The late Gary McVicar’s taste in cars came into the spotlight last year when his large collection of rare classic automobiles went under the hammer.
Twenty-nine cars that looked as if they rolled out of The Great Gatsby, were auctioned off.
They included an Auburn Speedster from the 1930s, a 1941 Cadillac V8 L41 Sedan previously owned by a royal family in India, a 1932 Stutz 8 Limousine, 1980 Ferrari 400i, 1947 Lincoln Continental V12 Club Coupe and a 1976 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow 2. Combined, they were worth millions.
The cars were part of the fruits of decades of family business that started out with his forebears operating sawmills on the West Coast.
The McVicars moved to Christchurch in the 1950s, re-establishing their timber business in the city where most of the family still lives.
Founded in 1949 by Neil McVicar, the group is now managed by his great grandson John and employs about 200 staff at two sawmilling sites in Christchurch and Quirindi in northern New South Wales.
When Gary McVicar took over in the 1970s, he established the first branded DIY retail chain in Canterbury and opened the market for treated pine exports to Australia.
However, the McVicar fortune has been derived primarily from forestry holdings, which are managed through the McVicar Timber Group.
Forest holdings grew from an initial 400ha block to 4000ha, making McVicar Group the largest privately held forestry and sawmilling business in New Zealand at the time.
Before he died, Gary branched out of forestry into tourism and property development, and initiated development of a mountain bike park with a chairlift that was subsequently built in McVicar's Cashmere Estate forest on the Port Hills above Christchurch.
2018: $80 million