League of besties

IF you haven't yet hit the top of a global business then it's time to chum up with some of the billionaires at Monterey Car Week.

Peter Briggs

AFTER luck, the most important ingredient in getting to the top in business, politics or public service is networking.

Being a big fish in a small pond won't get you very far. Being a medium-sized fish in a lot of ponds of all sizes is as close to a guarantee of success as you can get outside of having very rich parents or marrying into the royal family of a reasonable country where the peasants aren't about to revolt.

Australia has some networkers who could make the national team without marrying out or up - players such as Melbourne's Ron Walker, Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, UBS boss Matthew Grounds, company director Belinda Hutchinson and former Liberal minister turned chairman Warwick Smith. However, the only sure path to making friends who matter Down Under is becoming a state or federal Liberal or National Party treasurer. But in the bigger international game it takes more than a box at the MCG or a political fundraiser to make it. If you haven't hit the top of a global business then you need something else. You need to buy a ticket to play and one of the best places to play is Monterey.

California's Monterey Peninsula is like an industrial-strength Byron Bay. If Monterey were a Cold Power packet it would say "Byron - now with added celebrities, writers and billionaires".

Byron Bay has political commendator Mungo McCallum, surfboard pioneer Bob McTavish and sword swallower Chayne Hultgren. Monterey has John Steinbeck and Clint Eastwood; James Dean was killed driving there. Byron Bay has Bluesfest, Writers Fest and Spirit Fest. Monterey has Jazz Fest, Reggaefest, Sea Otter Fest and Automobilia Orgy Fest. Actually, it's called Monterey Car Week. But that's like calling the Olympic Games an athletics carnival. You don't come to Monterey Car Week just to drink buckets of champagne, see rallies, classic motor racing, private jets and multi-million-dollar auctions. No, you come here to rub shoulders with helpful people with money. Lots of money.

Soon to be besties such as shipping tycoon Peter Livanos, the electric man of Hong Kong Michael Kadoorie, former house builder and one of the seven richest people in Harrogate Terry Bramall, Asian schmutter sourcer Chip O'Connor, Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, the Bronx boy who got Yanks to dress British, Ralph Lauren and acres of wealthy US tech, oil, and media magnates, turn up year after year. They are all billionaires and they all have extravagantly expensive classic car collections.

Perth mining entrepreneur Peter Briggs has been a regular at Monterey for a long time. The events he chooses to enter are the most exclusive of all. They are centred on Pebble Beach Golf Course, a course anyone can play on. Anyone who can pay $520 a round, that is. In early August Pebble Beach goes from famous golf course to a parking lot for 200 of the world's most beautifully restored cars, a thousand of the world's most expensively restored people and the kind of pomp that Americans think is English.

Briggs used to have 150 cars in his collection. He's pared it down to 70 recently. But the car that gets him invited (you don't apply) to Pebble Beach and similar billionaire bashes around the world is his Bentley, the first to enter Le Mans in 1923.

Naturally persons aspiring to enter the big league of besties have cottoned on to the connection between classic cars and entrance to the world's most exclusive club. Perhaps that is why this year's Monterey auctions saw old cars bring $320 million, a 20 per cent lift on last year. A Canadian paid the highest membership fee of the season, $30m for a 1967 Ferrari. It's unlikely your lovingly restored Citroen will ever get you a place at Pebble Beach. So there's always the royal family route.

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