The sale of the home of a circus heir and the revival of Billy Smart’s Circus
Billy Smart, Sr. (1894 – 1966), a travelling showman and father of 10 children (he was himself one of 23), bought a circus in 1946 and quickly became known as an extraordinary entertainer. One of his son’s, Billy Smart, Jr. (1934 – 2005), made his debut at the age of 12 as an assistant ringmaster in Billy Smart’s New World Circus and performed with ponies, horses and eventually elephants. (more…)
Thrice married Norah Docker lived life to the full and did it in style. (more…)
This Swiss born son of a printer has spent over £85 million buying up properties in the Henley-on-Thames area of Oxfordshire. Schwarzenbach also owns 123,000 acres in Australia, 26,000 acres in Scotland and has his own polo team, the Black Bears. This financier’s foreign exchange dealership, Interexchange, is the biggest in Switzerland and betting against the dollar has brought much success. He supposedly even named his Gulfstream G650 “George” as “ultimately it was Bush who paid for it.” Whilst Schwarzenbach’s Grand Hotel Dolder in Zurich wins plaudits galore. an investment in Mayfair’s Café Grand Prix was less successful. It is, however, for philanthropy and discretion that Schwarzenbach and his wife, a former Miss Australia, are known best.
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.
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.
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 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
The sale of the £20 million Bletchingdon Park, Oxfordshire
Bletchingdon Park House in Oxfordshire is one of those classic Palladian villas that would make the perfect setting for a period drama. Unlike vast Jacobean mansions like Highclere Castle, better known as Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey, however, Bletchingdon is of a far more manageable size.
This Grade II* listed Georgian house, built for Lord Valentina in 1782, may be some 24,600 square foot in size, but it has a layout that makes it both practical for living and suitable for entertaining on a grand scale. The accommodation, which has been renovated by the renowned building company Symm, includes 9 bedrooms and suites, well-proportioned formal reception rooms and a garden floor with further reception rooms, a billiards room and a fitness room with spa.
Whilst the original stable block has been sold off and converted to residential accommodation, Bletchingdon Park includes 2 staff flats, a 2-bedroomed lodge cottage and a further 3-bedroomed cottage. With parkland and grounds extending to 127 acres, maintaining Bletchingdon’s plot is large, but easily maintained.
In the 20th century Bletchingdon was owned by Lord Astor and then Lord Rotherwick. The current owner, Dr Michael Peagram, purchased the estate in 1993. Peagram made his fortune in the chemicals industry after having led a management buyout of Huddersfield based Holliday Chemicals Holdings (HCH) in 1987. He revitalised the business, expanded into new markets and floated the company in 1993. The business was ultimately sold to Yule Catto for £225 million in 1997 and in 2001 Peagram sold another company for a reported £44 million.
At this point, this scientist turned tycoon moved to Monaco and saved himself, according to a 2009 Daily Mail article by Piers Morgan, some £13 million in capital gains tax. A wise businessman and a supporter of David Cameron, Peagram’s modus operandi is:
“Winning with honour and playing by the rules… And not cheating.”
In an interview with Monaco’s NeXt Generation Entrepreneur Forum, he states that he “did lots of work” to achieve his success but admits to “being a romantic at heart.” He has used much of his fortune to fund the philanthropic activities of Outward Bound Monaco with Prince Andrew, The Duke of York and Albert II, Prince of Moanco.
Peagram placed Bletchingdon Park on the market in May 2012 at a price of £20 million. Of why it hasn’t sold, one blogger commented that a footpath runs close to the house and that there is a lack of leisure facilities and outbuildings. Somehow neither seem insurmountable and whoever purchases this fine residence will be a very lucky man. If I were Dr Peagram, though, I’d keep it.
Bletchingdon Park, Bletchingdon, Kidlington, Oxfordshire, OX5 3DW is for sale through Knight Frank. For further details contact Damian Gray on +44 (0) 20 7629 8171 and to download a brochure go to: http://search.knightfrank.com/cho090098
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.
This billionaire businessman started out in medicine but soon moved into commerce realising that enterprise would better provide for his family. He was imprisoned on falsified charges of contract murder for 11 months in 1996. Subsequently cleared, Rybolovlev then went on to make his fortune in potassium and banking. This divorced father of two has used his fortune to fund the restoration of many of Russia’s churches and also bought Donald Trump’s former residence, The Masion de L’Amitie in Palm Beach, Florida, for $95 million in 2008. This risk taker also parted with another $88 million in December 2011 to purchase New York’s most expensive apartment for his 22-year old daughter. Rybololev’s passions are surfing and 19th and 20th century art.
The founder of the world’s first boutique hotel moved to London in 1962 with just £10 to her name. She’s acted with Anton Rodgers in Zodiac and was in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service but it as a designer of global repute that she is best known. Married to Sir Mark Weinberg, the founder of St. James’s Place Wealth Management, Hempel was born on a boat sailing from Papua New Guinea to New Zealand. This society figure’s first hotel, Blakes, created in 1978, is the favourite of personalities such as Sharon Stone and Seal and still sets the barometer for style today.
Started a property empire with a loan of £6,000 from their grandmother in 1995. Now said to be worth anything upto £13 billion, this pair are most famous for their One Hyde Park development next to The Mandarin Oriental. London based Nick is married to the Australian singer and former Neighbours actress Holly Valance whilst Monaco based Christian is married to a former “It-girl” named Emily Crompton. In one interview Nick was quoted as saying: “We’ve probably got about 10 cars”. With this much wealth, what’s a car between friends?