JD Classics, what have they been up to?
Discussion
skwdenyer said:
stichill99 said:
This case reminds me of a businessman who had an abundance of money to spend who wanted to buy farmland. My friend was selling his upland stock farm. Land agent had this businessman who was desperate to buy into farmland. The agent sold the farm as a first class arable farm at what us locals considered to be an incredulous price even for an arable farm.
After his first harvest he realised that it was not what he had been led to believe.He tried taking the Land Agent to court but got nowhere. Now everybody in the area thought how can a man who has built up a successful company be so stupid and gullible!
This is what you might call the Eric Laithwaite effect.After his first harvest he realised that it was not what he had been led to believe.He tried taking the Land Agent to court but got nowhere. Now everybody in the area thought how can a man who has built up a successful company be so stupid and gullible!
After a long time building up a successful company, you will often to start to make the right decisions as if by instinct. In reality, your mind has built up such a store of data and experience that you are simply processing much faster. Which is good.
When you move into a new domain, you may not recognise this in yourself. Instead, you may deliver that your instincts are infallible, that they are better than others' and to be acted upon. Unfortunately, you may find that your "instincts" are nothing of the sort. You mind is still processing based upon its available data and experience - only you don't have any.
You trust your hunch, your hunch is founded in nothing, you lose everything you've worked for. Many people who are already successful don't fully understand that they need to go right back to first principles in a new domain.
It happens a great deal. It is easy to spot. It is hard to realise about oneself. And it is frequently exploited by those who are looking to make money - flatter the idea that the "mark's" instincts are as good as s/he thinks they are.
Doofus said:
TBF, if I had £60m in the bank, I wouldn't 'invest' in anything. Why would I need to make more money? I'd already have more than I'd ever need, and investing in stuff just means you spend a proportion of your time worrying about money. Under the circumstances, that would seem like a huge waste of time and effort.
Spot on!tight fart said:
roygarth said:
Spot on!
I so nearly quoted that as well. If you are the man and the mindset of someone who has developed an idea into a company of the value he did those guys never stop looking for the next deal or the next opportunity
That's why he is the person he is ...(and the vast majority of us are not)
Willhire89 said:
......and yet so wrong in the context of Tuke
If you are the man and the mindset of someone who has developed an idea into a company of the value he did those guys never stop looking for the next deal or the next opportunity
That's why he is the person he is ...(and the vast majority of us are not)
You don't know that. He sold his long-established business for £60m, but in essence, that business did at the end the same thing it was doing at the beginning. He had a successful company, but that doesn't make him a serial entrepreneur.If you are the man and the mindset of someone who has developed an idea into a company of the value he did those guys never stop looking for the next deal or the next opportunity
That's why he is the person he is ...(and the vast majority of us are not)
Dr Jekyll said:
aeropilot said:
iSore said:
I wonder what Spitfire running costs are? Insurance, fuel, storage (Duxford?), maintenance. Horrendous I should think.
Around £3000 per flying hour I think is the oft quoted sum.Couple of hundred k for a Merlin overhaul.
So you could probably still manage £3000 an hour if you can fly it a lot.
But by that point in time he likely had accumulated some money. Whatever he turned his hand at, he came out tops. The man was literally a genius who stood on this earth for too little time, tragically killed in a road accident in 1988.
Always wondered what he must have paid for his crates of Spitfire parts he purchased/won at an auction then had delivered on a lorry to his home, and which he completely rebuilt and flew? And did the same with a ME109.
Now, of course, that particular Spit is famed the world over in his wife Carolyn's hands and Nick's son, Richard.
As for JD Classics, couldn't care less. Crooks have always been out there, always will be. Should be more column inches on deserving people like Nick Grace, and far fewer on the likes of Hood etc.
Livia1 said:
I'm told by someone who should know that a Pretrial
Hearing plus various applications will be heard in October and a full trial after that probably next year. Slow but when it arrives I gather it's going to be VERY big........
Let's see if we can book into the public gallery!!!Hearing plus various applications will be heard in October and a full trial after that probably next year. Slow but when it arrives I gather it's going to be VERY big........
V8 FOU said:
Let's see if we can book into the public gallery!!!
Excellent idea, with cheese and pickle sarnies, Thermos Flasks of Rosie Lea and ones preferred dunking biscuits. A gathering of PH'ers in Court with packed lunches should liven up the proceedings 
munch, munch, munch, munch...roygarth said:
Doofus said:
TBF, if I had £60m in the bank, I wouldn't 'invest' in anything. Why would I need to make more money? I'd already have more than I'd ever need, and investing in stuff just means you spend a proportion of your time worrying about money. Under the circumstances, that would seem like a huge waste of time and effort.
Spot on!One only has to take a look at John Duffield. A toad of a man, a miserable miser who treated his employees poorly, drove a Mondeo, had no hobbies and lived just for money. He's only worth £330 million it seems but I bet that, even in his mid-seventies, he is scheming to make more. One only has to look at the independent article on his court case brought by a former employee to see what kind of man he was. For some people, the word enough does not exist.
v8250 said:
Excellent idea, with cheese and pickle sarnies, Thermos Flasks of Rosie Lea and ones preferred dunking biscuits. A gathering of PH'ers in Court with packed lunches should liven up the proceedings munch, munch, munch, munch...
Hopefully a large portion of schadenfreuded to be enjoyed by all!! munch, munch, munch, munch...GoodOlBoy said:
I think you're very far off the mark and need to read up on it. Derek Hood/JD Classics were the beneficiaries of the fraudulent practice, not Mr Tuke.
In just one example, on JD advice, Mr Tuke paid £245k for a car from a private seller, or so he thought. The seller turned out to be fictitious. JD had already bought the car from a specialist dealer for £84k. £161k into JD's account. Hardly an increase in profit for Mr Tuke.
Take that case as an example. JD promise Mr Tuke that the car will be a good investment. Surely this means nothing. Everyone who is selling you anything assures you that it is a great investment. 'Advertiser's puff' in legalese. In just one example, on JD advice, Mr Tuke paid £245k for a car from a private seller, or so he thought. The seller turned out to be fictitious. JD had already bought the car from a specialist dealer for £84k. £161k into JD's account. Hardly an increase in profit for Mr Tuke.
Then the fictional seller. Have you never been in a car showroom or antique shop where they say 'we are selling this on behalf of a customer/friend?' You are on your guard, or should be. It is done either because he does not want to give you any warranty that it is genuine, or so that you don't blame him for the exorbitant price being asked. Suppose he says, this fountain pen belonged to JFK, that is why I want £5000 for it. Or it was used to sign the Magna Carta. Unless it is down in writing it means nothing.
In the end, Tuke bought a car from JDC. Nothing more complex than that. Nobody forced him to do it. Unless he specified in writing, that it should be bought from X, as he might have specified that it had the original steering wheel or was a matching numbers car, it is not part of the contract, and it doesn't matter a damn. All of that other stuff, IMHO, is just the flannel you get from a salesman to build up the value of the item in your eyes, quite successfully in this case it appears. It should have no legal consequence whatsoever.
It seems to me that the courts are trying to impose the same consumer protection you would have if you bought an exploding TV from Curry's, to the classic car market, and it is just not applicable. They should have learned that from the Old Number One, and Stanley Mann cases.
If Tuke had an agency contract with JDC the terms of that contract should spell out, once more in writing exactly what JDC were going to do and charge, but I have seen no mention of that. If you are going to spend that amount of cash on a car you would surely spend another 1k or so on a detailed report from a known marque specialist, and not the dealer you are buying the car from. I see no evidence that he did that either.
Instead what he is doing is to pull all of the nonsense the dealer told him out in court and try to treat it item by item as warranted fact. That is just nonsense.
Tuke cannot be a fool, so I am forced to the conclusion that he is being disingenuous.
The Wilmot link above is useful, as includes a PDFs of the full judgement.
This makes interesting reading.
I remain of the view that if you deal in millions with a classic car dealer with no written agreement except a few meetings alleged statements and a number of emails flying around, you are dealing on your own judgement, and you deserve what you get.
What the judgement does is list the cars and the prices paid. It also makes it clear that Tuke, far from dabbling in classic cars, decided to sink his entire fortune into them, with a view to 'making a better return than he might get elsewhere'. Some of the cars chosen are odd, and most of the prices paid seem to me to be ridiculous. He got so far in that he had to borrow £8m from Close Brothers. During the period in which he was buying and selling, he must have been the mainstay of JD's business. He got to the point that he was desperate to sell cars just to stay solvent. It reminds me of a pools winner buying a football team.
I take back what I said before. I think that he must, to some extent, have been a fool. Who would have given a classic car dealer tens of millions of pounds to play with, with no written agreement, and without, it seems any clear idea what he wanted to buy or how much he wanted to pay. That is what he did, and I am still of the view that he only has himself to blame. Derek Hood did certainly say a lot of things in emails which were misleading, however there is nothing that I wouldn't have expected, and nothing which a sensible businessman investing for profit should not either have seen through or questioned in detail. At no stage as far as I can see was there any clear written agreement, and Tuke spent tens of millions.
This makes interesting reading.
I remain of the view that if you deal in millions with a classic car dealer with no written agreement except a few meetings alleged statements and a number of emails flying around, you are dealing on your own judgement, and you deserve what you get.
What the judgement does is list the cars and the prices paid. It also makes it clear that Tuke, far from dabbling in classic cars, decided to sink his entire fortune into them, with a view to 'making a better return than he might get elsewhere'. Some of the cars chosen are odd, and most of the prices paid seem to me to be ridiculous. He got so far in that he had to borrow £8m from Close Brothers. During the period in which he was buying and selling, he must have been the mainstay of JD's business. He got to the point that he was desperate to sell cars just to stay solvent. It reminds me of a pools winner buying a football team.
I take back what I said before. I think that he must, to some extent, have been a fool. Who would have given a classic car dealer tens of millions of pounds to play with, with no written agreement, and without, it seems any clear idea what he wanted to buy or how much he wanted to pay. That is what he did, and I am still of the view that he only has himself to blame. Derek Hood did certainly say a lot of things in emails which were misleading, however there is nothing that I wouldn't have expected, and nothing which a sensible businessman investing for profit should not either have seen through or questioned in detail. At no stage as far as I can see was there any clear written agreement, and Tuke spent tens of millions.
Edited by cardigankid on Sunday 20th May 12:51
Willhire89 said:
tight fart said:
roygarth said:
Spot on!
I so nearly quoted that as well. That's why he is the person he is ...(and the vast majority of us are not)
And isn’t Derek Hood a great name for a dodgy car dealer!? You couldn’t make it up.
Edited by roygarth on Sunday 20th May 16:17
Edited by roygarth on Sunday 20th May 16:19
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