Car sales tycoon with £500m fortune WINS battle to build garage for 20 motors worth £3m – with lift and games room
A CAR sales tycoon worth half a billion pounds has won a battle to build an extension for his 20 motors.
Peter Waddell was given the green light to build the showroom at his £20million mansion for his fleet of swanky cars.
Deep-pocketed Waddell, 58, resides at the eye-catching Holwood house in south-east London.
The pad comes coomplete with a swimming pool complex, two gyms, a cinema, music room and tennis court, all set in 50 acres of parkland.
And the tycoon will have some extra space to accomodate his 20 supercars worth well over £3million.
The multi-millionaire has lodged a string of planning applications since 2015.
Officials at the local council initially refused to grant permission to the homeowner, labelling it an “inappropriate” development on green belt land and a “disproportionate” addition to the property.
But following an appeal to a government planning inspector, the plans have finally been approved.
Peter, who is deaf and dyslexic, left council care at 16 and after a year of living rough on the streets of Glasgow, moved to London aged 17.
After starting his working life as a taxi driver, he went on to build Big Motoring World, Britain’s biggest second-hand car empire, selling 60,000 motors a year.
Today he is worth more than £500million after branching out into property and haulage.
However, it hasn’t always been glitz and glamour for Peter.
“I haven’t spoken to my mother in probably 50 years.” Peter previously told The Sun.
“I think my mother had a nervous breakdown.
“She scarred my whole body, attempted to cut my hands off and smashed my head.
But the tycoon has turned his life around.
His business, which specialised in high-mileage BMWs, expanded until it was selling 5,000 second-hand vehicles a month from sale rooms all over the south of England.
All the cars, bought from auctions, were checked and prepped for sale at a £10million former diesel engine factory in Peterborough, Cambs.
The company employed 1,400 workers, most of whom Peter knew by name, and he says: “I worked from four in the morning until midnight, seven days a week./qu
“My life is not all about being a CEO sitting on a chair in an office.
Who is Peter Waddell?
Motors tycoon Peter Waddell is the founder of the successful Big Motoring World brand.
He also owns 20 supercars worth well over £3million — with their prestige number plates worth another million.
And he recently paid £390,000 for a petrol-powered Rolls-Royce Wraith, forgetting he had also ordered a £500,000 electric Roller.
When not driving around in one of his supercars, he flies his own £4million Airbus EC130 helicopter with the call sign PJWW.
Peter has said his mother tried to kill him when he was just four.
He spent the remainder of his childhood in a Scottish children’s home.
“That wasn’t me. If a job needed doing, I’d do it. I even painted the gates at our prep centre.
“I used to land in my helicopter and I’d take all the staff up to give them an experience of their lives.
“We built our business on being a family.
“My life was about taking young people and giving them a chance to grow, because I never had that chance. I was totally dyslexic, couldn’t write, and suffered from disability.”