Ian

"Gibbs’ warm and easy relationship with Holyoake, who went on to become prime minister briefly in 1957 and again for more than a decade from 1960, boosted his boyhood confidence. Ian’s ambition and his success at Kinloch, meanwhile, provided Alan with a benchmark that in time he might measure himself against. His eldest brother also drove around in great sports cars. As a schoolboy, however, Alan could only daydream of future deeds and entrepreneurial schemes as he stomped the streets on his paper rounds or delivered parcels of groceries during holiday jobs at Hazelwoods. He took any opportunities that presented themselves to trade, however, such as with bubble gum at school or when mushrooms could be gathered on the hills and sold on the roadside."

"Not taking the hint, the Gibbs kept pushing. Ian explained he was going to the UK to visit the Reliant plant and they really needed their prototype to make progress. Marshall finally yielded at the end of November, allowing them to spend £750 on their prototype, but stressing that this munificence did not imply that approval had been given for the broader project.[11](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477268-974936905-11) Such was the extent of the state’s powers in New Zealand that the young entrepreneur had had to crawl on hand and knee to get this far."

"*Carters was run by a tough old sawmiller, Alwyn Carter, and his two sons. I remember going to their offices and persuading the old man to convert to the Chase Prime Rate, but the boys stepped in. They’d had a long-running fight with my brother Ian over pulp and paper equipment and were keen to take out their frustrations on me. I remember them laughing at me: ‘You’ve got your balls in a knot, Gibbsie, you’ll lose some money; what a joke, ha ha ha.’ ‘All right, you bastards,’ I thought. I went back and told my staff to look at the loan contract and if there is any infraction, the slightest irregularity, we’ll call in the loan. And sure enough, not long after they were one day late with an interest payment. I called in the loan. They went berserk. No one else would lend them money, since no one could make any profit lending money under the conditions Muldoon had created. The Carters got on to Chase Manhattan in the US: here they were with the top credit rating in New Zealand, and this little bugger in Auckland* *was calling in their loan! I got reverberations from Australia but nobody stopped me. It was one of those satisfying victories, going back to the Carter brothers and saying, ‘Tough titties, boys: pay up.’ And they did.*"

"Knowing that the car project would take months, possibly years, to come to fruition, Gibbs kept busy on other things to pay the bills. By the time Alan joined Anziel, Ian was employing six or seven people. Leaving the car project to one side, Alan’s job at Anziel was to look for a manufacturing business to buy, in order to grow the business. There was an expectation down the line that he would buy into this new business."