Dragon's Den judge has a millionaire's taste

e went from rags to riches. A Croatian immigrant who came to Canada as a kid with nothing, he turned his fortunes around when he sold his online security software company to AT&T for a staggering $100-million in 2000. Nowadays, he's a TV celebrity: a judge on CBC's Dragons' Den , where budding entrepreneurs pitch their business ideas.

But Robert Herjavec doesn't just invest his hard-earned cash in budding entrepreneurs; he also spends it on exotic cars. His collection includes a 2009 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 roadster, a 2008 Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, an Aston Martin DB7 Vantage, and a Rolls-Royce Phantom, which once belonged to rap star 50 Cent.

“We came from this little village with dirt floors. We come to Canada and everything is over the top. We're here a few days and see a white Cadillac. I have no idea what it is and I brushed by it by mistake and my dad is like, ‘Don't touch that car Only rich people drive Cadillacs,'” says Herjavec who was 9 at the time.

So, when he made his millions he bought a Caddy for his dad. “My dad – the Lamborghinis, the Ferraris: who cares? It's Cadillac. We're driving and I said, ‘Can we go into a Cadillac dealership?' There's a beautiful white Cadillac and he goes, ‘It's beautiful.' I said, ‘Sit in it.' He said, ‘No, no.' My dad is a blue-collar, average guy. I talk him into sitting into it … I take out the keys and say, ‘This is for you.' And he starts crying, I'm crying, everybody in the dealership is crying.” he recounts the story, piercing blue eyes watering.

“I used to have a lot of cars because they look great in your garage. But as you get older I find it's really true – you really can only drive one at a time,” he says standing in front of his eight-car garage at his mansion in Toronto's exclusive Bridle Path neighbourhood.

“I love to drive. I love cars. I take out the Aston Martin and I'd be going around and some guy would pull up in a Ferrari and I'd go, ‘Oh I wish I had my Lamborghini,'” says Herjavec, who makes his American TV debut as a judge on the upcoming ABC reality show dubbed Shark Tank , which is similar to Dragons' Den .

His favourite of the bunch is the Murcielago. “It's just gorgeous. I think it's one of the most beautiful designs ever made. I love the lines and the purity of it. The whole car is so impractical. It's made to go fast and it doesn't care about anything else. It doesn't care about your comfort – there's no sightlines.”

“I bought this car through my ‘I have more money than brains' period where I bought everything I could for no other reason than I could.”

There's another drawback to the Murcielago – lack of space. “I was going to take the Lamborghini to the office, but I have my briefcase and I have to go to Tim Horton's on the way – no cup holder in that one.”

“I have a neighbour who thinks my cars are stupid and gas guzzlers and showy. He just doesn't get it. But I walk into his house and he has a $2-million painting on the wall. I look at that and go, ‘You know what, my kid could have done that'” says the 46-year-old married father of three.

While he flips cars constantly, there's one he won't sell – the Aston Martin. “I kept this one because they put my name on the car when I bought it,” he says, pointing to a tiny plaque on the driver's door sill with his name engraved on it. “I can't sell this one because they had it made for me. My wife is like ‘You know they didn't have it made for you. They went to Kinkos and had it made for $19.95' She doesn't get it,” he laughs.

The Rolls seems out of place – even though it did belong to 50 Cent. “Him and I are buddies. We hang. We go to clubs. You know we get the Cristal [champagne], whoa” he jests.

“All my friends think this is so not me. I can't believe you have a Rolls. It is just so old. I'm like, ‘I love it for what it is.' It's just so big. It's beautiful. I love the umbrella, the suicide doors, and the RR always stays up,” he says pointing to the emblem on the wheels.

His daily drivers include two Cadillac Escalades and a Mercedes-Benz S550. He also has a BMW R1200C bike, which doesn't work. He kept it because it was in the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies .

Herjavec's first car was a Nissan 300ZX. “I drove it all the way to Vancouver. All my stuff fit into it – everything I owned” Then came a long list of cars – too many to mention: a Trans-Am with “the big screaming chicken on the hood,” a Corvette, a Mazda RX7, an Acura NSX, a Ferrari Testarossa, a Porsche 911 Turbo, a Lamborghini Diablo roadster, a Bentley Azure, a Bentley Continental GTC – just to name a few.

Herjavec briefly raced cars professionally for Formula Ford – he gave it up after a bad crash and took up golf instead.

He still has a heavy foot at times. “I got a ticket once for going 150 kilometres over the speed limit 20 years ago. They actually charged me with dangerous driving, which could have been a criminal charge. But it was in a completely empty subdivision where they were building homes. There just happened to be a police officer having a coffee,” says Herjavec, who now runs the Herjavec Group, a network security firm in Toronto. He just signed a publishing deal with Harper Collins; his book hits stores next March.

Money is no object for Herjavec; he could buy any car in the world. But it's a used one he's looking for: a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. “My dad, in a moment of weakness, bought it used and could barely afford it. We could only keep it for a few weeks and then we had to give it back. So there are days when I say, ‘Wouldn't it be cool to have that?'”

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