PORSCHE JOINS THE ELECTRIC CAR CLUB
BRIGHT SPARK: Porsche Cars Canada president-ceo Marc Ouayoun sped from Toronto recently to unveil the automaker’s all electric Taycan model. Although base-priced at $173,900, most should sell in the mid-$200,000s. With “four figures worth” of Taycans on order, Ouayoun said it and the soon electrifying Macan will contribute to half of all Porsches being battery-powered by 2025. Given the current naming policy, native Parisian Ouayoun might be pleased with a Cancan model. Then again, a Tincan could succeed Porsche’s budget-priced and long unlamented 914 (really a Volkswagen).
FLAT OUT: Ouayon also broke ground for a 70,000-sq.-ft. Porsche dealership the Openroad and Dilawri groups will operate at Richmond Auto Mall. Respecting the “Race Sunday, sell Monday” maxim, Openroad chief Christian Chia has long competed in Porsche GT3 Cup events. A recent Singapore outing had him crash in one race and finish mid-pack in another that “my brother Francis won, but I don’t want to talk about that.”
CAVE DWELLERS: As for saving gasoline, how about a 1975 Cadillac Eldorado convertible still on its second tankful? With a mere 236 miles (380 km) on its odometer, it occupies False Creek Automotive principal Vern Bethel’s underground compound beside a 1976 model with a still paltry 25,000 miles (40,234 km) recorded. Classic-car minder Bethel said the late owner ordered an enormous Caddy ragtop because of its announced discontinuance. When the dealer delayed delivery, be bought another in the U.S. and drove it home. Learning that his Canadian order was now ready, he parked the import that, with its near identical neighbour, still looks showroom fresh today.
TAKE YOUR SEATS: Sam Sullivan is completing a video history of transit in Vancouver, where he was the 2005-08 mayor. His theme is the streetcar and interurban network that lasted until 1958. Sullivan, who’ll be 60 on Nov. 13, has ridden electrified wheelchairs since a skiing accident disabled him at age 19. His current project is as chocka-block with informative data as streetcars were with riders on reaching what is now MLA Sullivan’s Vancouver-false Creek constituency in 1891.
TEN YEARS AGO: MS Teal hoisted the B.c.-built Pacificat Discovery aboard and set sail for Abu Dhabi, leaving no visible reminder of the previous NDP government’s half-billion-dollar fast-ferry fiasco.
FLY & DINE: Winemaker Anthony Von Mandl has served many dinners at his Mission Hill Family Estate Winery’s Terrace Restaurant overlooking Okanagan Lake. But not hitherto at ones in St. John’s, N.L., Saint John, N.B. and Saskatoon, Sask. That will change when a competition he’s launched will fly winners to dine sequentially at restaurants staffed by Top Chef Canada TV show finalists. They’ll guzzle Mission Hill vintages at each stop, including a finale at the Westbank winery.
NICE TRY: As Hong Kong’s summer of discontent generated global attention, property development and investment biggie John d’eathe released a self-penned book about 1960’70s sporting doings with other international implications. His Creating the Hong Kong Sevens — Tokkie Smith and The Colour of Rugby tracks the rise and downfall of a South African-born businessman-player who promulgated international seven-a-side tournaments in the then-crown colony. Smith also strove but failed to integrate a sport still played by U.k.-ruled amateur “gentlemen.” Esoteric? Yes. Pertinent to a now-professional sport that has shucked off such trappings? Hardly. But d’eathe’s book about old-boy-era rugby’s privilege, contention and booziness is as entertaining as any he might have written concerning high-level business.
BEST BETS: Peter Wall is another development-biz luminary with a sport-related book in him. The so-called sport of kings, in fact, as Wall would discourse on owning and betting on endless racehorses. Those activities eventually entailed a possible nine-figure cash flow with Wall ending a few per cent up or down — he neither knows nor cares. His stable spendings and betting methodology might interest Sauder School of Business students at University of B.C. where the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies is located. More engagingly, his memories of racetrack characters evoke famed turf scribe Damon Runyon. Wall recently recalled being passenger to a top-drawer trainer whose erratic car-driving and combative late-night conduct resulted in police officers jailing him. Undeterred, he phoned the local judge, confided the names of three winners at the following day’s races, and was provisionally released. The first two nags won, but the third’s now-apparent unlikelihood would have put the trainer back in the slammer. To avoid that, Wall urged the rider of a post-parade lead pony to discreetly relax control while accompanying the horse in question. The skittish thoroughbred’s resultant unruly behaviour disqualified it, thus setting the trainer scot-free.
SCREEN CREDITS: The 38th-annual Vancouver International Film Festival has ended. But respect and thanks continue for 26-year former director Alan Franey and 20-year chair (later chair emeritus) Michael Francis, who made the Seymour-off-davie Vancouver International Film Centre and its 175-seat Vancity Theatre a reality in 2005.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Firefighters will breathe easier Tuesday with the sudden cooling of electioneering senior politicians’ incandescent pants.