Kirk Kerkorian is like that little kid fascinated with cars who never seemed to grow out of it. He tried to take over Chrysler in 95, ended up with a board seat, sued Daimler unsuccessfully for something akin to trying to force Chrysler shareholders into choking on those little plastic toys those Germans hide inside Kinder eggs, tried to take over GM and force it to merge with Nissan (at least he exited that one with a profit) and, most recently, bought up Ford (F) shares hand over fist for like four times what it is trading at now (immediately thereafter, Ford announced it was giving up on turning profitable in 2009, or, possibly, ever). Apparently he’s been forced to pony up a big chunk of his MGM Mirage stock as collateral for the credit line he used to buy the Ford shares, meaning he is using gambling to back up gambling. So he just dumped a big chunk of Ford at a loss and may be tossing all of it.

I wanted to put the logo for Tracinda, his investment firm, on a failboat. Does Tracinda even have a logo? All I find when I search for it is Tracinda’s Country Treasures, which, when you consider the whimsicalness of all this investing in American autos, is probably completely apropos: