Cars and land keep Tony Denny on right road

Tony Denny says there are clear parallels between the two markets he loves: luxury cars and property .

Tony Denny was forced to close the popular Gosford Classic Car Museum after an ATO dispute could not be resolved.

Tony Denny says there are clear parallels between the two markets he loves: luxury or vintage car trading and the property sector.

Mr Denny is trying to make a success of both, having made his fortune by establishing and then expanding the AAA Autos car dealership network throughout eastern Europe and the mostly former communist states in the region.

Now residing on the NSW Central Coast, Mr Denny has started a successful luxury property development business, Central Real, which has built a string of upscale apartments in Gosford and surrounding areas.

But Mr Denny, an avid vintage car collector, is still dabbling in the luxury vehicle market as well.

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He has joined forces with Sydney financial services firm Magnolia Capital to fund specialist loans involving high-end luxury cars to buyers and sellers around Australia.

The joint venture is being launched with a $50m facility and will offer finance secured against luxury cars, an asset class Mr Denny and Magnolia chief executive Mitchell Atkins say has been overlooked by other financiers.

“We are uniquely placed to provide finance from $50,000 to $5m on high-value automotive assets which may include brands like Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, Rolls Royce and several classic cars,” says Atkins, who claims this type of financing does not exist in Australia at the moment.

Mr Denny told The Australian the financing would be available to buyers of the luxury cars, or those in the market to sell.

“We can offer them the funds upfront, for a fee, secured against the asset and when the car is sold they pay us back.”

Meanwhile, Mr Denny is working on selling his most luxurious property project yet, a mega penthouse in his Elysium development at Terrigal.

The penthouse comes with a six-car garage and its own lift, panoramic water views, five bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms and would complete the sales for a 64-apartment complex which set local records when it was first marketed off-the-plan in 2017.

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“We’ve saved the best for last,” Mr Denny told last weekend’s Mansion magazine. “It’s what you’d expect to see in a luxury penthouse at Bondi or the Northern Beaches, but for the fraction of the cost of what you’d pay in Sydney.” Mr Denny said his business had received 180 leads from potential buyers of the penthouse — “that is amazing” — and he is confident of there being good competition when it goes to auction on February 29 because of the strength of the prestige property market. “There’s two segments at the moment. The bottom end of our market, the sub-$800,000 part where there’s first-home buyers and owner-occupiers, that is pretty strong. The top end is really strong as well. But there is a dead zone in between. The classic car market is pretty similar. Towards the bottom is quite strong, towards the top is also quite strong. But it is pretty slow otherwise.”

The penthouse at Terrigal is being marketed through McGrath, an ASX-listed company in which Mr Denny emerged as a surprise major shareholder in March 2018.

Substantial shareholder notices lodged then showed Mr Denny buying about 7.2 million shares for just over $3m. At the time, he said he had made the purchase as “a passive long-term investment”.

He now owns 9.4 million shares, or about 5.65 per cent of McGrath stock, which are worth about $3m. McGrath shares have fallen about 6 per cent since the start of this year.

Mr Denny made his fortune in the tough world of used car sales in central Europe, building the AAA Autos dealership chain from its Prague headquarters before selling most of it to Polish private equity firm Abris Capital Partners in 2014. Mr Denny still owns a small shareholding in AAA, which has been put up for sale by Abris in a process he hopes will be finalised within about six months.

He had also opened a vintage car museum in Gosford with more than 300 cars worth at least $70m, but has closed it due to a dispute with the tax office, which objected to Mr Denny displaying vehicles in the museum and also operating a car sales business.