The Stronachs are coming

As the future of 5,000 workers at Vauxhall in Britain and another 25,000 at Opel in Germany hangs in the balance, the news that the Canadian car parts giant Magna International is one of two remaining bidders for GM Europe (the other is Fiat) sets the spotlight on Canada's most famous father and daughter combo - the rags-to-riches tycoon Frank Stronach and the blonde bombshell, home-wrecker and heiress with the mostest, Belinda Stronach.

Belinda - just the first name will do in her homeland - is an old friend of readers of The First Post, not least because of her once close friendship with Bill Clinton. An affair was never proved, but in 2006 it looked for a while as though "Bubba's blonde", as the tabloids called her, might be the most likely "other woman" in a Bill and Hillary divorce case.

At the time of her friendship with Clinton, Belinda was having a brief fling with politics, having given up her job as CEO of Magna - and walked out on her second husband, the Norwegian speed skating champion Johann Koss - to become a Conservative MP.

The fling came to a grisly end - and earned her the nickname 'Sellout Barbie' - when she decided to cross the floor from the Conservatives to the ruling Liberals, only to see her new friends lose power.

Belinda was last in the headlines because of an affair with the Maple Leafs ice hockey player, Tie Domi. In September 2006, she was cited in divorce papers filed by Domi's wife, Leanne. Amid the ensuing hoo-ha, the Toronto journalist Lynn Crosbie wrote for The First Post: "Not since the days of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's wayward wife Margaret has Canada enjoyed the performance of a true libertine, a girl who lives big and in the moment."

In 2007 Belinda returned to Magna as executive vice-chairman, working once again with easily the most interesting man in her life, her father Frank.

Stronach, now 76, arrived in Montreal from the Austrian Alps, aged 21. With $200 in cash and suitcase of clothes, he began his Canadian adventure peeling potatoes in a hospital kitchen.

He then bought a single lathe, installed it in a Toronto garage and built the business over half a century into one of the world's biggest car parts companies. Today his fortune is estimated at more than $1 billion and he's able to indulge his love of racing. His horses have won both the Belmont Stakes and the Preakness Stakes, while a sister company to Magna owns racetracks across the States.

If Frank's audacious plan to rescue GM in partnership with the Russian lender Sberbank comes off, Belinda's inheritance stands to be even greater.