Driving with the Dragon
Toronto Star - August 15, 2008

Robert Herjavec has earned his money, and he loves to spend it on automotive fantasy

MARK RICHARDSON
Wheels Editor

Robert Herjavec looks almost apologetic, standing between his two Lamborghinis.

"It has a cup holder," he says about the red Gallardo convertible, "I've got to have my Tim Hortons on the way to work, so some days I won't take the orange one because there's no cup holder." Not that there's anything wrong with the more powerful, orange LP640 Murciélago convertible in his garage; it's just that even $600,000 cars have their limitations. And you don't drink coffee driving a Murciélago.

"This is like a go-kart, cornering, small, pretty tight," he says about the Gallardo, then turns to its big brother. "This is like a race car. This is just so blindingly fast, it's unbelievable."

Herjavec, however, has made hundreds of millions of dollars in the computer encryption business, so he has a far greater luxury of choice than most people. And he's not stuck with the Lambos, either. There's an Aston Martin Vanquish, which he's owned longest of all – nearly seven years now – and a Bentley Continental GTC when he feels like driving a heavier car.

And when his three children want to come along, there's the Rolls-Royce Phantom, bought second-hand with a killer sound system from rapper 50 Cent.

Robert Herjavec was recently interviewed for the Wheels section of the Toronto Star.

There's also a motorcycle, a BMW R1200 C, one of the bikes used for filming the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies. He bid for it at a charity auction, not expecting to actually buy it. His wife was not impressed and is pleased that his graduated motorcycle licence has long since expired. Now it helps prop up his kids' bicycles.

Herjavec loves his cars. He loves them so much that he doesn't drive them in the rain or the snow. For the grunt work, there's a Cadillac Escalade and a Mercedes-Benz S550 – his "everyday, winter beater driver car."

Those seven are the limit, because his Bridle Path mansion only has an eight-car garage. The pride of place in the garage, closest to the door that leads inside the house, goes to his wife's old X5. She doesn't care about cars. Her Bimmer has its wing mirror held together with duct tape. But she does care about having to park outside in the rain, so Herjavec is stuck with just seven cars for himself.

If he wants another, he either has to sell one ("I suppose it should be the Gallardo, but I really don't want to let it go,") or expand the garage. Walking around the 50,000 square foot mansion, one of the largest houses in the GTA, he eyes the tennis courts behind the garage with a hunter's squint. He's only played tennis three or four times, and imagine the possibility ....

We should all have such problems.

Herjavec is one of those fortunate people who has more money than he can spend, and who can indulge himself with pretty much whatever he chooses. Others can't criticize this because he made the money himself, fairly and squarely, and he proves his business acumen every week in the fall as one of the five "dragon" judges in the CBC show The Dragons' Den.

His parents did not have money, and he tells the story of how his mother, a Croatian immigrant with a poor command of English, once bought a vacuum cleaner from a smooth-talking door-to-door salesman. Or at least she thought she'd bought it, with a sizeable payment. It wasn't until 12-year-old Robert came home from school and read the contract that she realized the payment was part of a lease, to be just one of many.

He says he vowed then never to be taken advantage of again.

Herjavec put himself through the University of Toronto by waiting on tables, and he studied English literature and political science. After seeing an opportunity in IT ("at the start of the up-cycle"), he founded his own company and became successful enough to start buying interesting cars. The first exotic was an Acura NSX. Then a '96 Lamborghini Diablo roadster, and an '86 Ferrari Testarossa, which he loved. A modified Porsche 911 Turbo, in which he once was ticketed for 150 km/h over the limit, dragging away on the deserted road outside his Mississauga house early one Sunday morning. And a bunch of others.

He says he stopped driving fast on the street when he began campaigning a car in the Formula Ford series. "The first year, I raced against Jacques Villeneuve, which was really cool. And then you realize, I know nothing. I'm really not that good."

It was in 2000 that he made his first serious money, selling the company to AT&T for more than $100 million. "We were so naïve, my wife and I took this humungous cheque to the bank and tried to cash it," he recalls. He celebrated by buying the mansion and a Bentley Azure – "the first car I bought simply because I could, as opposed to wanting to drive it hard. But it just wasn't that much fun to drive."

Then he went to work as a vice-president with a California-based company, which was sold later for $225 million. He retired for three years but, not yet 40, skulked around the house and quickly grew bored. More cars came and went – "I used to have three times as many as I have now, but they didn't fit in the garage." That became the rule: no more than seven at any time.

Now, at 45 years old, he runs The Herjavec Group from an office at One Yonge St., 17 stories above the Toronto Star and with a better view of the lake. He's known in the building as "the rich guy upstairs with all the cars," and the security staff enjoy keeping a special watch on whatever vehicle he's driven in that day.

"I like to drive – I love the experience," he says as we squish down into the leather seats of the LP640 for a cruise around the neighbourhood. "My business is technology, in which every generation is better than before, and it's the same thing with cars. They just keep getting better."

We pull out of the gates, where we pause for a delivery van that's driving past. The young guys in the van do a double take at the bright orange wedge and the passenger reaches for his cellphone camera. Herjavec grins at them; I think we're about to be car-jacked and wish for a hardtop. The young guys grin back and give us space and the Lambo slides out with a subdued, guttural roar.

"I used to worry about having the cars and be very conscious of the money I spent on them, when I sold the first business," he explains as we accelerate through the Bridle Path. "But then I said, `you know, I earned the money and I don't care. It's not like my dad gave me the money.' I don't feel conscious about that now, but I do worry that people will see them as really frivolous."

He stamps on the pedal of the LP640 and it launches forward like the space shuttle. All the neighbours, behind their high hedges and thick gates, know that Herjavec is out there.

"We have speed bumps in the area and I'm really torn about it," he says. "When I'm driving, I think they're absolutely useless. When others are driving, I think we should have more of them."

He pauses at a bump and presses a button. The Lambo raises itself a few centimetres, quickly, to increase its road clearance. Herjavec is nodding toward a palace across the street and telling me about the neighbours.

"He spent five years building this house, spent $28 million. It's solid marble – it's unbelievable," he says.

"It has a real underground garage, but the problem is that it's got a really steep slope down into it and it's constantly freezing. If the heating stuff breaks, you can't go down it."

The rich have different problems from the rest of us.

We drive back to his house and I roll out gracelessly from beneath the Lambo's low-slung scissor doors. "I used to be very self-conscious about that," says Herjavec, "but then I realized that nobody's really looking at me. They're looking at the car."

He's come a long way, but there's a small part of him that has happy memories of the way things used to be, before the really big money. And the garage reflects it, too. It's large but not fancy. Wooden shelves line the walls. Sports stuff is stacked in one corner, alongside the kids' bicycles. There's even a teenager's Ferrari Testarossa poster pinned on the wall.

"The first car I had was a turbo Trans-Am. You know, the Burt Reynolds black with a screaming eagle chicken thing on the hood. And I've got to tell you, there's a part of me that wants to go back and get that car. It was really cool."

There are other cars to get first, though. Herjavec has the convertible Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe on order and expects to take delivery in the spring.

He's also put a deposit on a Mercedes Ocean Drive, the concept convertible based on the S600 that was seen at the 2007 Detroit auto show. He has his eye on the Mercedes SLR, and is trying to persuade his wife to trade up to a Porsche Cayenne.

But this will mean selling some of his current cars. Or the tennis courts. The decision will probably be one of his simpler choices.

As stated before, the rich have different problems from the rest of us.

Season Three of The Dragons' Den starts Monday, Sept. 29 on CBC at 8 p.m.