Novelist switches to Porche theme in rewrite of Noir-ish novel

[malibucarart]

PORSCHE HUNTERS
A Historian reveals his plan to tie into the Porsche marque in a bid to capture Hollywood's attention..


Those who've been following my non-fiction work (at least two picture books on 356's) might not know that, among my 18 automotive non-fiction books (all sadly out of print now...) was an action-thriller titled Ferrari Hunters.
The plotline: start-up automaker develops technologically advanced prototype, bad guy carjacks it right off the test track and the hero, a detective whose side gig is barn finding collector cars, is retained to get it back, no holds barred.
I published the book myself well over a decade ago, but never achieved mass distribution. I have a single copy in hand.
Flash forward. It's now more than a decade later. The car world has changed. When I first started the original book the idea a start-up automaker coud challenge the BigThree was dubious but now we have Tesla, Rivian, Lucid and many other start-ups.

THE BARN FINDER'S BRAND
But now, looking back at the choice of Ferrari as the brand the hero searches out, I see that as increasingly problematic because, back when I was a barn finder in the '80s, I could still find a bargain-priced 250 or 330 with a blown engine or somesuch, cheap. My technique was to run a picture of a tatty one in Auto Trader's "Wanted" section with the words "as is" emphasized.


I barn found other brands too-- Rolls Royce, Bizzarrini, Iso Grifo. But nowadays there ain't no cheapo V12 Ferraris and if the film rights were bought, no producer is going to want to set his flick in the '80s just because that's the last time bargains in old Ferraris were still to be found. In every street scene for instance, if you insisted on setting it in that time period, you couldn't have any cars newer than 40 years old...not to mention clothes, incidental background music, store signs, yadda-yadda. setting in present day costs less.
Solution? Switch marques. And the title, to Porsche Hunters. Porsches are much more numerous than V12 Ferraris --and you can buy a custom (called "outlaws") and bring them back to stock where, in the Ferrari world, Ferraris are rarely devalued by customizing.

The hero of the book is the kind of hero I like to see on screen--your prototype ex-military ex-detective with a somewhat checkered career, so casual in appearance he's sometimes mistaken for a beach bum.
The hero's background is not my own experience, though I was a weapons specialist, but no combat. Police work? Nada ...When it comes to barn finding though, some of the cars I bought for $30,000 back then are worth well past ten times that today.
To start on this new quest, I went through the one hundred paintings I did in my other role as fine artist and selected a few Porsche portraits as backgrounds for announcement posters for the book's re-imaging as a Porsche book. I don't picture the hero (though as a movie poster I would) but instead a Porsche and a lurking villain.
Of the three in this group shot, only one is the type the hero would consider the buy of lifetime. I ran across the roadster at Laguna Seca and I think I doubted it was a '52 but later on, when the owner died and the car was sold it turned out to be a one time factory racer originally raced as a coupe. At LeMans no less. Easily a million dollar car today.
The Porsche world is exciting. Just as in the Ferrari world, there are Holy Grails still to be found--James Dean's Spyder, various factory one-offs etc. In real life I barn found only one--a Convertible D, which I didn't realize was that rare until long after I sold it.

You'll likely see me at car events, handing out Porsche Hunters-themed posters to those with production company or literary agency connections.
Am I optimistic? You bet. Since writing the original, streaming TV has become THE trend and , watching several series myself, I can see it eats up material voraciously.

I haven't made a reservation yet, but am looking forward to booking a second celebratory lunch at Paradise Cove in Malibu, the same restaurant where I celebrated my first book rights option sale. (Alas the producers never bought the book itself, only an option to buy the book but, hey, that paid a year's rent)
Hey, welcome to Hollywood.
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THE AUTHOR Wallace Wyss can be reached at malibucarart@gmail.com

Caption: I chose three of my Porsche paintings for the book rights poster.

The mock-up cover. Should have a villain with a gun for that film noir feel...

The Ferrari themed original book