Dream machines: Sharing supercars did not have a happy ending.
COURTESY OF TIM SOMMERS
The first part of this tale is best told in the context of a sandpit. Remember the days of the old school yard? One kid, let’s call him Tim, has an idea to pool all the children’s Matchbox cars into one big “club”. He tells everyone how good it will be, and another boy, Nathan, joins him, adding his cars and his pocket money to the pot. They set the rules: For a fee of $5, children can buy in and get the use of any car they want for a certain number of days per school year.
Then the wheels come off. The boys squabble then go straight to the principal to dob on each other.
Fast-forward about 25 years and the Cat Stevens’ schoolyard song remains the same for the two boys: First “we used to laugh a lot”. Then there were tears. English entrepreneur Tim Sommers and self-made Aussie mining billionaire Nathan Tinkler went on this journey when they joined forces to create the Supercar Club by living out the above scenario on a seriously alpha-male scale. The sandpit scene may be fabricated but the adult re-enactment is not. Sharing toys, it seems, never gets easier.
Instead of Matchbox cars, there were drop-dead dream machines, including Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and Ferraris worth up to $750,000. The annual fees ranged up to $50,000 and, at its peak, its 300?members included Jennifer Hawkins, media mogul Ryan Stokes, ex-AFL footballer Jason Akermanis and trumpeter James Morrison.
In August 2009 the club collapsed amid bitter in-fighting and Sommers was sacked as CEO; multimillion-dollar lawsuits followed soon afterwards. Tinkler wanted $2.2 million from Sommers, who he claimed had run off with money, cars and motorbikes. Sommers counter-sued for $600,000, claiming Tinkler paid only $1.4 million of a promised $2?million?investment.
In the place of a cranky school principal dealing with two finger-pointing boys was an equally unimpressed judge, Justice White, who, in mid-2011, told Tinkler off for not showing up in court and for failing to provide evidence to back up some of his claims. Tinkler’s claim was successful but, of the $2 million Tinkler sought from Sommers, Justice White awarded him the sum total of $10. Ten. Dollars. – in damages. He was initially awarded more but the sum awarded to Sommers in his counter-claim was offset against Tinkler’s damages award, reducing it to $10.
Despite commentators in Australia calling it a “stalemate”, Sommers considers the day a great success.
“Nathan was trying to get over $2 million off me and he was awarded 10 bucks!” Sommers says, talking on a mobile phone from his native England, where he has returned with his wife to “regroup”.
“Which part of that isn’t a win for me?”
But Sommers shouldn’t gloat. He may have attended, but he received nothing and was deemed by his honour to be “not reliable” as a witness. The part that “wasn’t a win” for him was the fact that his claim for $600,000 netted him doughnuts.
And last year, in a truly bizarre twist to the tale, Sommers decided to release a book called Big Boys Fall Out Over Their Toys, which he says has two goals: “To showcase the cars; and to be a public, six-page statement from me, which had been hidden from the press.”
Well, the pictures sure are pretty but unfortunately Tinkler’s lawyers immediately put a gag order on Sommers, effectively pulling all the teeth out of the tiger that was intended to bite the billionaire back. Practically none of Sommers’ original diatribe has survived.
Which raises the question, did Sommers ever really expect the book would work? “Probably not!” he says, laughing. “It wasn’t really for the masses. It was for the 10,000-odd people, including the members and the suppliers, who know the situation.
“Listen, I’m very angry,” he says. “My entire life and soul was in the business. I traded with all my assets exposed. I traded with personal guarantees.”
The fallout from the club’s collapse for members is hard to determine. While The Telegraph estimates “70 to 80 super-rich members” have been left out of pocket, Sommers reports that “about 95 per cent” of feedback has been positive. Sommers lists “Aker” (Jason Akermanis) as one of his satisfied customers: “Jason emailed me the day I left saying how much he enjoyed what I’d founded.”
Aker not only denies this, he claims to have “never even met” Sommers. He goes as far as checking his ‘Sent Items’ for said email while on the phone to The Weekly Review. “Nothing! Closest I’ve got here is Tim Hayden!”
As for Sommers’ future in the sandpit, there’s one thing for sure; he’s tossing in his toys and going home. Despite owning “more than 30” luxury vehicles in his life, he now drives a Toyota Tundra (similar to a Hilux) and the plan is to abandon billionaires and Bugattis for a “move into e-commerce” in Australia and New Zealand.
“I tell you what I won’t be doing and that’s opening a Supercar Club,” he says grimly. “I honestly have been totally and utterly cured of $400,000-dollar Ferraris, Porsches and Aston Martins.”