Caddy drives big deal

America's No 1 Cadillac dealer, golfing great Arnold Palmer, has brought back from a Japanese consortium the Pebble Beach company, which owns the Pebble Beach golf links course, two hotels and three other courses on the Monterey Peninsula. Palmer needed help to swing the deal, so he teed up the former commissioner of major league baseball, Peter Ueberroth, actor Clint Eastwood and the former chief executive of United Airlines, Richard Ferries.

The partners, a veritable who's who of sport, film and business, were reported to have paid more than $1.5 billion for the northern California jewel. A Japanese developer bought Pebble Beach in 1990 for about $1 billion. It dropped a bundle on the deal and sold the complex to another Japanese company, which managed golf courses in Japan, two years later for $600 million.


In the driver's seat


New Zealand 4WD, a magazine chock full of local and international off-road news, is going monthly. Auckland publisher Sam Parker and his editor Phil Hanson have been putting together six issues a year. Now they will do 11, skipping January when everyone is at the beach. Advertising demand has pushed up the size of the magazine from a regular 76 pages to 100. Readers must like it, too - audited circulation has jumped 28.6 per cent, from 4998 sales to 6428.


Ford, Holden scrap


Ford Australia is closing the sales gap on Holden, something it has been waiting a year to hear. Ford pinned its future on the AU Falcon but for a while things looked grim. Its styling was criticised as looking too much like the ill-fated Taurus, its different grilles were controversial, its launch coincided with the natural gas crisis in Melbourne, it ran into crash test difficulties, and it was recalled to fix a fault with the front suspension.

Despite the pitfalls it now trails the Commodore by a few hundred sales each month rather than a few thousand. Holden, meanwhile, expects to reverse the trend with the Series II VT Commodore, which went on sale across the Tasman this week and is expected in New Zealand soon.

Visually, the updated car is largely unchanged from the previous model. But Holden has included more standard equipment and tweaked the interior. The grille has been revised slightly and the window surrounds get chrome treatment. Side airbags will be optional. The Series II comes with the American-built 220kW Generation III 5.7-litre V8 as an option. The engine is more economical and produces 23 per cent more power and 11.5 per cent more torque than the Australian-built 5-litre V8 it replaces.


We are the world


* A German driver who grew tired of being tailgated to and from work fitted a James Bond-style device to his Opel Mantra which sprayed oil over the car behind. Ulf Schwarz, from Frankfurt, was caught after a victim wrote down his number plate.

* Roadside recovery teams in Britain are carrying lotions and potions along with tow ropes these days. Staff who man the emergency vehicles are being trained in massage to ease the roadside stress of stranded motorists.

* A new car radio in Britain records local traffic news even when the car is parked and turned off, replaying it to the driver when he starts the engine.

* A petrol station in Tortosa, Spain, did a roaring trade after the attendant fell asleep and left all the pumps on, allowing motorists to fill up for free.