire was born in Damascus in 1939 and declares his loves to be music, architecture, art and horse racing. His home is the £50 million neo-Georgian mansion Tusmore Park near Bicester in Oxfordshire and he supposedly paid Robbie Williams in excess of a million to perform at his daughter’s May 2012 wedding to PR Khaled Khawaja at The Palace of Versailles. Saïd was one of Margaret Thatcher’s biggest supporters but is also said to have been a confidant of Peter Mandelson. As chairman of Saïd Holdings Limited, he presides over an empire with investments in hedge funds and real estates but he’s better known for the £23 million endowment he provided to establish the Saïd Business School in Oxford in 1996.

  • Sir Benjamin Slade Bt.: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”

    Sir Benjamin Slade Bt.: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”

    The Steeple Times asks the right-wing businessman and owner of Maunsel House and Woodlands Castle, Sir Benjamin Slade: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”

     

    The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom.” What’s your guiding force?

    Money, power, sex, success, land, trees, books and fine wine.

     

    “Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?

    “If it f**ks, floats or flies: Rent it, don’t buy it and don’t marry it!”

     

    Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2012?

    David Cameron and Sir Mervyn King.

     

    Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?

    Being in London full-time.

     

    What might you swap all your wealth for?

    Good health and two healthy sons.

     

    Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank.” What’s your view on the banking crisis?

    It’s like putting bartenders on commission and allowing them to give credit to alcoholics who die and go bankrupt.

     

    What phrase or word do you most loathe?

    I’ve got three: 1. “Sustainability.” 2. “Stakeholder.” 3. “Human rights.”

     

    In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home.” What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?

    UKIP and Help for Heroes.

     

    The judge in “Law Abiding Citizen” states: “I can pretty do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?

    They are useful for ringing up if late, doing deals and arranging dinners with girls.

     

    If you could fill a carriage on The Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?

    Warren Buffett, Bobby Faber, Philip Gibbs, Bettany Hughes, Brian Kingham, Lady Kitchener-Fellowes, Francis Fulford, Robert Lyle, Sir John Madejski, David Ord, General Sir Michael Rose, Roger Seelig, Alexander Stockton, Jonathan Sumption PC, Norman Tebbit, Lord Westbury, the Duke of Westminster and Mrs William Worsley.  Adrian de Ferranti can sit in the luggage car and serve wine.

     

    Sir Benjamin Slade Bt.

    If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?

    It’d have to be at La Tour d’Argent in Paris.

     

    What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?

    1pm and 6pm.

     

    A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?

    Green tea.

     

    Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?

    Sotheby’s and Christie’s and those hosted by Liz Floyd and Philip Gibbs.

     

    Who is the most positive person you know?

    My friend Bobby Faber.

     

    What’s your most guilty pleasure?

    Drinking claret at £100 per bottle.

     

    If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?

    A big castle with lots of walnut trees, good books and bottles of wine. And girls’ hips.

     

    If you were a car, what marque would you be?

    A Ford Fiesta.

     

    Cilla Black presented “Surprise, Surprise.” Tell us the most surprising thing about you.

    I’m self-made, have a great knowledge of history and am a seriously good doctor with over 120 patients. And, you’ll be surprised to learn that I was a spy in the Middle East for Britain.

     

    What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?

    Tankards, invites, various Mouser and Walther pistols, cows horns, Roman artifacts, decanters, pewter cups, silver, an 18th century bottle of port and a Russian machine gun.

     

    Maunsel House, North Newton, Near Taunton, Somerset, TA7 0BU. Telephone: +44 (0) 1278 661076. Website: http://www.maunselhouse.co.uk

     

    Woodlands Castle, Ruishton, Taunton, Somerset, TA3 5LU. Telephone: +44 (0) 1823 444955. Website: http://www.woodlandscastle.co.uk

     

    Read Sir Benjamin Slade’s blog at: http://sirbenslade.blogspot.co.uk/ and follow him on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/sirbenslade

  • James Sherwood

    James Sherwood

    This Kentuckian buccaneer founded Sea Containers in 1965. He is best known though buying the Hotel Cipriani in Venice for less than £1 million “on a whim” and reviving the Venice-Simplon-Orient-Express. A true perfectionist with an attention to detail unlike any other, Sherwood was victorious in 2010 in a battle with the Cipriani family over their using his hotel’s name in London and also founded Harry’s Bar in Mayfair with Mark Birley. He is married to the leading expert on botanical art, Dr Shirley Sherwood OBE, and was once stranded at 16,000 feet in the Andes with Princess Michael of Kent after his helicopter had to make an emergency landing.

     

  • First Among (Not So) Equals

    First Among (Not So) Equals

    The latest sale of 32a Ovington Square

     

    I first visited 32a Ovington Square in September 2009. At the time, this “hidden house” was the home of Lord Carrington and it had just come on the market at a price, if I recall correctly, of circa £3,000,000.

     

    The newly redeveloped Carrington House, 32a Ovington Square, London, SW3 1LR
    The Rt. Hon. The Lord Carrington KG, GCMG, CH, MC, PC, DL (born 6th June 1919) with his wife Lady Carrington (1920 – 2009) and their dog Edward

     

    A friend was looking for somewhere to buy in London and I’d somehow come across the aforementioned property in a magazine. A detached house in Knightsbridge at this price seemed like a bargain and as he was keen to take a look and I lived round the corner, we arranged to see it together.

     

    During this period, I had unfortunately made the mistake of making the acquaintance of a former ambassador’s wife who thought herself rather grand. Said woman somehow found out about my friend going to what Americans might term an “open house” at 32a Ovington Square and somehow muscled in. This individual happened to be selling her own home nearby and I reckon she, like my friend, thought she’d be onto a bargain. She’d previously unsuccessfully tried to persuade my friend to buy her individually styled, Ralph Lauren wallpapered home but as it actually rattled every time an underground train went underneath and as it was far from a bargain, he’d sensibly declined.

     

    We arrived at the 2,240 square foot 32a Ovington Square to be told by a rather unhelpful estate agent that we’d have to just wander round by ourselves and that there was no brochure or floor plan. As a merry throng trailed through the house, Lord Carrington stood in the garden looking bemused and his secretary fussed around him. The pair plainly weren’t comfortable with all the interlopers and all in all, who could blame them.

     

    The ex-ambassador’s wife, whose carelessness Rupert Everett most amusingly made reference to in his recent memoirs, spent the entire visit whingeing about the house being dark and stinking of damp. I had to agree with her as the neighbouring buildings towered over it and there was mould on the walls. My friend simply said: “It needs a fortune spending on it.” We left and later I heard that it sold for well above the asking price. The wife of the ex-ambassador thankfully departed from our lives soon after.

     

    A site plan shows how hidden away 32a Ovington Square truly is – ideal for a government minister or indeed a wayward celebrity

     

    About a year and a half later, I saw 32a Ovington Square for sale with planning permission to construct a far larger residence with a basement and sub-basement pool complex. The price was in the order of £14,000,000. I thought that somewhat ludicrous but now that the very same property is on the market at a price of £23,00,000, it seems that the world has just gone mad.

     

    The brochure for the new residence, which has been renamed, Carrington House, reveals a three-storey low-built freehold building with 5,300 square foot of accommodation. Though 32a Ovington Square has been more than doubled in size by a developer named London City Developments, the sub-basement leisure complex has not been constructed. Could this have been because of planning problems or simply because such construction wasn’t deemed to add value?

     

    In August 2002, Lord Carrington, whom The Mirror described as being  “doddery” in a Scurra diary piece, was said to have objected to a bar named Townhouse behind his former home being given a 1am licence. That bar has since closed but as seven of the residents of Ovington Square and Beauchamp Place also took a dislike to the prospect of subterranean developments at his former home, only proposals for a single basement level were included in the January 2010 plans submitted by a Mr & Mrs R. Garner.

     

    Jeffrey Archer’s 1984 novel “First Among Equals” (published in the UK by Hodder & Stoughton, ISBN: 0-340-35266-3)

     

    Aside from controversy with residents and planning officials, this “heavily overlooked,” “dark” house gets a brief credit in Jeffrey Archer’s 1984 novel, First Among Equals:

     

    “Charles would not have normally accepted the invitation. Lately he found cocktail parties to consist of nothing but silly little bits of food, never being able to get the right drink and rarely enjoying the trivial conversation. But when he glanced on his mantelpiece and saw an ‘At Home’ from Lady Carrington he felt it might be an amusing break from the routine he had fallen into since Fiona left. He was keen to discover more about the rumoured squabbles in Cabinet over expenditure cuts. He checked his tie in the mirror, removed an umbrella from the hat stand and left Eaton Square for Ovington Square… He arrived at Lord Carrington’s front door a little after six forty-five. A maid answered his knock, and he walked straight through to a drawing room that could have held fifty guests and very nearly did. He even managed to be served with the right blend of whiskey before joining his colleagues from both the Upper and Lower Houses.”

     

    Turning to the real Lord Carrington, here is a man who has led a remarkable life. He served as Foreign Secretary in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet between 1979 and 1982 and as Secretary General of NATO from 1984 to 1988. The last surviving member of the Cabinets of both Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home was British High Commissioner in Australia between 1956 and 1959 and also chaired the 1979 Lancaster House conference that brought Zimbabwe’s revolutionary war to an end. In 1991, Carrington presided over diplomatic talks in the former Yugoslavia and commented:

     

    “When I first talked to Presidents Milošević and Tudjman, it was quite clear that both of them had a solution which was mutually satisfactory – which was that they were going to carve up Bosnia between them.”

     

    Lord Carrington at his desk in 32a Ovington Square, Knightsbridge
    The Manor House, Bledlow, Buckinghamshire, HP27 9PB is the country home of Lord Carrington

     

    Milošević was found dead in his cell in 2006 but it is quite possible that Lord Carrington’s name will be mentioned in the trial of Goran Hadzic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that has just commenced at The Hague. It is amazing to think that matters involving this 93-year old politician are still current but Carrington’s stamina is shown in his roles as the longest serving member of the House of Lords and the second longest serving member of the Privy Council after HRH The Duke of Edinburgh.

     

    Aside from politics, there is much on the internet, a considerable amount of it written by wildcards and fantasists whose number includes David Icke, about Carrington’s involvement with Henry Kissinger, the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group and the Committee of 300. The consensus of these conspiracy theorists generally borders on the ludicrous, but it is without doubt that Lord Carrington had and continues to have influence in many high places. He was chairman of Christie’s International PLC from 1988 to 1993 and has held directorships on the boards of companies that have included Barclays Banks PLC, Hambros PLC, Cadbury Schweppes PLC, Amalgamated Metal Corporation PLC, British Metal Corpoation PLC, Rio Tinto PLC, Kissinger Associates Inc. and Hollinger Inc.

     

    The main entrance to Carrington House
    The main reception room of the house is decorated in a contemporary style and a far cry from the traditional decoration favoured by Lord and Lady Carrington
    An essential feature in any house priced over £10 million is a media room
    Carrington House now boasts a bar that any dignitary would envy
    The newly added basement level features an entertaining hall, dining room, bar, gym, media room and two bedroom suites
    The staircase is now lit by a glazed cupola
    The master bedroom
    The master bathroom
    Another bedroom, located at basement level, is decorated with a Scottish theme and has access to a shared courtyard
    The other suite that shares the courtyard is decorated with an “Out of Africa” theme complete with an image of a zebra and matching linen and upholstery
    Would the purchaser of a £23,000,000 home truly want an AstroTurf lawn?

     

    Following on from this rather over the top redevelopment, a new chapter has certainly begun at 32a Ovington Square. Whether it is bought by a popstar or a Russian oligarch, they’ll definitely not be anywhere nearly as equal to Lord Carrington in terms of their league of influence.

     

    Carrington House, 32a Ovington Square, London, SW3 1LR is for sale through Knight Frank. For further information contact Nick Vestey on +44 (0) 20 7591 8600. Full details of the house can be viewed at: http://search.knightfrank.com/sla100211

     

    For more details about the Carrington family’s Carrington Estates Ltd., go to: http://www.carington.co.uk/

  • For how much longer will Jim be mixing it?

    For how much longer will Jim be mixing it?

    A concrete firm whose boss is fixated on a rather tarnished name

     

    I recall seeing a cement truck belonging to a company named Jim’ll Mix It parked in First Street, Chelsea several years ago. As I walked past, I said to my friend: “Plainly that’s owned by a wit.” The joke, given recent revelations about a certain Jimmy Savile, is sadly no longer funny.

     

    A Jim’ll Mix It cement truck

    Jimmy Taylor founded Jim’ll Mix It in 1983 and employs some 50 people at his sites at Bow, Upminster and Croydon. Asked whether he’d be keeping the company’s name, his response was in the affirmative:

     

    “What is Jimmy Savile to do with me? I am who I am. I’m in concrete, my name’s Jim. I’ve no intention of changing the name.”

     

    The Jim’ll Fix It star himself has only one known connection with concrete and that came quite recently. After he died in 2011, Jimmy Savile’s grave, which is bizarrely angled so he could look out to sea, was concrete encased.

     

    Jimmy Savile’s headstone in Scarborough has now been ground to dust. It was captioned at the base: “It was good while it lasted.”

    Though Savile’s headstone has already been removed, there could be an opportunity for Mr Taylor’s firm in Scarborough. Given the demands that the alleged paedophile’s body be relocated to another location, there could indeed be a need for a new concrete pit for Savile elsewhere.

     

    Carved into the now destroyed headstone for Savile were the words: “It was good while it lasted.” If Mr Taylor is sensible, he’ll take the same view and change the name of his company.

     

    Jim’ll Mix It, Unit 1, Lusty Industrial Estate, Empson Street, Bow, London E3 3LT. Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7538 2266. Website: http://www.modernmix.co.uk

  • Far from a loser

    Far from a loser

    Henrik Fisker: a man who creates automotive winners

     

    Readers of The Steeple Times will know that we are big fans of the designs of Henrik Fisker and most especially his Fisker Karma – a car that has sadly not yet made it to Britain’s roads.

     

    We very much hope that this superb automobile does arrive soon, but a newsletter we received this morning from Hexagon Classics reminded us that Fisker has been responsible for many other groundbreaking vehicles, amongst them the BMW Z8.

     

    Automotive designer Henrik Fisker with a Fisker Karma
    Republican Mitt Romney during the first in a series of debates with President Barrack Obama

     

    Mr Fisker hit the news last week when the foolish Republican who desires to be President, Mitt Romney, made the following comment during his first debate with Barrack Obama:

     

    “You put $90 billion, like 50 years’ worth of breaks, into solar and wind, to Solyndra and Fisker and Tester [we think he pulled a “Bushism” and meant Tesla] and Ener1… I mean, I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right?”

     

    Fisker Automotive’s spokesman, Roger Ormisher, rubbished this nonsense with the following riposte:

     

    “We don’t consider ourselves a loser having sold 1,500 cars already, raised over $1.2 billion of private equity and are now expanding our export markets to GCC and China. We believe that is a quite an achievement for a small American business.”

     

    Ormisher raises valid points and, in our humble opinion, Romney is wrong not to support this pioneering brand. Fisker is an innovative company that is now holding its own and setting the agenda in eco-friendly vehicles. That the especially pernickety Top Gear team love the Karma speaks volumes and frankly, this silly politician should just keep his oar out.

     

    The Henrik Fisker designed BMW Z8 roadster offered by Hexagon Classics
    The car with the roof up
    The rather bold red and black interior
    Pierce Brosnan with a BMW Z8 in the 1999 James Bond film “The World Is Not Enough”

     

    Hexagon Classics offer a 2002 BMW Z8 5.0 litre roadster in titanium silver with a sports red and black Nappa hide interior at a price of £119,995. The car has only 9,013 miles on the clock and can achieve a top speed of 155mph.

     

    The Z8 roadster was good enough for Pierce Brosnan in the 1999 James Bond film The World Is Not Enough and if you’re in the market for a roadster, this particular vehicle could definitely “give you the world.”

     

    For more details and images of the 2000 BMW Z8 Roadster available through Hexagon Classics, go to: http://www.hexagonclassics.com/car_sales/BMW-Z8-Roadster-5.0-/6191.htm or contact Jonathan Kaiser on +44 (0) 20 7225 3388.

     

    Read The Steeple Times article on the Fisker Karama at: http://thesteepletimes.com/opulence-splendour/is-it-worth-the-fisk

     

    For more on Fisker Automotive, go to: http://onward.fiskerautomotive.com/en-us