Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From MotorTrend to Masterpieces: The Remarkable Reinvention of Wallace Wyss

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From MotorTrend to Masterpieces: The Remarkable Reinvention of Wallace Wyss · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
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over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
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designers, and everything in between.
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Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder.
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How did they get that job or become that person?
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The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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For more than 40 years, Wallace Wyss has lived at the
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crossroads of automotive culture.
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First as a celebrated writer and journalist authoring 18 car books,
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including a bestseller, and later in life, becoming a fine artist whose exotic car
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paintings now circulate around the world.
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From his early days at MotorTrend to his deep Shelby connections, while he
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has chronicled the machines and the people who shaped modern motoring,
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only to reinvent himself decades later, with a paintbrush in hand based in
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San Bernardino, and still chasing the stories that move him, he joins us today
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to talk about the craft, the cars, the creativity, and the unexpected turns that
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define a life in the automotive arts.
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That's right.
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And joining me tonight is returning co-host Don Weiberg from Garage Style
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Magazine, one of the many personalities on the Motor Inc podcast network.
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Welcome back, Don.
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Thank you, Eric.
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Good to be back.
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Thanks for having me.
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And with that, let's officially welcome Wally to break fix.
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Thank you.
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Welcome, Wally.
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Pleasure to be here.
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Well, Wally, like all good break fix stories.
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There's a superhero origin story you've been quoted as saying, I've
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been a writer for over 40 years that accidentally became an artist.
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So take us back to the moment when you've.
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First chose writing as your path, especially automotive writing.
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And what drew you into the automotive world specifically, and what
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kept you there for four decades?
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I'm glad we didn't get into age, so I don't know how that will work.
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'cause then I start saying, I was born before television.
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I was born with four computers and when I was a kid you went down to trade station.
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You had a choice of steam locomotive or, and then I was thinking the other day,
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it's something that really blows my mind.
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I have to figure it out with the pencil.
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But when I went to a Veteran's Day parade, guess what war the veterans
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were from the Spanish American War.
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You know, like they must have been born, uh, in the, uh, 18 hundreds, you
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know, or else they knew people born in the 18 hundreds and those people they
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knew knew people in the 17 hundreds.
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So it's like, here we are 2026.
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It's hard to believe that I knew people who talked to people
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who were two centuries ago.
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Mm-hmm.
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Wow.
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But I'm trying to disguise it as well as I can.
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Another job I had in, uh, high school was cleaning swimming pools.
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So one time I'm at this guy's house in Birmingham, Michigan.
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He has the Corvette Stingray prototype in his driveway.
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A few minutes later, the Mako Shark shows up.
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Few minutes later, something else.
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So turns out he is a design chief of gm, bill Mitchell.
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And so I got to talking with him and, uh.
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I hung out with them for a while and went to his job and he would drive me on a
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little race course they have there, and he gave me his opinion of this and that.
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And so I was just a really enamored of the, you know,
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the creativity of that field.
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But I never really did.
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You know, I got into it with my fine art, but I never got into
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it where I could affect the cars.
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And by the way, another great thing about living in Detroit
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was they have a museum there.
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Art museum.
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They have several rooms of one painting continuous mural by Diego
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Rivera, and it's the Ford Factory.
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And my father worked there at 32 Building by Lace.
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So I always wonder, is he this guy tightening the wheels
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or is he this guy over here?
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Because, uh, Diego Rivera would make all the workers look alike.
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That really sparked the back half of my brain.
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The funny half said, oh, you wanna design cars with back half?
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Said, no, no.
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Leave the cars aside.
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Go to art.
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Find art.
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First I started at Wayne State in Detroit as a uh, art major, and I
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was kind of just an average artist.
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Didn't have any particular style, but then I was a poet a little bit.
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So one time I'm in the library looking for a new book on poetry, and I
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saw a British sports car magazine.
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I opened it up.
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There's a three page story and the ESO Griffo A three C race car, which.
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It was made in Italy, but had a Chevrolet engine.
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And that picture, even though it was black and white, it was so stunning that
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right there, I forgot everything about poetry, didn't care about poetry anymore.
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I came outta that library saying, I gotta get involved with cars.
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And then a little while later, some ad agency scouts came and
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said, we're looking for summer interns who wants to be an artist?
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I raised my hand and they said.
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Oh, we already got ours.
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Okay.
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Who wants to be a writer?
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And so right there I switched my major and became an ad writer
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writing kinda the modern version of C-D-U-S-A and your Chevrolet.
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And I was in advertising for like five or 10 years before I moved to California.
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What agency were you working for?
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Campbell Eald was the second one.
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The first one.
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I think it was called DP Brother.
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That was a Oldsmobile account.
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I'm kind of embarrassed that I worked for Account Square.
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The marks have disappeared since then, but I guess they didn't do
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the right car at the right time.
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Don, it seems like when we look at Wally's resume, you two
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share a publisher in common.
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Both of you spent some time at MotorTrend.
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Yeah.
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Are are you still in, in, uh, in therapy too, Wallace?
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Are you still in therapy?
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Well, I, I, I, I'm still in therapy for my tenure there.
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I actually worked for two different places.
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I worked in Hollywood Boulevard and uh, that was kind of a crummy little building.
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It probably used to be a porno theater or something.
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And then I came back a few years later and when I worked at Car Life Magazine,
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1970, the art director tipped me off, Hey, they're gonna shut down this magazine.
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So I rushed over to Hollywood and I had more chutzpah in those days.
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I just walked in, called the personnel department and said.
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I'm the new guy at MotorTrend.
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You know, the editor didn't even know who I was.
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Sent me the paperwork, I signed it and suddenly I was working there.
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I don't have the nerve to do that now, but that was great to work
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on that street because it was a street called Sunset Strip.
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And all these movie stars and rock stars would celebrate their signing the
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contract by driving some exotic car.
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And several times I tried to buy the car, but sometimes by the time I found
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out what it was, it was too late.
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I missed my chance.
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I'd follow them to a house and put a check in mailbox.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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The sunset building was really neat.
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You're right though, with a crummy building.
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Yeah.
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I do have one more story though, about working in that street
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where the famous people were.
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I was on the sixth floor.
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I looked down, I saw a yellow Ferrari P three slash four, like
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the kind that race to Lamonts.
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Mm-hmm.
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A full race car going down the street and for some reason, well, I didn't
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wanna take the elevator take too long, so I ran down six flights of stairs.
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I go out into traffic and I stop the guy and I said, I, I need to
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take your picture from magazine.
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And he turned out he had bought the car and converted it to street
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use and was having a blast with it.
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It turned out that he was not only a good looking movie star type, but he was
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a movie star and he was a rock and roll star, and his father was Dean Martin.
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And so I got the story in the magazine, and then the real sad part
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was he didn't live to enjoy it that long because he volunteered for the
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Air Force to be a fighter pilot.
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And then the airport said, okay, you can fly 5,000 feet, but they didn't mention
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it was 8,000 foot Mountain in the fog.
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So I thought, well, that guy really lived the life as much as he could.
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From there, you went into the world of writing automotive books, and in your
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bio there's 18 book credits to your name.
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So what started that journey, because that's a whole different thing than just,
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you know, writing ads or writing articles.
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That started with picture books I was doing for classic motor books.
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It was called In Wisconsin, run by a British man.
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And what I did was I would do these picture collections and
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captions and believe it or not, I could write the book in one day.
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'cause just like 80 or 90 pictures with the captions.
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And I would even fly over to like England and go to Jaguar or something
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and say, can I look at the files?
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Walking with an empty suitcase, walk out with a full one.
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That became the book.
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But then I started thinking about Cobras and Shelby's and all that, and
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then I was mulling that in my brain.
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And then what happened was is just by accident, I actually lost
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my job at the second magazine.
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First it was Car Life, then MotorTrend in Hollywood.
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I was back in Detroit doing advertising editorial work.
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I'm walking down the street and I hear a roar.
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And I look up and I see this 4 27 comp Cobra with a big wide
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fenders and big wide tires.
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And a woman is driving it and she's sliding around the corner
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and everybody's panicking.
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So the horse of the Mount of policeman was bucking and I was debating whether
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to help with the horse 'cause I actually was a cowboy for a little while.
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But then, uh, the lady happened to pull up next to me and she
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said, you, which way is Cobo Hall?
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That's the convention center.
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I said, well, I'll show you if you give me a ride.
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So she opens the door, the Cobra.
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I get in, strap myself in.
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She takes off.
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Again, top speed.
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I said, you're going the wrong direction.
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But anyhow, I corrected her.
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Five minutes later we were at the convention center.
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Just as I got outta the car, Carol Shelby comes up.
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So I introduced myself and then I thought, oh, he's approachable.
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So then I contacted this publisher and said, I wanna do a book in the Ferrari.
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He said, there's too many books in Ferrari, but there's none on the Cobra.
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So I said, oh, well, okay, that's an American engine, but
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I was kind of snobby already.
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And so, uh, that's how it happened.
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And the book sold.
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50,000 copies.
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So I wanna pull this thread.
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Who was the lady behind the wheel?
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Was she a celebrity?
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I know her name.
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Pat Marone.
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M-E-R-O-N-E.
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But I never checked on what happened to her since or how she did in racing.
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But that's the p rrg of Shelby was to say, because he told me personally,
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the 4 27 will kill you in a second.
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You know, if you don't know what you're doing, it's just too much power.
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Yet having a woman drive it at these different occasions made it
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like, well, maybe it can be tamed.
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So it's kinda like having a pet lion, you know?
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Well, you sort of buried the lead here.
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As we dig into your career, you've had a long connection with the Shelby
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world and part of the 18 books you've written, three of which are on Carol
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Shelby and his life and his cars.
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So you described how the relationship began.
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So as you dug into his story and you, you met a living legend.
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You worked with a living legend.
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What do you think most people misunderstand about the man, the
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cars and the Shelby culture itself?
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I think he was a real deal maker at heart.
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I mean, of course he loved cars and he loved airplanes.
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He had plenty of both.
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But when push came to shove some design that they worked on for years that was
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gonna revolutionize the car industry.
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That would disappear.
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Like there was one called the Lone Star that was pretty sure it was front engine.
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But anyhow, it was just his assistant, Al Dow told me once I had to crawl
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across the gas tank to get to my bucket seat, I lost interest in it.
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He didn't wanna be in a high performance car sitting on top of the gas tank.
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And so anyhow, I was shocked that Shelby would develop a prototype and
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then it would be gone and it would never, never be mentioned again.
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So.
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He always was preparing for the next meeting with Ford executives.
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Shall I pull the, the bunny out of this pocket or that pocket?
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In what way they go for, that's the way he operated and you
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just had to get used to it.
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If you were working on one of those projects that he
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canned, well, too bad for you.
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Like Pete Brock, you know, the Daytona Coop with a 4 27 engine that would've
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actually perpetuated the Daytona coop into another year of racing.
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But then four thought, well wait a minute.
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What if it beats the four gt, which is their baby?
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Mm-hmm.
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It had to go, I just gotta dig in here a little bit.
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18 automotive books with a four part series.
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The Incredible Barn finds the highly entertaining stories behind 50
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Treasured Par published in 2013.
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How did you become the barn finder guy?
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You want the actual barn finding or the writing about 'em Both?
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Yeah.
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Start with that and move into the other one.
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Okay.
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I was at a convention.
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It wasn't really watching dc it was in like Virginia.
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I mean, you know, just a few hundred feet away from Washington, went to a Ferrari
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convention and talking to everybody.
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One of the funny things was there was some illegal gray market boxer there and
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there was some ultra enthusiast engineer from Detroit who ended up being in
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charge of catching the gray market car smugglers the cars that weren't really
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legal, and he was like prowling around if that car leaves this hotel property.
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I'm gonna grab it, you know, for the US government.
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And so that was interesting to me that I was dealing with the haunted species.
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And then I found out this New York man I met who was a
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landlord in downtown Manhattan.
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He loved Italian cars and so did a lot of his friends.
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And I don't know what occupations they had, but one of 'em made some food, I
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can't remember what it is now, a real popular thing, but they would meet every
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week in New York and they would sit around the table and they would say.
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Now I'm gonna imitate a New York accent.
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Much to your horror.
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But one of 'em would say, Hey, yeah, what do you got?
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You got anything new?
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And then they'd say, yeah, I got a Ghibli coming in from Chicago.
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What color is it yellow?
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Is it five speed?
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No, it's an automatic.
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Within five minutes they decide which of the group is gonna get it.
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Then somewhere out in the road in Indiana or something, two reliable trucking semis
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would meet and then unload, and then move the yellow car from this truck to
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that truck so it could go to the new guy.
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So anyhow, when I heard that, I said, well, I can look around
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out on the West coast and see.
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So then I started advertising in um, Autotrader, and I would always show a
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picture of a scruffy car, not a clean one, that would win a concord kinda dirty.
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And then I would say, I want this car.
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It doesn't matter if it runs, you know, if you got a clear title, call me.
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And then my wife at the time worked for American Airlines and
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you know, that old slogan of the airline employee Marry me Fly free.
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So I would go home and say, oh, I need a ticket for, um, Kokomo, Indiana tomorrow.
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My technique was to go out there and.
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Knock on the door.
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Not even call them first.
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'cause the flight wasn't costing me anything.
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I'd knock on the door and they'd answer and I'd say, I'd say, this is a check
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with your name on it, cashier's check.
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Let's go see if the bank will cash it.
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I didn't say, let me look at the car, let me check the
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engine, let me check for rust.
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I said, this is a check with your name on it.
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And 90% of the time I succeeded.
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I mean, some car club people were really mad that I just
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blew it outta nowhere, didn't.
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Know the seller and didn't know the car, but I had the check that would cash.
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This is like something Eric would do.
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Eric would totally do something like this.
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I could just see him doing this, you know?
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Now it wouldn't work so well because of the internet.
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There'd be gossip about me in the internet.
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Watch out for this guy, Wally.
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You know?
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Oh, and now it's about writing about him.
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What happened was, there was some other book, I can't remember the
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series, but another book about.
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Rare cars that were hidden.
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And so I kept trying to upstage myself and find a car that you could not have guessed
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when you saw it, what was underneath it, but if you did guess right and then re
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bodied it, its correct configuration.
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You'd have a million dollar car, and I think out of all of 'em, my
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favorite is the uh, two 50 P or two 50 LM Ferrari, a full racing car
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that I think won one lama in 65.
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So some guy was racing in Switzerland and he crashes it and then he's
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sitting there like, when am I gonna do?
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I called the Ferrari factory.
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They refused to make a new body that's an old car to them.
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So he just sitting there, this guy comes up and says, well,
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how many meters long is it?
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And he tells him and he says, you know, I got a Porsche body that
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will fit on that if you cut the nose the tail off a little bit.
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So they did.
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They called it the poor fare, and I thought that's where the
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American collectors really miss it.
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They didn't look at the obscure little series in Switzerland where
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a real two 50 LM Ferrari was racing.
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It just didn't look like a Ferrari.
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So that'd be a real shot in the dark to guess that one.
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So is that the kind of cars and stories that are included in the barn?
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Find books?
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Yeah.
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Uh, the main type of stories I was trying to do is how a car was neglected
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for a long time and nobody knew what it was, and that before the computer
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you weren't able to do the homework in 15 minutes and find out about the car.
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And I'm still looking for one now.
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I'll tell you about the one that eluded me.
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It was so close and I missed it.
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It's my favorite car.
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It's called the Bini.
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It's Italian car, Corvette Engine.
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So I worked at MotorTrend Magazine in Sunset Strip.
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There's one of these at a car lot across the street.
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So you think if it's 'cause it's my favorite car, am I gonna
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walk over there and look at it?
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No, because it was charcoal gray.
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I didn't like the paint.
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It didn't have the right rear window, but now I realize that that car was put
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together of two smashed ones, the front half of one, the back half of the other.
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So if you had that, theoretically you could build a new front for
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the existing back and for the other one you could build a new rear.
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You'd have two cars from one, but now it's 50 years later.
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Who knows where that car is?
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It could still be sitting in San Fernando Valley.
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So that's one of my favorites.
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Said Who would guess and why didn't I go look at it?
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So the premise behind the series is these are unrestored
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cars that you're looking for.
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You're literally legitimate barn finds.
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Yeah.
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And then sometimes people would re body a car because at the time
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it seemed like a good idea and the manufacturer didn't want it anymore.
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But then.
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Years later, the body they put on it wasn't so appealing.
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And then the smart guy checked the serial numbers and said, I'll
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build the original body again.
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So Dom, this reminds me of a story you told me a while back about the Bugatti in
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the bar, I believe is what it's known as.
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Wally.
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Are there.
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Some cars in that book that if somebody was picking it up for the
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first time would really shock them.
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Like something like the Bugatti in the barn.
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I don't even remember all the cars that are in it now, but there's several cars
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in that book that are more valuable now than they were then because there's
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more education on the cars and more.
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Actually, you know, who has some of the best cars?
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Like this one Cobra that was, I don't know if it was bodied by Gia, but it's got a
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different body, I think, of 4 27 chassis.
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But in Detroit, these automakers would donate the concept cars.
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And after a while, you know, your garage gets full 50 concept cars.
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So you'd call up the Detroit Historical Museum across from the art museum.
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And say, Hey, would you like this car?
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Hey, they're not gonna turn it down.
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So now the sad thing is their museum's way too small to show more than two or
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three cars, so they've got him in storage, at least they're protected from rust.
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But I mean, that story happens over and over again where a rip Coner gets
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the car, but he can't keep it anymore.
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So he donates it, and then who knows where it goes from there.
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You have to have good records.
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You know?
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And that's a great segue into something I know is very passionate
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subject for you, which is car design.
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You kind of alluded to it with the Beats arena.
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Part of what you've written about over the years is all the design changes
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in the evolution in the car world.
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So I wanna get your take now that you're looking back over 50 plus
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years in the automotive space, what your thoughts are on car design.
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Well, sometimes I'm elated with.
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Some new prototype and then most of the time I'm not because I can remember
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something way back that was a lot better.
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Like the new Rolls Royce, they have one, it's called the Nightingale series.
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The price is so bizarre and the press release is from 1 million to 30 million
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and each car will be individual.
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But it's like, I can remember one from 1970 that like better.
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So I'm constantly in turmoil.
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I can barely embrace the new one when I think, but that old one was so good.
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I'm a frustrated car designer and I do write critiques of new cars that came out.
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And this one former GM designer keeps writing critiques of my critiques and says
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they're not critiques, they're analysis.
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And I looked up critique and it says, you say some good
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things, you say some bad things.
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That's what I do.
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So if, if you were to pick top five most beautiful cars, near the
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top would be the thero male 33.
20:27
It's some clip that actually copies about 90% of the old one, but they still screwed
20:32
it up in the details like the little, the headlights trim and stuff like that.
20:36
But just to capture that shape, I would say it's as good as the bini shape.
20:40
And by the way, when I came across this French word called
20:44
Lu, I think L-O-U-C-H-E, I really like that word to describe this
20:49
because that means a beautiful.
20:52
Woman that's got a little too much makeup on, you know, you don't wanna
20:56
take her home and introduce her mother.
20:57
I mean that car is like wicked looking.
21:00
Well if we're staying with the classic cars, you mentioned one, so your top
21:03
five most beautiful cars of all time.
21:05
'cause this is a question we actually used to ask guests quite a bit.
21:08
What's the sexiest car of all time or what's the most beautiful car of all time?
21:11
Well, the Aston Martin DB 4G TZ, Aston Martin's a gto.
21:15
I remember when an owner couldn't get rid of it compared to a Ferrari and
21:19
it's worth a lot more than most Ferrari.
21:21
Well Rolls Royce Silver Cloud convertible series three with the forehead lamps.
21:27
Uh, Monteverdi had a, A one-off Palm Beach I think it was called, and that was
21:32
a Swiss car with the Chrysler engine and then the 4 27 Cobra with the wide body.
21:38
I think I'm up to five and I find it interesting that you have chosen five
21:42
cars that no one else has ever selected.
21:44
You know, we get a lot of E type jags and two 50 pontoon fender Ferraris.
21:48
And stuff like that is, is that, you know, Coke bottle shape if you will.
21:51
So, really interesting picks you have there.
21:53
But I think there's an opposite side to this design question, isn't there, Don?
21:58
Oh yes.
21:59
Oh yes indeed.
22:00
Yes.
22:00
'cause we understand that you have a connection with Jerry Wgar
22:05
and the Vector, is that right?
22:06
I was a friend of his and I wrote a novel, which didn't go any place.
22:11
I didn't find a publisher for it, and I only self-published a few.
22:15
But that was about.
22:17
A small entrepreneurial car developer like DeLorean or like Weigert.
22:23
And so I kept comparing in real life.
22:25
Every time I met Jerry Weigert, I'd ask him something and what he would tell me
22:29
would, oh, that's so good for my book.
22:31
And now that he has died, I found some more scandalous things, which I might put
22:37
in the book if I ever published it or not.
22:38
But I gotta admire his pluck, though.
22:41
He came from bad Acts, Michigan.
22:44
Came out to California and developed his own car and actually got to where a
22:47
few were sold, but he never compromised and sold it to another company.
22:51
He tied in with the Indonesian company, but in the end he
22:54
ended up with the car again.
22:56
He was like Shelby, but he was going for high tech all the way, even though
23:00
the real high tech world was outpacing him far ahead of where he was at.
23:05
Since you're sharing celebrity stories, one you told me off
23:08
camera was about Roger Penske.
23:10
You wanna share that one too?
23:11
I would love to tell that at a party.
23:13
If I'm never near him.
23:14
Maybe I'll have to look for him at Pebble Beach, but as I was working in this ad
23:18
agency, I'm driving along in my opal.
23:20
I see Roger Penske on the sidewalk looking perturbed.
23:24
And so I pulled over and I said, Hey, Roger, what's wrong?
23:27
He said, somebody took my Corvette and I want it back.
23:31
And I said, well, hop in.
23:32
We're driving around.
23:33
We only drove for a few blocks and we saw a cop, and he pointed
23:37
at the cop, said, somebody took my Corvette, I want it back now.
23:40
And the cop said, yes, sir. Hop in.
23:42
So he goes over the police car.
23:44
It goes away and gets his car back.
23:46
But I thought that's what made him a business success.
23:49
Maybe a billionaire that he didn't have to explain who he was.
23:53
I want it back.
23:54
You know, you took it.
23:55
I want it, you know, and I thought he's gonna go play for that boy.
23:59
You said you were driving in an opal.
24:00
Was it an opal gt?
24:02
Uh, no, a man.
24:04
Oh, that's a shame.
24:04
'cause if you had been driving a gt, you could have told them, Roger,
24:07
I took your car to get washed.
24:08
And it shrunk when it came out the other side.
24:11
He has a big publishing company now.
24:13
I think they published one very lavish car magazine.
24:16
So as a connoisseur of car design, Wally, how would you critique the vector?
24:20
Uh, it was a very bold design for the time, but I don't know
24:23
wind tunnel wise how it came out.
24:25
I thought it would, it was the ultimate wedge, so it was probably pretty good.
24:29
But when you get those cars up past 180, sometimes just a couple inches difference
24:35
here and there can cause a lot of trouble.
24:37
And that's actually what happened with the.
24:40
First mirrors, you know, when they got 'em out there was, it was way faster
24:44
than they had ever planned for and now they're overdoing it the other way.
24:48
We're making a lot of exotic cars look alike 'cause they
24:51
wanna get good arrow number.
24:53
Let's take a little pit stop.
24:54
And for those that are watching this episode behind the scenes on our Patreon.
25:00
They'll notice that you are wearing all white, and apparently this
25:03
is one of your signature styles.
25:05
There's a story behind why you're wearing all white, isn't that right?
25:09
Yes.
25:09
What happened was during that first time was with MotorTrend.
25:13
I'm not sure it's the first or second time, but anyhow, I went to a bookstore
25:17
in Hollywood and they had this writer from New York in his thirties or forties.
25:22
Wearing all white with the white hat, and he was Tom Wolf,
25:25
who later became real famous.
25:26
I think he wrote that book that became a movie about the astronauts.
25:30
But that book was, first book was called The Candy Color Chance Ring
25:33
Flake Streamlined Baby About Custom Cars and George Barris and all that.
25:38
I invited him to lunch and nobody was buying his book.
25:40
Nobody knew who he was, so he said, okay, I'll go to lunch with him.
25:43
And during lunch, he admitted that he wasn't really in the car world,
25:46
that he lived in New York City.
25:48
So he didn't really relate to cars that much, but his mind was so
25:52
blown by the custom cars that he had to write a story for Esquire.
25:57
Then he couldn't get the story written.
25:58
He couldn't get his mind around it.
26:00
So the editor of Esquire just said, that's okay, we'll just take your
26:03
letters and that will be the story.
26:05
And so that became his story and that became the book.
26:08
And uh, he always wore white.
26:10
And so then I started wearing white Years later, and all
26:14
kinds of good things came of it.
26:16
Like one time when I was at Pebble Beach, walking with my wife, passed this big
26:19
mansion, they were having a party and they yelled out and said, oh, we're over here.
26:24
They thought that it must be a celebrity.
26:26
Coming to their party and I was lost.
26:28
And so I come in and I meet the Governor Schwarzenegger and all
26:31
that, you know, I never explained that I wasn't going to their place,
26:35
but I feel good when I wear it.
26:37
And it, it's a, a tip of my hat to the Tom.
26:39
You look good.
26:40
You wear the white.
26:40
Well, not many people wear all white.
26:42
Well, but you seem to pull off the Clorox look very well.
26:45
I'm still trying to work out the, uh, walking, there's a certain way of
26:49
walking that I just can't get it down.
26:52
Like when you walk that way, then everybody cleared.
26:55
Here comes the boss.
26:56
Yeah.
26:56
It's a swagger.
26:57
Yeah.
26:57
I just can't do it.
26:58
I go into, uh, you know, little old man mode.
27:01
I'm just wondering, in your painting, in your work, do
27:04
you still wear the all white?
27:06
Does it go with you everywhere?
27:07
I mean, what do you do there?
27:08
Oh, when I show the paintings, I'm even going to a show this Sunday
27:12
in, uh, LA Jolla, and that'll be the right atmosphere, the ambiance, you
27:16
know, right by the ocean and all that.
27:18
So I'll wear it, but.
27:19
I'm gonna wear 'em at different shows because then people who bought one of
27:23
my paintings before will come up and say, well, what do you got that's newer?
27:26
You know, kind of continue the conversation from three
27:28
years ago or something.
27:30
Mm-hmm.
27:30
It's kind of funny because Ben Collins, better known as the Stig on Top Gear, his
27:34
book is called The Man in the White Suit.
27:37
So not to also be confused with the Del Monte commercials from the seventies.
27:40
So, you know, we'll leave that where it is.
27:43
All right.
27:44
Well, let's come back from our pit stop and carry on with your chronology.
27:48
Wally, as mentioned in the intro, you have self-described becoming an artist
27:53
as something that accidentally happened.
27:56
Let's go back to that turning point when you realized that painting
27:59
exotic cars and what we consider today classic cars was becoming your second
28:04
career rather than a side experiment.
28:06
Well, that happened because.
28:08
I had done the third Shelby book, and I knew they were gonna have this parade,
28:12
not a parade, but kind of an informal concourse on Rodeo Drive, one of the
28:17
fanciest streets in the United States.
28:19
I thought, well, I'll bring a few of the books and then I'll bring the painting.
28:23
I made a painting of Shelby.
28:25
I said, I'll leave that in the car.
28:26
Just show people pictures of it.
28:28
So the first guy I sold a book to, I said, oh, by the way, I
28:31
got this portrait of Shelby here.
28:33
He said, go get it.
28:34
You sold that too.
28:35
And I thought that was a good sign.
28:37
'cause you didn't say, how much is it?
28:39
So as I'm walking back from the car, I thought, you know what?
28:42
I think I'll be an artist.
28:43
You talked about going to school for writing and when you changed
28:47
careers, did you go back to school to become a fine artist or did
28:51
you learn all this on your own?
28:52
Believe it or not, it was just at a print shop.
28:54
And before, I never liked real oils 'cause the linseed oil smelled so bad.
28:59
But now people paint oils told me, oh, they use a different brush cleaner
29:03
now, it doesn't smell bad, but how fast it dries, that acrylic oil dries
29:07
in seconds and that paper is good.
29:10
And so once I got all that together and I learned how to take the right
29:13
pictures, I do sort of tend to shoot the front three quarter and
29:16
rear three quarter views a lot.
29:18
But each car kind of.
29:19
It tells me how it wants to be shot and uh, I throw a lot away.
29:24
You know, I think I'm throwing about 50% of my pictures away 'cause it's
29:27
just either the right car at the wrong angle or I got the car too
29:30
realistically and you see its flaws.
29:33
All I have to do is learn how to make copies.
29:36
I don't wanna sell the original.
29:37
Then I bought some paid supplies and then did more and more of 'em.
29:41
But I do only sell the, the print, like this is a print.
29:45
Wally, do you do commission work?
29:46
In other words, could somebody hire you?
29:48
Oh yeah.
29:48
Yeah.
29:48
That one of 'em wants some, A museum owner in uh.
29:52
Georgia or someplace, you could tell where he got the money
29:55
'cause he owned a water company.
29:57
Maybe what could be better to own than a water company.
29:59
That's the best.
30:00
And uh, he had a hundred dollars and he started reading off the list.
30:04
And when he got to 2 75 gtb four Ferrari, I said, it's a red.
30:08
He said, yes, that's okay.
30:09
I'll do that one.
30:10
But sometimes it's a challenge because maybe I don't like the color of the car.
30:14
Like I did a white Ferrari and I was like, how am I gonna make the
30:18
interesting, white is a dull color.
30:21
But then he happened to mention that where he worked, there was a office
30:25
that with his own little waterfall, so I parked it in front of the
30:28
waterfall and lots of little spurts of white water in the background.
30:33
Perfect.
30:33
Sometimes you'd even have to do it twice, you know?
30:36
And then another thing was is commissions.
30:38
People don't like to get up early.
30:39
I said, well, I'd like to be up at 6:00 AM when the sun comes up.
30:42
I mean, they don't understand.
30:43
The middle of the day is the worst time to shoot a car.
30:45
Mm-hmm.
30:46
Yeah.
30:46
You gotta get that sweet light going on.
30:48
And by the way, I do different cars in different categories.
30:51
This is the rarest category.
30:53
This is called art deco.
30:54
Streamlined modern with the E on the end of modern to make it very French.
30:59
And the French just love this smooth airflow cars around 36 to 39.
31:06
Then unfortunately the war came along.
31:08
Then after the war, the economy was so whacked outta shape that nobody
31:12
had the money to buy one of these.
31:13
So it's just this golden era.
31:15
That's a Bugatti, I think.
31:17
This one's in the A museum in the valley, San Fernando Valley, and
31:22
then I do sports Cars of the sixties.
31:25
Like Ferrari, short wheel base two 50 gt.
31:28
I like to do a car with the atmosphere behind it.
31:31
Now, sometimes I wish I could have the right background behind the right car,
31:36
but it just doesn't turn out that way.
31:38
Sometimes the great picture of the car, great lighting, but there's
31:42
a a tractor trailer behind it.
31:44
You know, a Peterbilt.
31:45
I wanna be real, but I don't wanna be that real.
31:47
I want people to enjoy the nostalgia of the car.
31:50
So then I. I've done a lot back.
31:53
I said when the marry me fly free days, I took pictures all over the world so
31:56
I can combine one thing with another and sometimes nature, but like Villa
32:01
DTE is a good place to shoot, but I don't know how you get in the show now.
32:05
That's the famous Concord in Italy, lake Como?
32:07
Mm-hmm.
32:08
But I don't know who you have to be to get in or, or whether
32:11
they'll gimme a trespass.
32:12
So back to your, your bini or whatever that is in Paradise Cove.
32:17
That actually wasn't taken at Paradise Cove.
32:19
No, that was, it was.
32:21
That's the weird thing about that car.
32:22
My favorite car, the one that converted me from a poet to a rider.
32:27
So I went to Paradise Co. When Andy Cohen, who used to have Beverly
32:31
Hills motor accessories, he started that very exclusive show there.
32:34
He had to be invited to it.
32:36
So I went there at seven o'clock in the morning waiting for the first car, and out
32:40
of all the cars in the world, only 150 or so made comes my favorite car by itself.
32:46
So I shot that.
32:47
Yeah, I, I remember that show really well.
32:49
It was always a fun, fun show to go to.
32:51
He always had the greatest cars.
32:52
I really miss him and I miss that.
32:54
I miss that event.
32:55
That was a lot of fun.
32:56
Some people do a car with a white background, but when you do
33:00
that, you deny all the pleasure of relating to the environment.
33:04
Like I have another one with Paris and uh, I don't know how to pronounce
33:08
it, I don't know French, but there's some restaurant called LED Mago.
33:12
Sounds to me like it's in the two maggots.
33:14
But anyhow, people have come up to me and say, I eat in that restaurant.
33:18
I sat at that table.
33:19
So it brings a whole lot to it when you have the atmosphere, and even this vRAN
33:24
one is in a beach called Paradise Cove.
33:27
So a lot of people have been to Malibu, but they didn't know there's
33:30
this place called Paradise Cove.
33:31
But if you ever watch the movie, the TV show, Rockford Files,
33:36
that's where his house trailer was.
33:37
Don just finished rewatching it for the hundredth time.
33:40
So yeah.
33:41
Oh, okay.
33:42
Oh, by the way, this is called gallery wrap.
33:44
When you have the canvas wrap around, you don't have to bother
33:48
to get a frame or anything.
33:49
This is another short whale based Ferrari in Pasadena.
33:52
Again, Ferrari's on Colorado Boulevard.
33:55
How long does it take you to create one of these near photorealistic paintings?
34:00
And it should takes me like a week or so to do it.
34:02
It's a lot of back and forth work.
34:04
I do it on paper first, then I get a canvas done.
34:07
Then I embellish the canvas.
34:10
What are we looking at?
34:11
Is it paint on canvas?
34:12
Yeah, paint on canvas, but it's a print underneath made from my original
34:17
paint of acrylic oil on paper.
34:20
Those are very inexpensive to do.
34:22
The paper is very special.
34:24
I discovered it by accident.
34:25
It's called.
34:26
Linen.
34:26
L-I-N-E-N.
34:27
If you look at it real close, it looks like cloth.
34:31
So you're designing them on a computer and then printing them on on linen?
34:35
No, no.
34:35
I'm taking a picture with my camera at all these events I go
34:38
to, I have thousands of pictures.
34:40
Oh, I have maybe a hundred, 150 paper prints and only a few canvas ones.
34:45
So I'm looking for a, a gallery that wants to put them on consignment, and
34:50
I've actually sold 'em to museums.
34:52
Big collectors that have a hundred cars, they'll say, well pick one of my cars.
34:56
Okay, I'll take that one.
34:57
So I've had a dealer say, I don't want it 'cause it's not original.
35:00
But now this is the only one that I don't know 'cause of glass
35:03
if you'll be able to see it.
35:04
But this is an American hot rod and I very rarely have people.
35:08
Because you don't often have people that look like models that look
35:12
like just right for that car.
35:13
So here's kind of a dumpy looking guy, but he's looking at like a 32 Ford hot
35:18
rod with a supercharger on it, Pomona.
35:20
And I like it 'cause it's, it's real, people doing real things.
35:24
But then sometimes I think, what if I do, people in the people don't come out right.
35:28
I've ruined all the work doing the car.
35:30
That's kind of what I'm trying to capture in my paintings.
35:33
But, you know, I admire so many artists for what they could do, and I think I'm,
35:37
I got my own little area to work in.
35:39
I, one of my favorites was Ken Dallas, a British artist.
35:43
And ironically, when I was riding Chevy ads, they hired him to come
35:47
in and draw some of the cars.
35:49
So it's like it's a big world, but we run into each other.
35:52
Wally, one thing I've noticed in listening to your stories is it sounds like
35:56
everywhere you go, you have the luck or the fortune of running into car people.
36:01
Yeah, a lot of times I don't know who they are, kinda like movie stars.
36:05
I don't know who they are till later and somebody says, oh,
36:07
didn't you recognize Najaro?
36:09
You know, it was like, that is a problem.
36:11
But one was meeting the people I did in Detroit.
36:15
Being a journalist, I'm interviewing people all the time, even if I have
36:18
no reason to, uh, I'm not writing a story, but you know, somebody waiting
36:22
in a restaurant line, you know, I'll get down to, you know, where's the best
36:25
place to fish in New Orleans, you know?
36:28
So when you look back at both of your careers as a writer and as an artist,
36:33
what moments over the last 50 years would you consider a defining chapters
36:39
for you and in the automotive world?
36:41
I wanna say one thing about art in general, though.
36:43
Since I became an artist, I appreciate nature a lot more.
36:47
I don't go out and paint nature, but I remember looking at this tree in,
36:52
in some doctor's front office yard and thinking, God, that's fascinating.
36:57
Look at those roots.
36:58
The roots are outside the ground.
37:00
It.
37:00
I thought, I mean, before 2009, I would've never noticed that.
37:04
And so colors, sunsets, color of water, the feel of cloth every,
37:09
the whole world's become more exciting since I rediscovered art.
37:12
And I'll refine that by saying, since you've witnessed so much of automotive
37:16
history you've lived through, I'll give examples, you know, from.
37:20
The autos sphere, let's say the death of Eton Sena to, you know, the, the arrest of
37:25
John DeLorean and everything in between.
37:27
Are there standout moments as a witness to automotive history
37:30
that have resonated with you and maybe changed you as a person?
37:33
One very recent one was, I went to Monterey, and again, gotta
37:38
get up early in the morning.
37:39
I was out there at Laguna Seka about seven in the morning.
37:43
Empty parking lot.
37:44
Suddenly a Ferrari SR two shows up.
37:47
That's a real rare car.
37:48
Sp being special project.
37:50
There are two or 3 million a piece and they have another version SR
37:53
one with no windshield and only one seat, and anyhow, one shows up,
37:58
then another one, then another one.
37:59
Suddenly I'm in the middle of a parking lot of 20 or 30 of 'em.
38:02
I thought there couldn't be that many in the whole world.
38:05
But they're all gunning their engines.
38:07
And then I thought, I wonder if these people have racing licenses
38:11
or they just bought a $2 million car and Ferrari waved the green flag.
38:15
But anyhow, they went out in the track and I got a picture of that
38:18
and made one or two paintings of 'em.
38:20
And that's like a moment I, I mean you couldn't plan that to
38:23
be there at the right time when that many show up in one place.
38:27
And Ferrari does that a lot.
38:28
They have these private race course events only for owners and
38:32
you have to, and to buy the car.
38:34
There's all kinds of things.
38:35
You can't customize it.
38:36
If you own a, a recent model SP Ferrari and you say, well, I'm gonna put
38:40
my doggies picture on the hood, you know, they won't sell you another one.
38:44
So that's really a, a marketing story in itself, how they got to that point.
38:49
Let me ask you something, uh, from one writer to another, what
38:53
words of wisdom for both aspiring automotive writers or artists.
38:57
Can you share what, what would you espouse upon people trying to make in
39:01
the art world or the journalism world?
39:03
I've met a lot of artists by joining these art associations.
39:06
And by the way, if you join them, as long as you paid the dues, you
39:09
can submit your work and they'll put your work in the local show.
39:12
So you get the first time experience of having your work in a show.
39:16
The public looks at it.
39:17
And by the way, one other thing I like about fine art is when I had a
39:21
painting in the Monterey Mecca auction.
39:24
I didn't stay around to find out what it sold for.
39:27
I couldn't afford another night in a hotel.
39:28
So I drive home, called 'em up to say, oh yeah, we sold that for 1400.
39:32
And I thought, oh my god, in, in the, uh, writing field, it would
39:36
take, you'd have to sell a hell of a lot of books at a dollar and a
39:40
half royalty to make that money.
39:42
And here I made it in one day, you know?
39:44
The last thing that the rules makers haven't determined
39:48
is how much is art worth?
39:50
You know, that was the case where two people wound up by
39:52
that painting, they kept bidding.
39:54
Uh, I tell them if they're really good at one particular subject,
39:58
like they do outdoor scenes, but they're really good at horses.
40:02
I say, develop that as a sub strata of your work and become
40:06
known as the horse artist.
40:08
And uh, and then you'll get those people inviting you to their events,
40:11
you know, so that's what I've become.
40:13
Even though some of the cars I paint, nobody wants a picture like the Bini.
40:18
I've written a couple stories about that.
40:20
10 paintings of cars that nobody knows what the car is.
40:23
But anyhow, now writing, I don't know.
40:26
I'm so scared of ai.
40:28
I've had AI pop up on my computer and say.
40:32
Oh, would you like a story on this?
40:33
And all you have to do is give them the first line and, you know, the evolution
40:37
of the, uh, model A Ford, you know, the machine takes over and does the writing.
40:42
I wouldn't recommend somebody go into just journalistic writing.
40:45
They'll have to do some specialty that the computer can't push 'em out of the way.
40:50
I think that's a big fear with a lot of writers is AI is coming about.
40:54
In fact, it's interesting right now there are tech companies that are
40:57
hiring writers and English professors, et cetera, who teach AI how to write
41:03
better, how to better research.
41:05
I, it's incredible.
41:07
I've seen the ads.
41:08
And then in art field too, there's, well, right now there's a new
41:11
TV series, I can't remember the title of it, but the beautiful
41:14
female star doesn't exist at all.
41:16
Yes, she just, I thought, what are you gonna do when she has to go to the
41:20
Oscars or something to get a prize?
41:22
Send a robot up at stage?
41:25
Hey, they might at least she'll never age.
41:27
Look at it that way.
41:28
Well with that, Wally, we've reached that part of the episode where I'd like
41:32
to invite our guests to share any shout outs, thank yous, promotions, or anything
41:36
else that we haven't covered thus far.
41:38
I'd like to hear from an art gallery that wants to try out my art.
41:41
I'll send you some paper ones at no cost.
41:44
You put it up there and hope that you find a market in your town and that
41:48
it's a good price because maybe it's not so good a price in, uh, well, even
41:53
two towns like Fort Bragg, California is only five miles from Mendocino, but
41:58
in Mendocino you get 10 times the money.
42:00
But the thing is, I'll give you my email address.
42:04
This is all I could do is mendo, R seven M-E-N-D-O-R-A-R-T, number seven gmail.com.
42:11
And if you're a. You got a brick and mortar store, write me and I'll send you
42:16
some pictures and you could choose some.
42:18
Now do you have your own radio show?
42:19
Yes, I do a UCR.
42:22
Actually, my co-host has a, an assumed name on the show, I think.
42:26
'cause he has so many shows.
42:27
But anyhow, I've had that show for over 30 years.
42:30
Oh wow.
42:31
Once a week.
42:31
We've changed the format of what's covered a lot because you can't help it.
42:36
I mean, when there's.
42:37
These crises, like the electric cars were coming on and everybody
42:41
had to go electric and they were gonna ban internal combustion.
42:44
And now suddenly a lot of automakers said, yeah, we went electric.
42:47
Look what happened.
42:47
Nobody bought it.
42:48
And then I was doing more testing of test cars than I do now.
42:52
So the thing is, is that, um, we have to evolve with the times, and I'm
42:57
still nostalgic for the old cars, so it's like I'm torn between the two.
43:01
It's kinda like they're saying we have a new movie just shot in 2026.
43:05
They could come see us.
43:06
Well, I don't know.
43:06
They're gonna show an old Humphrey Bogart movie over here.
43:08
I'd kinda like to see that.
43:10
In the end, Wally reminds us that a life in the automotive world
43:14
isn't always a straight road.
43:16
Sometimes it's a series of unexpected turns.
43:19
One that can take you from the pages of MotorTrend to the quiet focus of a studio.
43:24
From interviewing legends to becoming one in your own right is journey shows that
43:29
reinvention isn't a departure from who you were, an expression of who you can be.
43:35
So whether through words or through paint, Wally has spent decades
43:38
capturing the soul of the machines we love and the people who shape them.
43:42
And as he continues creating from his home in San Bernardino,
43:45
his story stands as proof.
43:47
That passion doesn't fade, it just finds new forms.
43:51
With that.
43:52
Wally, I can't thank you enough for coming on Break Fix and sharing your story with
43:56
us, and please keep chasing those stories, the stories that move you and move the
44:00
rest of us as we look at your photographs, at your paintings and read your words.
44:05
Thank you.
44:10
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