By Brian J. O'Connor
Detroit News Finance Editor

Back in 1999, billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian told a newspaper reporter about growing up as the son of Armenian emigrants.

"Our first language, although we were born here, was Armenian," he said. "We didn't learn the English language until we hit the streets."

Evidently, he never learned the word for "quit."

Almost exactly 12 years ago, Kirk Kerkorian used the New York Auto Show to announce his intention to take over Chrysler. Since then, the maverick billionaire has remained a near-constant thorn in the auto industry's side, back now in his third attempt to buy or control a major automaker.

After his failed bid for Chrysler in 1995, he forced cash and concessions out of the company, launched a years-long suit over the merger of "equals" with Daimler-Benz, then made an abortive run at controlling General Motors Corp. last summer.

Along the way he's battled and sided with the same few auto executives -- often at the same time. His quest for cars would make him appear less like the heroic "Captain Kirk" nickname Wall Street gave him, and more like Captain Ahab.

Or maybe Captain Queeg.

Instead, he's a smart, patient businessman. Once he focuses on an industry or a company, he'll come back again and again, whenever he senses that the time -- and the money -- is right.

Taking another at-bat

Kerkorian's bid Thursday for Chrysler should come as no surprise.

Alex Yemenidjian, Kerkorian's point man during his first run at Chrysler, predicted as much when Kerkorian's $55-per-share bid was withdrawn in June 1995: "We're in it for the long haul," Yemenidjian told a reporter. "We're not going away, this is just the second inning of a nine-inning game."

The first time Kerkorian took a swing at Chrysler, his interest in an auto company came as a surprise, but it actually came just as naturally as everything else in his portfolio: a history of accidents leading to big bets that seem brash at best, foolhardy at worst. These deals also reflect Kerkorian's thirst to take big risks on even bigger deals.

According to a lengthy and rare 1999 interview that Kerkorian gave to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, he made his first money with airplanes, after a promising career as a welterweight boxer -- "Rifle Right Kerkorian" -- turned into a job installing furnaces in 1939. His boss, an amateur pilot, got the 22-year-old into a plane, and Kerkorian was hooked.

Kerkorian worked his way through a combination dairy farm/flight school, then ferried planes from Montreal to Scotland for the Royal Air Force during World War II.

The missions were near-suicide -- three of every four flights crashed, either in the snows of Iceland and Greenland or the icy waters of the North Atlantic. But they paid $1,000. Kerkorian made 33 of them, taking the route that was the most dangerous -- but the fastest.

He returned to L.A. after the war, started a flight school and charter company, where he started flying Angelenos to the emerging gambling mecca of Las Vegas. He bought a small charter line, grew the business and had an ironic first whiff of the car business when Studebaker Corp. purchased the airline in 1962.

Kerkorian bought the airline back, then took it public in 1965, eventually selling it for $85 million worth of TransAmerica stock in 1968.

Likewise, a small bit of land speculation led to his Vegas casino empire. And similarly, he wound up in and out of the business, taking his International Leisure company public, and building the world's biggest hotel -- twice.

His purchases of the MGM movie studio similarly launched a wave of purchases and attempted purchases of everything from United Artists to Disney. At last count, he's owned the MGM studio three times.

Along the way, he kept up his airline interest, first making a bid for defunct Pan American Airways, then launching the short-lived luxury airline MGM Airways in 1992.

Not going away anytime soon

It was in 1989 that Kerkorian's airline roots brought Chrysler to his attention, when he tried to convince then-Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca to sell the Gulfstream Aerospace division, maker of sleek corporate jets.

He didn't get the plane maker, but Kerkorian did invest $272 million in Chrysler stock. He upped that bid years later, after trying to keep his friend Iacocca from being ousted from the carmaker, then launched a bid with the same buddy to buy the company outright in 1995.

It didn't work, but it did set the wheels in motion for the now-failing merger with Daimler-Benz. It got Kerkorian hooked not only on the auto business but also with advisers such as Jerry York, the CFO of Chrysler during Kerkorian's first pass at the company.

York became Kerkorian's point man in his acquisition of 10 percent of GM stock, then in his efforts to hasten reforms at GM and engineer a merger with Nissan-Renault. When GM's board rejected the notion last year and Kerkorian dumped his GM stock, Detroit thought it had seen the last of the man often derided as a troublemaker and greenmailer.

"He's relentless," said Peter DeLorenzo, publisher of the popular automotive Web log Autoextremist.com. "I really believe it's all about the game to him. He has all the money anyone could ever want, but I just feel that he has to be part of the action."

Now Kerkorian's back to swing at Motown a third time, and the action-craving octogenarian looks to have a lot of innings left in him.

One thing's for sure: If he doesn't hit a homer this time around, he's sure to be back.

Kirk Kerkorian

Age: 89
Title: Owner of Beverly Hills, Calif.-based Tracinda Corp., which holds a majority stake in the casino and hotel operator MGM Mirage Inc. Tracinda was the largest shareholder in Chrysler Corp. when the automaker merged with Daimler-Benz AG in 1998.
Net worth: An estimated $15 billion. Forbes magazine ranked Kerkorian No. 31 on its billionaires list last month.
Education: Barnes Air Academy, commercial pilot's license
Career: Officer of MGM studios beginning in 1973; airline owner and operator, 1947-69; British Royal Air Force Transport Command, 1942-44

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