His success in the automotive business has made him wealthy. The 2011 National Business Review Rich List valued him at $165 million.
He grew up in various parts of New Zealand and attended Rotorua Boys' High School, which he left at the age of 14. "I wasn't very good at school, and there was someone better than me that needed the chair," Crichton said in a 2010 interview.
He began yachting in his youth and qualified to represent the Bay of Islands in P-class racing.
After leaving school he entered the automotive industry and in 1972 opened a used car dealership with Kiwi motoring baron Colin Giltrap.
In 1978, aged 29, he was diagnosed with throat cancer while living in Hawaii. Crichton endured 30 operations and eventually had his voice-box and oesophagus removed.
Doctors told him it was unlikely he would ever speak again, but experimental surgery in Indianapolis saw him become one of the first people in the world to receive an artificial voice box. About two weeks after the operation he began speaking again.
After the cancer, Crichton got back into yachting. He skippered the 30m superyacht, Alfa Romeo, to victory in the 2010 Sydney to Hobart race and has a long list of other wins to his name.
Yachting can be a dangerous sport but it's particularly treacherous for Crichton. If he fell overboard he would die, as water would pour in through the machine in his throat.
Despite spending much of his life outside New Zealand, Crichton said he was a "Kiwi through and through". But he said he no longer owned any property in this country.
