The Entrepreneur from Central Casting

It seems that every reporter who interviews Frank Stronach has the same experience. At the start of his unauthorized biography of the Austrian immigrant who became a car parts billionaire, Wayne Lilley tells the story of his first meeting with Stronach.

Instead of an interview, it was a lecture, as Stronach explained his theory of Fair Enterprise, a kind of mixture of capitalism with happy workers. It was the philosophy that made him rich and kept his auto parts plants non-unionized. But it was Stronach’s giant ego that astonished the magazine writer Lilley.

“When he was finished, Stronach tore off the sheet, rolled it up, and advised that I should take it with me, suggesting that one day it would be valuable.”

Like Lilley, I interviewed Stronach for a magazine article—on Magna’s fleet of private aircraft—in the late 1980s. He gave me the same sermon and a doodle, in red felt pen. I remember his words: “Keep this. It will be worth something one...