Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Beyond Little Anton (John W. Warner IV)

Transcript

Beyond Little Anton (John W. Warner IV) · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the auto 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 petrol heads 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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  Tonight, our guest is an author and historian with a passion for hidden
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  history, revisionist, historical narratives, vintage cars, and the
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  unsung heroes of world war II.
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  His father, a five term U.
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  S.
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  Senator from Virginia, his mother, the daughter of a renowned
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  Pittsburgh born philanthropist, his stepmother, a famous celebrity.
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  If you haven't guessed it by now, we're honored and excited to have John W.
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  Warner IV, on Break Fix, a former IMSA pro driver turned gentleman farmer, car
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  collector, and passionate petrolhead, to talk about his historical fiction series,
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  Little Anton, which is part satire, part love story, and a dash of espionage.
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  And I promise, John.
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  We wouldn't talk about aliens.
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  Maybe.
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  So welcome to Break Fix, John.
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  Howdy, how are you doing?
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  Let me put this in perspective for our folks that are listening in.
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  You and I have had the pleasure of meeting up several times during the
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  course of the last couple of years.
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  Last names withstanding, John.
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  I didn't really realize how tied into the automotive and motor sports world you
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  were until we both participated in the classic car tour back in the 2018 2019
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  season, where I was introduced to John W.
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  Warner IV kind of behind the scenes.
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  I got to see some of your collection, your racing memorabilia, hear
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  your war stories, pun intended.
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  Which leads to our first question.
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  Were you always into cars?
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  Was that your thing?
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  Has it always been a passion?
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  How did you find yourself behind the wheel?
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  Well, I have a dual passion, everything to do with space and
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  Star Trek and UFOs and all that.
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  But also I had a passion for cars at an early age.
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  When I was in college, I scraped together all the money I had in the world.
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  And I borrowed five grand from my dad.
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  It was a lifetime Lincoln driver.
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  And he says, what, what the hell kind of car are you going to get, son?
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  And I said, Oh, don't worry.
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  It's going to be a Ford.
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  As long as it's a Ford, I'm fine with it.
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  Here's five grand, pay me back later.
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  And so I went down in Charlottesville, I went to UVA, Brady Bushy Ford there,
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  they had a used car building and inside was a lime green 1972 Pantera.
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  That's Ford adjacent.
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  Yeah, I was like tell me about it because I was kind of gearhead and he's like well
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  This car's got no radios too loud And the former owner was a gt40 driver and he
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  pulled the motor and blueprinted it And it's got a solid lifter cam and you know
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  big holly double pumper higher compression and all that jazz and I said I'll take it.
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  Where do I sign?
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  And I took a salesman for a little drive.
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  This is before I learned to race because my father got me into racing.
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  Really?
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  I gave him a ride in the car one night at 140 miles an hour.
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  Same thing with the salesman.
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  My dad said, Oh, Jesus Christ, you're going to kill us all.
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  Go get some professional driving lessons.
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  I'll pay for them.
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  I insist the next week I was off to skip Barbara racing school.
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  This was the summer of 1983.
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  I met Paul Newman and Tom cruise was there in my class.
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  He was late.
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  I was friends with Newman from then on.
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  I actually dated his daughter later in life.
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  They were a wonderful, nice family.
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  They were just the nicest people.
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  And he and I raced together later on in a grand am IMSA.
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  American Le Mans series at Daytona and Sebring.
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  You know, my father got me into it.
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  You know, that's not something I would have guessed.
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  I don't know why I didn't put those two things together.
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  So was your dad passionate about cars and racing?
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  Lifetime Lincoln, man.
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  Oh no, he was a 55 mile an hour guy.
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  I usually had a driver, you know, in the Senate days, but he always
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  instilled responsibility and safety with me all throughout my life.
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  He said, listen, you know, you're a good responsible kid, but you're
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  21 and you need to learn to drive because this thing will kill you.
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  And he was right.
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  How it didn't kill myself.
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  I don't know.
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  That was a genuine 160 mile an hour car with that engine in it.
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  I did it late at night, one time with a friend.
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  He knew that it would save my life, and it probably did.
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  That's one of a few Widowmakers that you've owned.
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  I'll tell you that Pantera was a really nice handling car.
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  Engine would protrude into the cabin.
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  Talk about mid engine.
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  It was more mid engine than either the Ferrari 308 or the Boxster at the time.
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  And I've owned two Boxsters, and they handle like shit compared to a Pantera.
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  I mean, they're wonderful cars.
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  Beautiful sounding engines, but they don't have any torque.
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  Pantera would eat it alive.
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  The Pantera is a very neutral handler, and so you could go into a turn, a really
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  tight turn, hot, and lift off the gas, and the nose would point in gently.
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  Beautiful understeer built into it, just enough.
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  When I came back from racing school, you know, I could drive all of a sudden.
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  I noticed that the car was very neutral to balance, so I think
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  it was a very safe car, actually.
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  Your dad put you in racing school, but what did your mom think about all this?
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  Well, she was more of a car person than dad was.
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  She taught me to drive one day.
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  I was 12 years old.
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  Out in the rural Virginia in 1974, you know, it was no big deal for a parent
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  to have a kid drive them to the store.
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  Today it's a different deal.
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  She said, you know, put the booster seat in and said, drive.
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  There's the clutch.
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  That's the brake.
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  That's the gas.
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  It's four speeds.
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  She had a BMW.
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  It was a 3.
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  0 CS coupe.
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  And I said, okay.
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  And then dad, I think two years later, it was like, come on, I'm
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  going to teach you to drive my Bronco.
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  He had a 75 Bronco.
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  And I said, Oh, mom already taught me to drive when I was 12.
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  He's like, what?
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  Both parents instilled that in me.
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  Not to foreshadow what we're going to talk about in a little bit here, but did your
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  passion for Porsches start at an early age or did that come at a later time?
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  That came at a later time.
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  I had always noticed them and liked them.
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  Boy, I'll tell you, a friend told 911 turbo back then
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  before I bought the Pantera.
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  And I'm glad I didn't, was a novice driver and the trailing throttle
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  oversteer on those old ones is bad.
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  Once you master it, it's great.
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  Back then, I kind of knew that from reading road and track.
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  And I was like, you know what, it was the Pantera with badass.
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  You know, it had every bit of 370 or 80 horsepower, which
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  was a lot back then in 83.
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  It could take on anything in the world.
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  And in lime green, they saw you from a mile away and they
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  heard you from a mile away too.
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  They did.
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  The state trooper, one, one guy pulled me over in Charlottesville
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  and he said, Son, this car is too loud, too low, and too green.
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  And he gave me a ticket for no front license plate.
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  I don't know how I never got a ticket for speeding in that thing.
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  It's a miracle.
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  But I got a ticket for everything else.
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  Another Porsche question.
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  What was the first Porsche you ever purchased?
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  I had a couple of girlfriends with Volkswagen Bugs.
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  I was really impressed with those.
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  I had a girlfriend with a 914.
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  And I was amazed at how it handled in college.
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  And so, I bought it from her, but immediately sold it
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  two weeks later to a friend.
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  Friend of mine, but I was impressed with the handling.
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  My first Porsche that I bought was the race car actually.
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  I bought a nine 11 GT three R water cooled from the factory.
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  You know, it was factory race, car racing for a German team.
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  And they're like, ah, we had . You SISs, man.
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  They would call me Ner and so on.
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  Speed Vision at the time.
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  W-E-R-N-E-R.
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  Ferner Johan Vener.
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  Yeah.
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  before the race.
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  And so my first car was the race car.
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  But then when I got home, I bought a used 9 11 c four s from a friend.
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  I love that car, but the race car was awesome.
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  We had problems with the early water cool blocks like at the
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  date of going to 24 hours.
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  We blew through a Brock and practice.
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  But the factory FedEx is one overnight in Germany, a long block.
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  That's Porsche for you.
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  I mean, I raced on a German privateer team, but they had factory support in
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  the back door because they were German.
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  Let's expand upon that a little bit more.
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  So, you know, you went through racing school, Paul Newman, Tom
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  Cruz, all these kinds of things.
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  And then you find yourself in IMSA.
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  You know, what was ALMS then is still now IMSA today, soon to be merged with
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  the WEC to become whatever these new classes are that they keep talking about.
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  So late.
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  90s, early 2000s and three of the major cars that stick out.
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  One of them, you mentioned the 911 GT3R, Corvette C5R and a Toyota.
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  Of those three, which did you prefer?
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  Well, definitely the Porsche.
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  I'll tell you that the Toyota was a spec series.
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  It was a sports Toyota pro series.
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  They were very good mid engine.
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  open sort of a mini prototype.
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  I have a guy, Riley and Scott, why don't you move up into that?
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  And I said, no, I'm going to do a couple of years in a 9
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  11 before I do a prototype.
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  I had just done a year, two seasons of Grand Am and a Corvette
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  CE 5, which I really liked.
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  The only problem with the Corvettes was the slicks got greasy about 40 minutes
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  into their last now, depending on track conditions and heat, you'd be going
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  through the corner, just sliding around.
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  But the Porsche kept its weight on the rear wheels and it had a distinct
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  advantage in the corners and the Corvettes were allowed to have a little more power
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  so you could pass on the straights.
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  But.
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  I found I could dive into the corners and beat people that way in a Porsche.
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  I was like, why would anyone race anything else?
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  I mean, I really felt that way.
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  I don't plug for the Porsche factory or anything, but that car
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  saved my life on many occasions.
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  And I just got a real appreciation for the engineering that went into it.
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  It was evolutionary.
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  I had a brief couple races in a, in a rented air cooled, and then briefly,
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  I, I, I did a, the GT one with the twin Turbos, Newman raced that, and the
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  2001 Daytona did a race or two in that.
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  It had definitely had turbo lag problems and other electronic problems.
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  It wasn't the car, the car was set up.
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  Great.
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  We talked about it on an episode in season one about the gentleman drivers, and
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  I'm wondering, were you officially on a team or were you considered a gentleman?
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  Driver.
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  And I don't mean that in an offensive sort of way, more of a curiosity sort of thing.
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  I'm not even sure what the definition of gentleman driver is other
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  than just some rich ding dong, you know, going to rent a car.
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  I didn't do it that way.
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  My father told me some good advice.
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  He says he came to a race of mine when I was doing SCCA National in Austin Healy.
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  I said, I'm moving up to this Toyota Pro thing.
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  He'd always tell me never do anything half assed.
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  And don't jump into something that you're not prepared for.
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  And so I really was very conservative.
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  I raced with some very rich guys who would buy a brand new car, but they
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  didn't have jack shit per experience.
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  And they would obviously spin out and they couldn't take the
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  heat of professional racing.
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  That happened on a number of occasions, but I had five years in the Toyota
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  series, two years in the SCCA pro and the vets, and then the grandam
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  and the vets and other things.
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  I really worked my way up slowly because I didn't want to be this rich
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  dilettante, not knowing what the hell they're doing, but they've got the money
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  to buy two cars or a stable of cars.
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  I never did that.
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  I rented cars until the Porsche and then I had to buy it.
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  I enjoyed racing with drivers who came up through the ranks like I did
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  and didn't just buy their way in.
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  That's a really dangerous thing to do and people get killed all
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  the time and their arrogance.
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  They're like, I built this company.
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  I'm CEO.
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  I've made 700 million and I'm going to buy a brand new Ferrari race
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  car and they stuff it into a wall.
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  I've going to race at school of two weeks.
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  Pro racing is, it weeds out the children from the adults.
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  Some of the women I raced against, one was a paraplegic.
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  She was the best racing driver I ever saw.
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  Car caught fire.
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  She called herself out of the car by herself.
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  And we were all there clapping, you know, holy shit, you know,
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  that's real balls was that woman.
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  I always tell that to people, you know, I have girlfriends, you know,
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  you do all these macho things.
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  I said, Oh no, I raced against some very good women who take it very seriously.
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  And you would have come up through the same era as.
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  Like Lynn St.
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  James and Willie T.
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  Ribbs and all those folks that were in Trans Am in the 70s, 80s, and 90s as well.
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  Sort of.
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  I mean, I, I, I, 83, I was 21.
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  So I started early, but I went through the Skippy series for four or five years.
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  I really didn't think I was going to go beyond that.
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  I thought it was just going to be a hobby and everything.
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  My dad said, don't do anything half ass, so I didn't.
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  But by the time I got into the Toyota stuff, I won a minor
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  award for most improved driver.
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  It's like 40 of us.
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  And my crew chief said, it's time to move on.
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  The problem with those cars, they were momentum cars and
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  they didn't have a lot of power.
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  They would go.
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  145, but I wanted to be in a GT three or two.
• 12:02
  What do you think are some of the, other than the quadriplegic pulling
• 12:05
  herself out of the car at Sonoma?
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  I think it was the racetrack, if I recall the story correctly, what
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  other memorable moments from racing?
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  Like maybe some folks that, you know, you encountered that maybe
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  kind of puts you in all like one of the characters in your book.
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  Hans Stuck Senior.
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  Did you ever meet Hans Stuck, his son?
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  I wish I had.
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  I was going to race in Europe for the, not the Super Cup.
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  It was another series in 2002, but my back went in and I never got to Europe.
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  I was going to move there for a year.
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  I was going to live in Munich or somewhere with this German
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  team, but it all fell apart.
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  I met Newman early on, but my sister knew him.
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  I dated his daughter briefly for a few years, and he and I became good friends.
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  Around Daytona, 24 hours in 2001, it rained all night.
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  Oh, that was awful.
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  He was in the class above me.
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  I was in the GT3, he was in a GT1 Porsche.
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  And he would flip me the bird every time he passed me on the oval, you
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  know, on the high back in the rain.
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  You know, I'm like behind Dale Earnhardt, his son.
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  They were in the vets.
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  I'm like, Oh shit, what am I doing here?
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  You know, going 180 and you're following a little red light and all this spray.
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  You're praying the guy ahead of you knows where to break for the turn one.
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  I thought I was going to die that night.
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  Unreal.
• 13:13
  I didn't really meet any, I met, you know, Mario Andretti and some
• 13:16
  of the big drivers through Newman.
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  I would hang out in his IndyCar pits with the family.
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  And that was a lot of fun.
• 13:22
  I thought Andretti was kind of arrogant.
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  You know, it's like, don't beat your heroes.
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  You know, I was lucky.
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  I mean, Newman was this down to earth guy.
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  He was a really good driver.
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  I wish I was as good as he was.
• 13:31
  Of all the racetracks that you've driven on, What's your favorite?
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  Or your least favorite.
• 13:37
  Of the tracks you wish you had driven, is there still something on your bucket list?
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  Well, I can't drive anymore.
• 13:43
  My back's too bad.
• 13:44
  I'd always want to go to Le Mans.
• 13:46
  Check that out.
• 13:47
  My least favorite?
• 13:48
  In the old days, Mossport in Canada had a hill that went down to a bridge.
• 13:52
  I was there one time and they were like, All right, the drivers, I mean, the
• 13:55
  guy just died yesterday in practice.
• 13:57
  And we're all like, Oh shit, really?
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  They come down this hill at full speed, then there's no
• 14:02
  protection against the bridge.
• 14:04
  Now they fixed that over the years, but man, back in the early 90s when I
• 14:08
  was there, oh my god, that was awful.
• 14:11
  The rest of the track was great.
• 14:12
  Sears Point, you got me.
• 14:14
  How you drive that track fast, it's beyond my, I don't, weird setup,
• 14:18
  turn, I never could get it right.
• 14:20
  I never got it right.
• 14:21
  My favorite was Sebring.
• 14:22
  It was flat.
• 14:23
  You had the nostalgia of it.
• 14:24
  Turns were perfectly proportioned.
• 14:27
  It was pretty fast.
• 14:28
  There was room to pass, you know, on down the line, flat out best.
• 14:32
  And I like Summit Point, West Virginia, which is my hometown track.
• 14:36
  It's a really good track.
• 14:37
  It's bumpy as hell.
• 14:39
  But if you can learn to drive there fast, you'll learn to drive anywhere.
• 14:42
  That's very, very true.
• 14:43
  You've alluded a couple times, you know, back injury, back pain.
• 14:46
  Is that the reason you got out?
• 14:48
  What happened?
• 14:49
  What made you leave racing?
• 14:50
  No pain.
• 14:51
  I was getting ready for the 2002 season.
• 14:54
  I did a few practice runs in the 9 11, went back to the
• 14:58
  hotel, and I was like, oh my.
• 15:00
  God, I chugged a half a bottle of Tylenol and nothing happened.
• 15:04
  And I just said, there's something wrong with me.
• 15:06
  And I went to the doctor and I'll never forget it.
• 15:08
  He laughed at my MRI.
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  He said, you're done.
• 15:11
  Two races prior to that in practice, I was at road Atlanta and one
• 15:15
  of the Audi prototypes bumped me going in the downhill full speed.
• 15:18
  And I spun around into the wall.
• 15:20
  I don't know, 140.
• 15:22
  I can't remember what it was.
• 15:23
  Pushed the engine up against the firewall.
• 15:25
  Didn't break through.
• 15:26
  Car saved my life and I blacked out for a few seconds, but it was just
• 15:29
  an aggregation of all my accidents.
• 15:32
  I was riding Harley's and I was in good shape.
• 15:35
  I would go to the gym and I just thought I was invincible.
• 15:37
  I was 40 years old.
• 15:38
  I had just turned 40.
• 15:40
  And uh, the doctor's like, you got compound fractures.
• 15:42
  You've got fractures in your pelvis.
• 15:44
  You didn't know about.
• 15:45
  I was like, Oh, really?
• 15:46
  And he's got, you've got two smashed discs.
• 15:49
  You're done.
• 15:49
  And then weirdly enough, couple months later, I figured I'd take
• 15:53
  out the 2002 season and get an operation and get back into shape.
• 15:56
  I went head over heels and a mountain bike on the street about seven miles an hour.
• 16:01
  And I hit everything.
• 16:02
  I broke my right femur.
• 16:04
  I had about 30 fractures in my pelvis.
• 16:07
  That's when the compound fractures in the lower lumbar vertebrae started.
• 16:11
  I was just a mess.
• 16:12
  Wow.
• 16:13
  I'm still in pain to this day.
• 16:14
  I had three operations.
• 16:15
  This is really the jumping off point as to where you get to your writing career.
• 16:20
  Let me put a pin in that for just a moment.
• 16:22
  Let's come back and revisit this being in pain, coming off the
• 16:25
  bike, your last accident there.
• 16:27
  Thanks Some lighter hearted questions before we get into the
• 16:29
  meat of the conversation, which is your book series, little Anton,
• 16:33
  I've seen your collection of cars.
• 16:34
  So I know it's quite eclectic, but what are your favorite kinds of cars?
• 16:38
  And what would you consider the sexiest car of all time?
• 16:41
  You'd have to put it in a specific category, the sexiest car all time.
• 16:46
  If I had to pick one.
• 16:47
  a sports GT car.
• 16:49
  I would do the Maserati Ghibli of the early seventies.
• 16:52
  I'm an artist.
• 16:53
  I can tell you there's not one awkward line or anything on that car.
• 16:58
  I don't, I've never owned one, but I've seen one in person.
• 17:00
  It's so low and proportioned so beautifully.
• 17:03
  And actually it's a very good car too.
• 17:05
  I mean, Maserati could really build a car with, with that engine was raced.
• 17:08
  It's just perfect.
• 17:09
  My back wasn't bad.
• 17:10
  I'd probably invest in one.
• 17:12
  It's such an amazing car to look at.
• 17:15
  It's breathtaking in person.
• 17:17
  ferrari, Daytona and GTO other one sedan would be continental suicide door.
• 17:25
  own.
• 17:25
  I've owned it for al my wife and I just stare
• 17:32
  Post war four door American car ever made, in my opinion.
• 17:36
  The Ford and Lincoln guys got it right.
• 17:39
  The proportions, I mean, the Kennedy White House was filled with them.
• 17:42
  Because Robert McNamara used to be CEO of Ford.
• 17:45
  And Jackie Kennedy driving.
• 17:47
  I remember the Kennedys driving the cars when I was a little
• 17:49
  kid in the 60s, Cape Cod.
• 17:51
  My sisters were friends with them.
• 17:52
  I remember, you know, you get 10 kids on the back of the convertible.
• 17:55
  Those two cars, but I have to say for America, the 63 Stingray split window.
• 18:01
  I'd pick that over all other cars.
• 18:04
  My God, that thing is just perfect.
• 18:06
  What do you consider like the ugliest car ever?
• 18:08
  I don't.
• 18:09
  That's one of the questions in our meetings that people pass around.
• 18:12
  There's a million answers.
• 18:13
  You know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
• 18:15
  One person's idea of something good looking is another
• 18:18
  person's cool and weird.
• 18:20
  There's no answer to that.
• 18:22
  That is the most neutral answer we've ever received to that question.
• 18:26
  And I'm not, I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
• 18:27
  There's some ugly cars out there.
• 18:29
  To someone, it's always cool.
• 18:31
  That's very true.
• 18:32
  So are there still some cars on your bucket list that you'd like to own
• 18:36
  outside of, you know, a couple of the ones that you've already mentioned?
• 18:39
  49 Cadillac.
• 18:40
  Fastback, sedan, definitely on my list as my next car.
• 18:44
  I don't want to drive a super duper expensive car.
• 18:47
  It makes me a little nervous because I like to drive my cars.
• 18:49
  I barely even clean them.
• 18:51
  I'm in the poet's group, you know, that category.
• 18:53
  We just drive our cars.
• 18:54
  I don't go to shows and do the trophy thing.
• 18:56
  I could care less.
• 18:57
  I keep them relatively dust free, but I don't wash them a lot.
• 19:01
  Pre war cars, I just can't do anymore.
• 19:03
  I need power steering now.
• 19:04
  That bike accident ruptured my rotator cuff and it's just gotten worse, babe.
• 19:08
  I'm almost 60 now.
• 19:10
  Is there anything modern that would be on your list?
• 19:12
  Something that's caught your eye in the last maybe 20 or 30 years?
• 19:15
  Oh yeah.
• 19:16
  I go to this local Sterling, Virginia Ferrari dealership.
• 19:20
  I know the guy.
• 19:20
  He's Italian.
• 19:21
  He likes to drive fast.
• 19:22
  So I drive all the new modern Ferraris and back there they got a road circuit.
• 19:26
  We really hammer the hell out of them.
• 19:27
  So I've test driven all of them.
• 19:28
  The new, uh, Roma looks nice.
• 19:30
  But all these new sports cars, they look like angry insects,
• 19:34
  you know, from a sci fi movie.
• 19:36
  I just can't get over the styling.
• 19:38
  Maybe that's just my age.
• 19:39
  I just don't like it.
• 19:40
  Everything's so techie in the Ferraris now.
• 19:42
  I have a 1968 365 and that's just such a pretty car.
• 19:45
  Beautiful, elegant car with no fuss and electronics at all.
• 19:49
  I'm guessing I'm kind of a Luddite that way, but as far as
• 19:51
  new cars, that's a good question.
• 19:53
  What would I like to drive?
• 19:55
  I think the Bugattis are silly, even though Porsche has
• 19:57
  a hand in that engineering.
• 19:59
  Now, professor Porsche would admire the design engineering, but he
• 20:03
  would not have liked the weight.
• 20:04
  He was into lightweight, and so was Jerry, of course, his son, and so to see
• 20:08
  this behemoth, you know, 16 cylinders and 50 radiators and 20 intercoolers and
• 20:12
  50 turbos, even the professor, I think, would say, whoa, it's just too much.
• 20:20
  I think it's, it's just a.
• 20:21
  Toy for weirdos.
• 20:22
  I blow down in my old age, I, I don't get the rush of adrenaline.
• 20:26
  I, it's not pleasurable anymore.
• 20:28
  I collect old Cadillacs and Packers.
• 20:30
  My wife and I just love cruising.
• 20:31
  Uh, we still have 3, 5, 6 Ferdinand that we drive.
• 20:35
  I go around corners fast in that, but you know, that's only got 105 horse.
• 20:39
  That's a lot for a 3 56.
• 20:40
  Yeah, it's got the 1800 cc kit on it.
• 20:43
  Oh, there you go.
• 20:44
  Maybe 110 on a cool day.
• 20:47
  Boy, it's, it's so much fun to drive and it's actually rides pretty smooth.
• 20:51
  I can get away with it.
• 20:51
  I couldn't ride it for four hours, but I can do an hour and
• 20:54
  a half without hurting too bad.
• 20:56
  It's funny.
• 20:56
  We're talking about a 356 here for just a minute because, you know, I'm a
• 20:59
  petrol head of a different generation.
• 21:01
  I grew up in the era of the 930 and the Countach and the Testarossa
• 21:05
  and the F40 and things like that.
• 21:07
  So those cars get my attention, but I've always had an appreciation
• 21:10
  for air cooled Porsches because That's what I grew up with as well.
• 21:14
  There's a common misconception when it comes to who designed what oddly
• 21:17
  enough, I recently had a mutual friend of ours, Sal Fanelli on an
• 21:21
  episode of break fixed as well, to talk about Porsche diesel tractors.
• 21:24
  And he dove into the Porsche history as well.
• 21:27
  And you know, who's designing what, and when the tractors came out, that
• 21:30
  was still during the last couple of years of professor Porsche's life.
• 21:34
  And I'm like.
• 21:34
  Did he actually design the tractors, which kind of begged the question.
• 21:37
  As I looked over things, he designed a beetle ferry designed a three 56
• 21:43
  and Bootsy designed the nine 11.
• 21:45
  So it's kind of interesting to see the generations of the Porsche family
• 21:48
  and how they've evolved everything.
• 21:50
  People don't crack the big books.
• 21:51
  I talked to the guy at the Gamoon Museum for hours with a translator.
• 21:55
  No, no, no, no.
• 21:56
  Professor Portia designed the first 356.
• 21:58
  Ferry took it from there, but no, he designed it.
• 22:01
  Portia, people forget his World War I and earlier inventions.
• 22:05
  Before the tractor, he invented a front motor tiller tractor in
• 22:09
  the teens, 1914 or something.
• 22:12
  For the German people, he was always about efficient designs of things.
• 22:16
  You know, he was an airplane engine designer, designed engines
• 22:19
  for flying boats, all in my book.
• 22:20
  People always think, you know, the beetle and everything.
• 22:23
  He designed a lot of different things.
• 22:24
  He was a well known genius in the 20s, teens and 20s, Germany and Austria.
• 22:29
  It wasn't this fame that he got with Hitler.
• 22:31
  Hitler was a nobody when he met.
• 22:33
  Porsche in 27.
• 22:34
  Porsche was a famous man.
• 22:35
  Him and Bugatti were walking.
• 22:37
  That's a true story.
• 22:38
  Lerner and his entourage show up stinking like motor oil and armpits.
• 22:41
  And they were like, no, this guy's a whack job.
• 22:44
  The old man designed the tractor as well.
• 22:47
  Ferry designed the 550, I think, you know, obviously, and I'll, you know,
• 22:50
  the later 356 race cars and all that, the four cylinder race car series,
• 22:55
  and then everything after that.
• 22:57
  Bootsy, you know, I've No, the old man did the 356 his prototype for it still
• 23:01
  exists somewhere and it's pre war.
• 23:04
  It didn't have an engine, I don't think it might be in the Porsche museum.
• 23:07
  I can't remember.
• 23:08
  The 356 was designed loosely based on a Berlin to Rome aerodynamic
• 23:13
  car, but that was basically the Genesis for the 356, the chassis and
• 23:17
  everything, sort of the aerodynamics.
• 23:19
  People get a lot of that stuff wrong.
• 23:20
  It's no wonder because road and track and all these car magazines, those guys.
• 23:24
  They don't do much research.
• 23:25
  They do the minimum.
• 23:27
  They've got a deadline.
• 23:28
  When I started this book, I'm a very detail oriented person as
• 23:31
  Porsche was, and the Germans are known for that and Austrians.
• 23:34
  I hate it when Hollywood movies like Indiana Jones or whatever
• 23:38
  have even war movies and books and things, they get the details wrong.
• 23:43
  I went to extra lengths to get the details, right?
• 23:46
  I don't introduce a gun or a plane or a car until, you know, The moment
• 23:51
  in history that it was introduced.
• 23:53
  I don't play fast and loose with facts.
• 23:55
  I hate that in movies and books and things.
• 23:58
  Oh, they'll never notice.
• 23:59
  And most people don't.
• 24:00
  I understand that.
• 24:01
  And so I, in my books, I get a lot of compliments over the email of people
• 24:05
  like, you really sweated the details.
• 24:07
  You've got things right.
• 24:08
  I went on the Axis forum and the one guy that said, Oh yeah, you get
• 24:12
  things really right in your book.
• 24:13
  You don't screw around.
• 24:14
  So I'm very proud of that.
• 24:15
  I do have revisionist history, but There's a lot of true stories in there mixed in.
• 24:20
  I do write fantasy, but it's all based in probable reality.
• 24:24
  And Peinkel does something, I put the serial number, you
• 24:27
  know, it's that kind of detail.
• 24:29
  I don't want World War II, especially the, you know, the German buffs coming
• 24:33
  after me and going, this guy's a hack.
• 24:34
  But, you know, I, I write every book I can on the old man.
• 24:37
  And, uh, no, he doesn't get enough credit.
• 24:40
  Everyone thinks Ferry Porsche did everything.
• 24:41
  And it's like, nope.
• 24:42
  He didn't.
• 24:43
  He helped his father.
• 24:44
  He was there every step of the way.
• 24:45
  And he was a very good engineer and designer in his own right.
• 24:48
  A lot of it is, you know, the father and son.
• 24:50
  Very much so.
• 24:51
  And especially in those last years of his life, because a lot of
• 24:54
  people also don't realize that he was put in jail or in prison for
• 24:57
  being associated with, you know, potentially with war crimes and whatnot.
• 25:01
  And obviously with the third Reich and all that, because Hitler did have him
• 25:04
  under contract to build the people's car and all that kind of thing.
• 25:07
  Another reason the French put Ferdinand Porsche in prison for two years.
• 25:11
  Not just because of his war crimes.
• 25:13
  He was just an engineer.
• 25:14
  You know, I'm not going to debate that, that they pressured all the industry.
• 25:17
  Join the SS.
• 25:18
  Before the war, he had been working with Renault, had licensed
• 25:21
  his torsion bar suspension.
• 25:23
  I can't remember if there was some foul deal going on at Peugeot.
• 25:27
  And they got pissed at him, and then the war started.
• 25:29
  And so that was another reason why they kept him in jail, was that bad
• 25:32
  deal with the two French car companies.
• 25:34
  So I just want to throw that out there that, and in my new book, Porsche, you
• 25:37
  know, he admits that they've got 20, 000 Russians, Jews, and other people
• 25:42
  working at the Wolfsburg factory.
• 25:43
  And my character B shakes him and says, don't you dare go up
• 25:46
  against the SS, they'll kill you.
• 25:48
  And they don't care who you are.
• 25:49
  I think that you're right.
• 25:50
  It's pulling a thread.
• 25:52
  Like Ferry kind of continued, you know, the 356 A, Bs and Cs and
• 25:55
  all those that are more popular than the earlier Khmun cars.
• 25:59
  You know, I associate with Ferry specifically because he was left
• 26:04
  with the companies like, what are we going to do with this now?
• 26:06
  And they had to keep things going, put bread on the table, et cetera.
• 26:08
  And obviously they had a reputation to maintain having that legacy
• 26:11
  that his father had already built.
• 26:13
  Kind of interesting how all that played out.
• 26:14
  plays out and much like the intro, it's those unsung stories.
• 26:18
  It's kind of clearing up some of the more commercialized and watered down
• 26:22
  versions of Porsche story, even Enzo story, Lamborghini, going back into
• 26:26
  all these legacy car designers and families that are now known worldwide.
• 26:31
  And I have a very pointed.
• 26:33
  Portia question to ask you this question came up internally a long time ago
• 26:37
  and it raged a really fierce debate about ethnicity versus citizenship.
• 26:42
  And actually Portia senior was the crux of the argument, oddly enough,
• 26:47
  and it was whether he was Austrian or check and where did he align himself
• 26:51
  and how did he identify as a person?
• 26:54
  And so I want to ask you this.
• 26:55
  Two ways.
• 26:56
  One, because you've found a way to bring his story to life and fill in a lot of
• 27:01
  gaps, especially through your research.
• 27:03
  And two, because you are a known Porsche historian.
• 27:06
  So what is the truth there?
• 27:08
  Was he Czech or was he Austrian?
• 27:09
  Well, both.
• 27:10
  He was born in the Austro Hungarian empire.
• 27:13
  In 1886, he was an Austro Hungarian.
• 27:16
  You know, that region is Bohemia.
• 27:18
  So you could say he's a Bohemian, which he was.
• 27:21
  Today, it's like Silesia and part of the Sudetenland.
• 27:24
  So he was all that, but he did identify with Austria.
• 27:27
  He never really identified with Germany, though.
• 27:29
  He was always Austrian in his heart.
• 27:31
  My aunt was Austrian, and so she was able to give me some intel on that.
• 27:35
  Austrians are very proud of their heritage.
• 27:37
  They call the Germans pivka is the German pronunciation.
• 27:40
  And I say that in the book, he and Oscar make fun of the Germans.
• 27:43
  It's like someone from New York talking about California.
• 27:46
  It's like, well, we're Americans, but not really.
• 27:49
  Yeah.
• 27:50
  I don't know what language they're speaking.
• 27:51
  And so there are subtle differences in the German from region to region, Swabian
• 27:55
  German versus Prussian and other things.
• 27:57
  So, People identified with region, but he identified
• 28:01
  himself as Bohemian and Austrian.
• 28:02
  Part of the argument was, it didn't matter what the paperwork said.
• 28:05
  It didn't matter that the lines had been redistricted, and the area that he lived
• 28:09
  in is now what we know as Czechoslovakia.
• 28:12
  It wasn't back then.
• 28:13
  Exactly, exactly.
• 28:15
  person, you identify a certain way and we could extrapolate that
• 28:18
  into a lot of different things.
• 28:20
  But in this sense, patriotically, you know, his ethnicity.
• 28:24
  So I wanted to confirm at least from your knowledge that yes,
• 28:27
  Portia senior, if you asked him, he would have said, I'm Austrian.
• 28:31
  Yes.
• 28:31
  And he was proud of being from Bohemia.
• 28:33
  They've changed the name of this town from Mappersdorf to something
• 28:36
  else, but he was Austrian.
• 28:38
  Hitler had an affinity for him.
• 28:39
  He was a fellow Austrian.
• 28:40
  People always think Hitler's, German.
• 28:42
  He's not, he's Austrian.
• 28:43
  And for us here in America, what's the difference.
• 28:46
  But over there, there's a big difference.
• 28:48
  Like I said, when I did this Porsche tour and history mission
• 28:51
  that I did in Germany, I went to Germany twice to research the book.
• 28:53
  He was Austrian and my aunt was Austrian.
• 28:55
  And they were like, Oh, don't you ever call us Germans.
• 28:58
  They're friendly.
• 28:59
  And they've always had cross pollinization.
• 29:01
  It's a myth that Austrians welcomed Hitler with open arms in 1938.
• 29:05
  Most of them were not happy with the Anschluss.
• 29:08
  And Porsche and his family, I wrote it that they're not happy either.
• 29:11
  My editor liked that quote.
• 29:12
  I have a very short chapter of him and Ferry listening to radio.
• 29:15
  And my editor liked that above all else in the book.
• 29:17
  Hitler favored Portia.
• 29:19
  Obviously, he contracted Portia, well known at the time, as you
• 29:23
  said, Hitler was a nobody when Portia was already on the scene.
• 29:26
  It made me wonder, though, what Outside of fame and notoriety and
• 29:30
  the celebrity that Porsche had, Hitler was very much a Mercedes man.
• 29:36
  Let's put it that way.
• 29:38
  So why didn't he go to Mercedes and have them build the people's car?
• 29:43
  A group that was already established.
• 29:45
  Porsche didn't have a factory.
• 29:46
  Porsche didn't have the assembly line and all these people behind him
• 29:49
  to build the Volkswagen originally.
• 29:52
  So That's a part of history.
• 29:54
  I've never understood why Porsche above Auto Union or Horch, DKW or
• 29:59
  NSW or Wanderer or any of these folks that were still around, but
• 30:03
  Mercedes above all, because he was such a fanatic about Benzes.
• 30:07
  It's a complex story and most people don't know it because it is so complex.
• 30:11
  I write it as clear as I can in the book.
• 30:13
  He opened his Porsche design firm in 1930, in the middle of the depression.
• 30:17
  The lightweight, inexpensive people's car was not his idea or Hitler's.
• 30:22
  It had been floating around Germany for a while.
• 30:25
  French had an idea to do it too.
• 30:27
  The problem was steel costs money and engineering costs money and
• 30:32
  got to sell millions of these couldn't figure out how to do it.
• 30:35
  Cars were a luxury item, even for middle class people, they were a luxury item.
• 30:39
  And so Joseph Gans, I think was the originator of his lightweight car,
• 30:44
  which, and Porsche had met with him.
• 30:45
  People say, Oh, he stole his idea.
• 30:47
  Well, everyone was stealing each other's ideas.
• 30:49
  He admired Gans, and I wrote that in the book.
• 30:52
  Saw Gans's car, it was very promising, but I could do better because his
• 30:56
  engine's water cooled and all, too many things to break down.
• 30:59
  Hitler had the idea.
• 31:00
  Mercedes had toyed around with it.
• 31:02
  They couldn't figure out how to make it work economically.
• 31:05
  A lot of the horch is luxury.
• 31:07
  Auto union wasn't interested.
• 31:08
  It was just a third rail thing.
• 31:10
  It was like, we can't do it.
• 31:12
  And it took Hitler and the Reichsbank and everyone to force it to be done.
• 31:16
  The car manufacturers didn't want to do it because Mercedes is the luxury brand.
• 31:19
  It wasn't like today where they've got a million cars for sale.
• 31:22
  They had like five.
• 31:23
  And they didn't want to build some dinky toy.
• 31:26
  Oh no.
• 31:27
  And Porsche had the dream to do it, and Hitler had the dream to do it.
• 31:31
  I think Alfred Rosenberger and Hans Stuck had something to do with it.
• 31:34
  It's a little unclear, but they ended up in Hitler's office and they were
• 31:37
  like, we can make this work, but man, we're going to need money to do it.
• 31:41
  And he's like, don't worry about that.
• 31:42
  I need to auto mobilize the populace.
• 31:44
  That's a verb.
• 31:45
  People think I made that up.
• 31:46
  I didn't.
• 31:47
  Hitler was very enamored with Mercedes.
• 31:49
  They picked him up at Landsberg prison in 1923.
• 31:52
  with two supercharged S Class.
• 31:55
  They knew the value of political people on the road.
• 31:57
  Mercedes was trying to market itself.
• 31:59
  Hitler was a bit of a gearhead.
• 32:01
  In his letter, which I publish in the book, I publish it verbatim.
• 32:04
  He says, I need, require this and such gear ratios and for this amount
• 32:07
  of RPM and which is more efficient.
• 32:09
  He had some knowledge of that.
• 32:11
  He wasn't stupid.
• 32:12
  He was just crazy as a madman, but he wasn't stupid by any means until the drugs
• 32:17
  and everything later on, or got to his head, he's a megalomaniac and all that.
• 32:22
  But in the early days, he definitely a psychopath, but that really didn't mature.
• 32:26
  But when Portia met him, the stories I was able to piece together was Portia
• 32:30
  and Bugatti were not impressed with this politician, but Portia was impressed with
• 32:34
  the letter that he wrote to Jacob Verley.
• 32:37
  And said, God, this guy's not half idiot after all.
• 32:40
  He likes cars and everything like this.
• 32:42
  And it really is true that Hitler knew who Porsche was.
• 32:45
  The troops in the trenches in World War I, the German troops, they
• 32:48
  know who was designing the Fokkers and the engines and all that.
• 32:52
  It was the Red Baron and everybody.
• 32:53
  But it was Porsche.
• 32:54
  They knew.
• 32:55
  He was a famous man.
• 32:56
  And of course he did artillery trains and mortar stuff.
• 32:59
  And he developed a lot of things.
• 33:01
  That history is forgotten.
• 33:02
  That's why I made this book an epic throughout 45 years or more, because
• 33:08
  I wanted to showcase his early life.
• 33:10
  No one talks about it.
• 33:11
  And I didn't know a lot about it until I started to research it.
• 33:14
  It was astounding.
• 33:15
  He was recognized as a genius in World War I.
• 33:18
  So as we dive into your book a little bit, you reminded me of that scene with
• 33:21
  at the beginning stages of the book where It's told almost from Professor Porsche's
• 33:27
  perspective where he's there working with the Mercedes race team whatnot and
• 33:30
  there's Bugattis chasing them down in another one of the, in his own vehicle.
• 33:34
  And he refers to him as this arrogant Frenchman.
• 33:36
  And that's another thing that's always funny is Bugatti is
• 33:38
  associated somehow with Italian cars, even though they're French.
• 33:42
  He's French.
• 33:43
  It's, it's an Italian sounding name.
• 33:45
  I found that whole scene to be extremely comical and I think it's a great
• 33:49
  jumping off point for going back to what we put a pin in, which was how
• 33:52
  did you go from pro racing driver to automotive historian slash author?
• 33:57
  Well, I've always been interested in history.
• 33:59
  My degree at University of Virginia was in Russian history and Russian studies,
• 34:04
  Cold War and all the whole history.
• 34:06
  So I had a history background.
• 34:07
  And a good friend of mine, when I was laid up in 2006, you
• 34:10
  know, I was in terrible pain.
• 34:12
  He said, look, buy a laptop and teach yourself to write.
• 34:14
  You wrote really good, funny stuff in high school.
• 34:16
  You need to do it.
• 34:17
  I was like, all right.
• 34:19
  I didn't really want to do it.
• 34:20
  That's how I got into it.
• 34:22
  I had a history background.
• 34:23
  I traveled all over the world with my dad carrying his suitcase.
• 34:26
  I went to Russia with him to meet Gorbachev with Bob
• 34:28
  Dole and a bunch of senators.
• 34:30
  I was the only one who knew anything about Russian history or culture.
• 34:32
  And these guys were like, Oh, we're not going to the Bolshoi.
• 34:35
  You're going to go to bed early.
• 34:35
  And I said, every one of you is going to go to the Bolshoi.
• 34:37
  That's a rude thing to do.
• 34:39
  The Russian people take their culture seriously, their literature and all this.
• 34:43
  And, uh, I was, read a lot of books on World War II.
• 34:46
  I, I can label myself now as a World War II historian.
• 34:49
  I have enough knowledge.
• 34:50
  And of course I'm a portrait historian.
• 34:52
  Honestly, when I went to the museum.
• 34:54
  They were very nice, but they didn't know jack shit.
• 34:56
  And they would not talk about World War II.
• 34:58
  And they didn't know anything.
• 34:59
  I had to go to Gmund.
• 35:00
  I had an Austrian guy on my Porsche tour.
• 35:02
  And he said, I know some people that know some people.
• 35:05
  And I talked to people in their 90s who had been through the war.
• 35:08
  This is 10 years ago.
• 35:10
  So I had firsthand accounts.
• 35:11
  I met an old woman who had met the professor when she was a little girl.
• 35:14
  One's degree of separation, you know, the museum and all this stuff.
• 35:17
  They want that World War II history to go away.
• 35:20
  In Germany, they've got this thing.
• 35:21
  Well, if they outlaw the swastika and they outlaw fascism, it'll go away.
• 35:26
  It won't, they're doing everyone a disservice by trying to ignore
• 35:30
  it in some ways, the Porsche Museum needs to get over it.
• 35:33
  I mean, they should have a model of the Porsche Tiger
• 35:35
  tank and that's in my new book.
• 35:36
  You know, that's another thing that I was surprised.
• 35:39
  It was somewhat referenced, but not directly in the early chapters.
• 35:43
  Cause you do cover a lot of the world war one efforts and some
• 35:46
  of those scenes, I love the way they were graphically represented.
• 35:50
  He's out there on the mountain.
• 35:51
  It's cold breath of the soldiers, all this stuff and the anxiety.
• 35:54
  And it painted this awesome picture.
• 35:56
  And I liked the fact that the book isn't too technical and having a
• 35:59
  background, even as a petrol head, it resonates anybody that has any
• 36:04
  mechanical background, you get it.
• 36:05
  It's not so over the top that my wife couldn't read it.
• 36:08
  Not that I want to insult her intelligence.
• 36:09
  Cause she's very bright, young lady.
• 36:11
  It's very different than what I expected as I was diving into the book.
• 36:15
  So.
• 36:15
  It's the great doorstop.
• 36:19
  No, I mean, I don't want to be overly complimentary, but what I, what I want
• 36:22
  to say is it's interesting how you were able to fill in the gaps and get all
• 36:27
  this research material on something.
• 36:29
  I don't want to say as obscure as Dr.
• 36:32
  Portia's life, but something that isn't as annotated as let's say Henry Ford's
• 36:36
  life is right where you can dive into the history of Ford and figure out a lot of
• 36:41
  things and fill in the gaps very easily.
• 36:42
  Plus Ford was a Nazi lover too.
• 36:44
  I mean, he.
• 36:45
  Portia hated the Nazis and the SS, but it's funny.
• 36:47
  Henry Ford was good friends with Hitler as well.
• 36:50
  You were able to thread it all together and piece it all together
• 36:52
  based on interviews, scraps of information, stuff that people probably
• 36:56
  wrote down for you on a napkin.
• 36:58
  But the thing about the book that really got my attention
• 37:00
  is it's very dialogue forward.
• 37:03
  I've read plenty of historical fiction, you know, alternate
• 37:05
  history books and things like that.
• 37:07
  They're very dry.
• 37:08
  They're very, whatever.
• 37:08
  And, and I'm not saying.
• 37:09
  That's what was my prejudice going into this book.
• 37:12
  But what I came to realize was there's these characters, there's
• 37:15
  these other stories, there's these, these underlying arcs.
• 37:18
  And how do you just conjure up this world around Dr.
• 37:22
  Portia?
• 37:23
  It wasn't easy and I'm not patting myself on the back.
• 37:26
  I knew the story somewhat of the silver arrows and the auto union silver
• 37:31
  fish, which most people don't get.
• 37:32
  ever.
• 37:33
  They call them the Silverfish.
• 37:34
  And actually, Hitler picked the color as their national racing color.
• 37:37
  He polished an aluminum car in the 20s once.
• 37:40
  I think Neubauer did it to save weight, but that was a myth.
• 37:43
  The silver paint was made with fish scales.
• 37:45
  I put that in the book.
• 37:47
  Porsche's, you know, in World War I, he really was out there in the mud,
• 37:50
  and he had that electric land train.
• 37:53
  He was very proud of that, and it did work.
• 37:55
  It hauled, you know, mortars and stuff up the Austrian Alps to fight the Italians.
• 38:00
  And, uh, he really was on the front lines.
• 38:02
  The books just say he was there and nothing else.
• 38:05
  And so I had to fill in, you know, he was from a family of pacifists.
• 38:08
  He hated war, but he was also very patriotic about Austria
• 38:12
  and then later Germany.
• 38:13
  But, you know, his boys were at the front dying.
• 38:16
  And to ask an engineer, we need this airplane engine or Design
• 38:19
  this or this electric train thing.
• 38:21
  He's going to do it because you know, those are his young countrymen dying.
• 38:25
  And you know, his story with his brother is true.
• 38:28
  His older brother.
• 38:29
  That's the name of the book.
• 38:30
  There's not much.
• 38:31
  I tried to find some of the family members to tell me exactly
• 38:33
  what happened, but no one knew.
• 38:35
  But I'm not going to spoil that for the readers.
• 38:37
  The book is a tough read for other than for gear heads or World War II people.
• 38:41
  It is a tougher read, but I wrote it kind of with that.
• 38:44
  I was like, you know, regular folks aren't going to read this.
• 38:47
  And then it, the story became more metaphysical and it got bigger.
• 38:50
  It's really three novels in a long story format.
• 38:53
  Portia, you know, it was hard because the books are just technical.
• 38:56
  And I had to piece together scraps, like stale bread and the cookies in his pocket.
• 39:01
  That's true.
• 39:02
  He and his brother Oscar were close.
• 39:04
  You know, they had long talks.
• 39:05
  They would go hunting for stag and mushrooms and his wife would make
• 39:08
  mushroom soup and, you know, these little things that gave him humanity.
• 39:12
  Whereas all the books are about racing and technical and the Volkswagen
• 39:15
  Beetle and Hitler and the Tiger Tank.
• 39:17
  And little about the man, what he was really like.
• 39:19
  And so I had to piece that together from a million different That's why
• 39:22
  the book took me 10 years to write.
• 39:24
  But it takes on this life of almost a biography.
• 39:27
  It is his biography.
• 39:29
  I wanted to do that in a novel format.
• 39:31
  My editor had a cow with it, but we made it work.
• 39:34
  It's still too long for one story.
• 39:36
  I should have split it into two.
• 39:37
  Two or three different books with beginnings and
• 39:39
  endings, but it is what it is.
• 39:42
  It's just three books.
• 39:43
  One of my things that I had to come to terms with as I've been reading it,
• 39:47
  fully admitting here for the audience that, you know, I haven't finished
• 39:50
  it yet because it is quite long.
• 39:52
  I'm on the old version of Little Anton, which is in two volumes.
• 39:55
  The first one is massive and the second one is like a riot.
• 39:58
  It's like an appendix.
• 39:59
  It's the first volume.
• 40:00
  Brick and the stick.
• 40:01
  Yeah, exactly.
• 40:02
  The brick and the stick.
• 40:03
  Exactly.
• 40:03
  It's my wife's name for it.
• 40:04
  Yeah.
• 40:05
  As far as I know, I could be wrong.
• 40:07
  The only single novel that's sold in a three part set,
• 40:11
  I don't know of any others.
• 40:12
  My publicist and my editor, we are all like, no one's ever done this before.
• 40:16
  And I was like, well, I'll do it.
• 40:17
  . Yeah, there you go.
• 40:18
  But that leads to my question and, and kind of my thought is when I tried to
• 40:22
  grasp, when I was reading it, and for somebody that may be reading this book
• 40:25
  for the first time, what you realize is.
• 40:27
  You dive right into the Porsche family story in the early, early days, Dr.
• 40:32
  Porsche as a kid, and it kind of builds from there quite quickly into him being
• 40:36
  a young man and getting into engineering.
• 40:38
  I've seen some other things explained about his early days and how he got
• 40:42
  into electronics and he was auditing classes in Austria, and I've seen other
• 40:46
  versions of that story too, but I liked the way you painted that picture and
• 40:50
  how you got us to his as an adult, but what ends up happening though, as you're
• 40:54
  reading it, suddenly you're introduced.
• 40:55
  These other characters, to use your words, a mad cat cast of characters in this book.
• 41:01
  And I love the personalities that you brought forth of, let's say the Mercedes
• 41:05
  engineers, you know, and folks like you mentioned, like Neubauer or even Hans
• 41:09
  Stuck's father, Hans Stuck senior, right.
• 41:10
  And things like that, where you personify them, they become real suddenly because
• 41:13
  they are too far in the past for any of us reading it now to have been maybe intimate
• 41:18
  with their story or having even met them.
• 41:19
  But what ends up happening is you flip the script suddenly and you're like, wow,
• 41:22
  we're talking about B and we're on safari in Africa and we're setting the story.
• 41:26
  And I'm like, wait, this is like a whole nother book,
• 41:28
  which kind of posed a question.
• 41:30
  It's like, why didn't we just stick with Portia in one book and then do some
• 41:33
  sort of crossover and do B in her book.
• 41:35
  But I, as I'm reading it more at first, I was like, oh, maybe this is
• 41:39
  going to be to quote a movie title.
• 41:41
  And you know, Melvin goes to dinner, which is like, I come to Jesus type of thing.
• 41:44
  No, it's not that this has to play out this way.
• 41:48
  In order for us to get to where this all comes to a head and all
• 41:52
  these characters are now interacting with each other very, very closely.
• 41:56
  And so that makes it really exciting.
• 41:58
  I did a very complex thing for my first book, but that's
• 42:02
  me, you know, the Porsche way.
• 42:03
  I designed it like a, like a race car.
• 42:05
  Bee, Beatrice, Ferdinand, Porsche, and Lutz are the three main characters.
• 42:11
  And their lives intertwine, and they become tightly intertwined in the third
• 42:16
  part in book two that you have, but the third part, the third book, and around
• 42:20
  this project that's classified in Germany.
• 42:23
  Then it all comes together, and then the reader's like, oh shit, no wonder
• 42:27
  he went off on all these tangents.
• 42:29
  They're all coming together.
• 42:30
  Exactly.
• 42:31
  Boom.
• 42:31
  They're all in the same building together with this project.
• 42:35
  And it's like, Oh, that's why he named the book little Anton.
• 42:40
  I take a very circuitous way to do it, but I did it.
• 42:43
  The original version was 1300 pages.
• 42:46
  Whoa.
• 42:47
  Yeah.
• 42:48
  It was difficult to do.
• 42:49
  And it took me a lot of revisions.
• 42:51
  I mean, my editor and I went back and forth for a year doing that.
• 42:54
  Now you would send me tranches of book.
• 42:57
  He's like, I don't know how you're going to do this, but you need to do this.
• 43:00
  I said, you're right.
• 43:00
  I got to cut this out and redo it.
• 43:02
  It took a lot.
• 43:03
  It's way too ambitious, but I did it, but it all comes together in the end.
• 43:07
  I assure the reader that, and I think I mentioned that somewhere forward.
• 43:11
  Yes, you do.
• 43:12
  It requires an explanation.
• 43:14
  My new book is only 400 pages.
• 43:16
  You'll read it in a day and a half goes so fast.
• 43:18
  This was a little bit more.
• 43:20
  Sophomoric and retrospective in places and it is very technical in
• 43:24
  places It's not for you and me or your fans, but for the average reader
• 43:28
  like my wife They don't know what 4.
• 43:30
  5 liter engine mean the average person can glaze over that Who cares about
• 43:35
  a 12 cylinder engine versus a v8?
• 43:37
  Who cares as long as you understand what's going on?
• 43:39
  And I try to explain things in the simplest way I could but just was a little
• 43:44
  much It's definitely a gear heady book.
• 43:46
  Bea is an interesting character.
• 43:48
  She's just the total opposite of Portia.
• 43:50
  She's an absolute fuck up, although they both are rebels.
• 43:53
  Yes, very much so.
• 43:54
  Young Portia was a rebel.
• 43:55
  Mercedes fired his ass.
• 43:57
  They were like, you're too wacky for us.
• 43:59
  You know, the genius.
• 44:00
  Say what you want about Hitler, but he recognized his genius.
• 44:03
  Building the Volkswagen Bug, simplicity is not simple.
• 44:05
  And that's a quote from him.
• 44:07
  Damned if I know where I got it from, but I think he said it to
• 44:10
  Hiller when they laid out his race car, the C Type Auto Union with 16
• 44:13
  cylinders, two stage supercharger.
• 44:15
  That was the opposite of the bug.
• 44:17
  I mean, that was the most advanced automobile in the world.
• 44:20
  People still marvel at it today.
• 44:22
  You can see videos of it firing up.
• 44:24
  The characters in the book, a lot of that comes from my father's
• 44:27
  military background, uh, my Access to the government and the U.
• 44:31
  S.
• 44:31
  Senate through him, spending time in the Pentagon.
• 44:34
  Uh, I know race team people.
• 44:36
  I know a lot of engineers.
• 44:37
  I've talked to airspace engineers.
• 44:39
  In fact, I consulted an aerospace engineer to make sure I got everything
• 44:43
  right on a lot of that stuff, you know, be as a pilot and everything.
• 44:46
  And so it's a complex book, but it's really about friendship and love.
• 44:50
  I mean, it's a love story, plain and simple.
• 44:52
  And I don't want to give away where that comes in.
• 44:54
  And folks, it's not a Portia's mistress.
• 44:57
  So get that out of your head.
• 44:58
  It's something completely different.
• 44:59
  As far as I know, he didn't have a mistress.
• 45:01
  He was very much in love with his wife, Aloysia.
• 45:03
  She was his, like my wife, she's like his right arm.
• 45:06
  Fairy on the one arm and his wife on the other.
• 45:09
  And he really drew upon that strength.
• 45:11
  And there is also, hidden in here, a bit of a, we'll call it an homage,
• 45:15
  but it's a bit of an amalgam.
• 45:17
  There's a character that's hidden, but not so hidden.
• 45:20
  And it's a bunch of your mother's side of the family combined into one character.
• 45:24
  And if I remember correctly, his name is Redway Mellon.
• 45:27
  I thought that was really funny only because I know a little
• 45:30
  bit about your back history and your family tree and whatnot.
• 45:33
  So for the average reader, they may not know that, but this is the
• 45:37
  melons, as I said in the intro from Pittsburgh and that whole lineage.
• 45:40
  So what was that like and why did you choose to bring all that in as well?
• 45:45
  My grandfather was an OSS agent.
• 45:47
  He was the forerunner of the CIA in World War II, and he told me a lot
• 45:51
  about a lot of classified projects he saw with General Patton at the end
• 45:54
  of the war in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia.
• 45:57
  If somebody wants to watch my interview, it's on Dark Journalist,
• 46:00
  which is on YouTube, and he does deep state UFO things.
• 46:03
  But this is true history.
• 46:04
  Some of it's documented.
• 46:06
  But the Mellon family, we're a small family and we're in the
• 46:09
  committee of 300, 300 rich families, Rockefellers, Morgans, Duponts, the
• 46:13
  founding families, they call them.
• 46:15
  Some people call us that we're not a big family.
• 46:17
  There's about 130 or 40 of us alive at any given time.
• 46:20
  And I've been told by people in Washington, friends of my father
• 46:23
  and ex CIA and military Pentagon people that there's been over
• 46:27
  40 melons since World War Two.
• 46:30
  In military intelligence.
• 46:32
  I do not have their name.
• 46:33
  However, my friend and cousin, Chris Mellon is currently involved
• 46:37
  in the UAP UFO Nimitz thing.
• 46:40
  You know, he writes articles for CNN, you know, Washington Post and New York Times.
• 46:44
  He's in there.
• 46:45
  And so he and I have had a little chat about that.
• 46:46
  cross pollinization.
• 46:47
  I wanted to put a Mellon character in there because he's not a very big
• 46:51
  character, loosely based on actually my cousin and my dad and all this.
• 46:56
  So he's a composite character.
• 46:57
  We Mellons have had a hand in all that stuff, even going back to the 30s.
• 47:03
  My great grandfather Andrew Mellon had intimate dealings with Halmar Schacht.
• 47:07
  Which is Hitler's private banker and that's through Sullivan and
• 47:10
  Cromwell, which is Alan Dulles and John Foster Dulles and was very corrupt.
• 47:14
  Andrew Mellon was pretty much a fascist and they were doing business with Hitler.
• 47:19
  Oh, he's a Republican.
• 47:20
  They were investing in Nazi Germany.
• 47:21
  So Alcoa Aluminum, the melons, we sold a lot of that to Germany and
• 47:25
  they made Messerschmitts and Heinkel bombers, you know, standard oil.
• 47:28
  Went through Portugal, Ford trucks, Chevy trucks, GM.
• 47:32
  It's a true story that when the Allied, you know, our B 17s, the
• 47:36
  American Air Force was bombing the Ford truck factories in Germany.
• 47:39
  Germany under contract.
• 47:41
  We had to repay them to rebuild them out.
• 47:43
  And Chevrolet, GM, and Ford.
• 47:46
  That's a true story.
• 47:47
  The Wehrmacht rolled into Russia with Chevrolet trucks on firestone tires.
• 47:52
  The Japanese Zeros had firestone tires.
• 47:54
  They were new old stock.
• 47:56
  Wars, business.
• 47:57
  I mean, no one knew who was going to fight, you know, in the thirties.
• 48:00
  There were tons of weapons and trucks and everything sold.
• 48:03
  I just find that interesting.
• 48:04
  And I mentioned that when Porsche didn't know Henry Ford and they
• 48:07
  were, they were friends and Henry Ford gives Porsche, he says, your
• 48:10
  genius comes from reincarnation.
• 48:12
  And of course, Henry Ford and General Patton said that's
• 48:14
  where their genius came from.
• 48:16
  lives.
• 48:17
  The book does delve into some metaphysics and philosophy.
• 48:20
  There's two threads I want to pull here.
• 48:22
  And one of them is to go back to what you said about the book being technical and
• 48:26
  maybe complicated for the average person.
• 48:28
  And this is where I think I would disagree with you.
• 48:30
  And you're the author of the book.
• 48:32
  Let me put it To you from my perspective, right?
• 48:34
  You haven't gotten to the end yet.
• 48:36
  True.
• 48:36
  That's true.
• 48:37
  That's true.
• 48:38
  I mean, portion field physics.
• 48:40
  Oh man, episode of ancient aliens, but we'll keep that at bay.
• 48:44
  I've always been a voracious reader.
• 48:46
  I had the distinct pleasure of meeting.
• 48:48
  One of my heroes at Johns Hopkins university before he passed away.
• 48:52
  And that's Michael Crichton.
• 48:54
  And so as I've been reading your books, it reminds me of his writing style, which
• 48:59
  is also extremely technical, but brought down to a level that can be absorbed by
• 49:05
  anybody that sits behind those pages.
• 49:07
  So if you've read sphere or Jurassic park or timeline or any of those,
• 49:12
  there's tons of science in there.
• 49:14
  They're not portrayed as science fiction.
• 49:15
  That wasn't his thing.
• 49:16
  thing, but there's so much tech in there presented in such
• 49:19
  a way that it's absorbable.
• 49:21
  And I appreciate that about this book as well.
• 49:24
  It's enjoyable for anybody that sits down and reads it.
• 49:28
  But there was also something that came out.
• 49:30
  And as I realized how long it took you to write this book, and you
• 49:33
  mentioned on your podcast several times, you were kind of laid up
• 49:36
  watching TV and you know, you bought the laptop and all this kind of thing.
• 49:39
  And I wondered.
• 49:41
  As I peeled back the onion on Bea and Lutz and some of the other characters, I
• 49:44
  wanted to ask you, how much Downton Abbey were you watching while writing this book?
• 49:49
  Certainly some, but, um, I knew it.
• 49:52
  I knew it.
• 49:53
  I personally had to relearn the English language to write in the
• 49:56
  British vernacular of the 1930s.
• 49:59
  And before that, Churchill's Edwardian.
• 50:01
  But really, it was Churchill's books, I think I read most of them.
• 50:04
  I watched every English program, not just Downton Abbey, which I think is silly.
• 50:08
  But that's another story.
• 50:09
  I bring that up on purpose, but please continue your thought.
• 50:11
  I watched everything and I took notes.
• 50:13
  And I still take notes to this day, the phrases.
• 50:16
  She's round the twist, means she's nuts.
• 50:18
  These little things that the British have, just like Americans have, we have
• 50:22
  vernacular slang and everything like that.
• 50:24
  Colloquialisms.
• 50:25
  I'm sure it was in the 1930s, as much as I could, so it was doubly
• 50:29
  difficult, or deuce difficult, as they would say in World War I, you know.
• 50:33
  It was mind bending.
• 50:34
  I had nothing to do in my life.
• 50:36
  I couldn't move around.
• 50:38
  I was semi hazed.
• 50:40
  It was pain pills some of the time, you know, when Back pain was too much and
• 50:43
  I was laid up a lot and I would do my exercises but really couldn't do much.
• 50:47
  I was at a place in my life where I had the time and interest to dig into
• 50:51
  and the deeper I went into all this the book became bigger and deeper and as
• 50:56
  you finish it you'll understand why.
• 50:58
  But you know the Germans really were into a lot of that technology.
• 51:01
  That's a whole other side that gets into my UFO side of things.
• 51:05
  Ancient Aliens is very watered down.
• 51:09
  But it's not bad for the average person with no knowledge, but I
• 51:12
  don't agree with everything in it.
• 51:14
  The UFO field is people will rip your face off in arguments.
• 51:17
  The Germans really were into their Wunderwaffe technology.
• 51:20
  And this book gets into that.
• 51:22
  And that's a real thing, whether people want to believe that or not.
• 51:25
  They were way ahead in their atomic bomb program than we were taught.
• 51:28
  I know that.
• 51:29
  I've talked to, you know, generals and admirals who told me, Oh yeah,
• 51:32
  we kept that secret during the war.
• 51:34
  But you didn't hear that from me.
• 51:35
  These are the kind of stuff I've had access to.
• 51:37
  And the characters in the book, they're very human.
• 51:39
  And I really dig out Portia's human side.
• 51:42
  I have to fill in the Every once in a while, the technical book
• 51:44
  will say, you know, he really did tie lights to his lifescapes.
• 51:47
  What was that night?
• 51:48
  You know, 1880 something or, you know, 1890.
• 51:51
  That's a true story.
• 51:52
  He got in trouble, but that's all it said.
• 51:54
  He did this.
• 51:55
  He was mischievous.
• 51:56
  He got in trouble and his father beat him.
• 51:58
  That's the only thing the book would say.
• 52:00
  And so I had to extrapolate from there, from everything, but it
• 52:03
  was a good intellectual exercise.
• 52:04
  Now I will say there's one part, especially when you're talking about
• 52:08
  how you absorb the language of the characters that you're writing for,
• 52:12
  especially notable characters of history.
• 52:15
  And I remember.
• 52:17
  very vividly the scene where Winston Churchill, who happens to be the grand
• 52:22
  uncle of your character, Beatrice.
• 52:25
  He's in the room with, uh, fellow other folks from the MI6, like,
• 52:29
  you know, the precursor to MI6.
• 52:31
  He's trying to convince her, persuade her, and there's some very back and
• 52:35
  forth dialogue, and then suddenly, he goes into Churchill mode.
• 52:39
  He gives this, uh, monologue.
• 52:41
  It transported me there.
• 52:43
  I mean, that's the word I want to use.
• 52:44
  Like I've heard other speeches of Churchill and I've read other books and
• 52:47
  I was like, wow, this is really on point.
• 52:50
  And so I got to tip my hat to you on that because it's very well done.
• 52:54
  And there are scenes like this where Throughout the book that just stand
• 52:57
  out that are either extremely comical, very imaginative, super descriptive,
• 53:01
  or just really, really on point.
• 53:04
  When you introduce Chamberlain and he's signing off her paperwork for her to go
• 53:09
  into formal training and all this stuff.
• 53:10
  It's just so hilarious how you just bring out this kind of nasty,
• 53:15
  snarky side of his personality.
• 53:16
  And I just, I really enjoyed it.
• 53:18
  I actually chuckled as I'm kind of reading through those pages.
• 53:20
  There's a lot of satire in the book.
• 53:22
  The humor moves it along.
• 53:23
  I'm I mean, it's dark when it needs to be serious, dark it is.
• 53:26
  Once I, I got into Churchill's head, I can write anything in his voice.
• 53:31
  You'll really like the speech in lion, tiger, bear.
• 53:33
  When it comes out next month, he's addressing all the generals in Cairo.
• 53:37
  And he's like, God, and she has this back and forth with him in front of
• 53:42
  these generals, including Montgomery, you know, it's a desert war 42 Churchill
• 53:45
  was amazing because I read all those books and somehow over the years, I just
• 53:49
  was able to write in his voice at will.
• 53:52
  And it's.
• 53:52
  A lot of fun.
• 53:53
  You've mentioned before being a very skilled mimic, especially with voices
• 53:57
  and personifying people in your own way.
• 53:59
  So, I mean, I, we, we saw some of that at the beginning of this episode and my wife
• 54:03
  calls them the voices bloody fucking hell.
• 54:08
  They're not nearly as scary as the ones that are inside your head.
• 54:11
  That's all the conversation between Briggs, her father.
• 54:16
  and Churchill and her and I think Lord Sherwell was in
• 54:19
  there and he was saying this.
• 54:21
  The kinds of things they're discussing were actually true.
• 54:24
  But I pulled a million different things and I created this scene.
• 54:27
  Briggs is kind of this gruff old soldier, tough on Bea a lot.
• 54:31
  But he loves her and he dotes upon her, but he's very fearful of her
• 54:35
  going to spy on the Germans because he knows what she's up against.
• 54:38
  And they're talking about the German engineering, where does it come from?
• 54:42
  And he's like, I know, I didn't remember it now.
• 54:45
  And he goes off into this monologue about German airships of the 19th
• 54:48
  century and their engineering schools and the occult and other things.
• 54:52
  And it's all based on truth.
• 54:54
  You know, they did have philosopher scientists in Prussia
• 54:57
  and the early German states.
• 54:59
  And he knew it all because he's a military historian.
• 55:01
  He teaches at Sandhurst.
• 55:03
  I was able to do that because he had the knowledge of that.
• 55:06
  He was amazed that he could help his daughter with this weird
• 55:08
  operation that they want to do.
• 55:10
  You know, they think it's a walk in the park.
• 55:12
  Of course, it is nothing of the sort.
• 55:14
  She grows up a lot.
• 55:15
  She's very headstrong.
• 55:17
  immature and racist and classist and she's snob and she's very intelligent
• 55:23
  and she's a good pilot and she's a good driver and so she understands engineering.
• 55:27
  She has her dainty side with her friends and they're hard drinking and they cuss
• 55:31
  and that's based on women that I know.
• 55:33
  Some of it's based on my own sisters and their friends.
• 55:36
  You know, I know some people in British high society I was able to draw upon.
• 55:39
  It's just my background.
• 55:40
  And I don't mean to offend by making this, you know, Downton Abbey
• 55:43
  reference, but for me as a reader, I've always somehow tried to imagine
• 55:49
  what the person would look like.
• 55:51
  Sometimes an author does a good job of describing, Oh, she had long flowing
• 55:54
  blonde hair, metallic blue eyes, whatever.
• 55:56
  And you're like, okay, well, Fine.
• 55:58
  But in my head, you know, everybody either looks like a cartoon character
• 56:00
  or a Muppet or somebody from Star Trek.
• 56:02
  So, you know, it's one of those kind of deals.
• 56:04
  Kidding aside, the scene that did it for me was actually when Beatrice was
• 56:08
  bantering back and forth, really battling back and forth between her German tutor
• 56:12
  is Frau Gerwig, I think is her name.
• 56:15
  It suddenly hit me.
• 56:17
  That's Lady Mary Crowley from Downton Abbey.
• 56:20
  Whether you painted that picture or not, I saw that just rigid,
• 56:24
  like she buckled down, dug in her heels and she fought back.
• 56:28
  It didn't matter what her teacher was going to say.
• 56:30
  It was pound for pound.
• 56:32
  She was just going after it.
• 56:33
  And it's like in that stubbornness, I also pulled through the thread
• 56:37
  that I didn't realize until later, which was the feminism part of it.
• 56:41
  There's a side to this book that I want my daughters to read when they're
• 56:44
  old enough to read it and very true.
• 56:47
  All the, all the women's setting records in the thirties.
• 56:49
  They really did a great job.
• 56:51
  And of course, World War II, they became pilots and ferry pilots and nurses.
• 56:55
  And so it does have that.
• 56:56
  And the second book continues in that thread being Alice.
• 56:59
  I actually was terrible at languages.
• 57:02
  And in high school, I would go back and forth.
• 57:04
  My French teacher was this little fiery French guy.
• 57:07
  We both had this crazy sense of humor and I would say, call him
• 57:10
  a withering snail in French.
• 57:12
  And I would draw things on the blackboard.
• 57:14
  It was all based on my high school experience.
• 57:16
  That's so funny.
• 57:17
  Downton Abbey is a good visual.
• 57:19
  But Downton Abbey is very sanitized.
• 57:21
  It is.
• 57:22
  It's a very good show about the British upper class.
• 57:24
  It is.
• 57:24
  But they cussed a lot more, and they had a lot more dirty, drug taking,
• 57:28
  boozing episodes than Downton Abbey.
• 57:31
  It's very sanitized.
• 57:32
  I always enjoy the downstairs scenes.
• 57:35
  When Bea does go downstairs and visits with staff.
• 57:38
  And of course, when I was growing up, I hung out with
• 57:40
  the housekeepers all the time.
• 57:41
  I really enjoyed blue collar people.
• 57:43
  I still do, mechanics.
• 57:45
  You know, everybody.
• 57:46
  And those are the most interesting people because the rich people always put on
• 57:50
  airs and armor and they never say what they mean and it's absolutely frustrating.
• 57:55
  And so B is like, fuck this.
• 57:57
  You know, that's part of me and B.
• 57:59
  It's like, fuck this.
• 58:00
  I'm going to get to know the real interesting people like that pilot, Amy
• 58:03
  Johnson, who is not a rich, fancy person.
• 58:06
  And so they became good friends.
• 58:07
  And Amy is a real person.
• 58:09
  She's a hero.
• 58:10
  Most people don't know who she is, even in English.
• 58:12
  I had to look her up myself because she's in the foreword.
• 58:14
  You have a picture over there.
• 58:15
  At first, you know, as I'm reading the book, I'm like, is B Amy Johnson?
• 58:19
  Is that the parallel here?
• 58:20
  Is that what we've done?
• 58:21
  And then I realized, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 58:23
  Because you specifically call out that they're friends.
• 58:26
  And so I'm like, oh, now there's this parallel.
• 58:28
  I have this whole image of another person, right?
• 58:30
  It cleared it up for me as we went along.
• 58:32
  That also led me to dig into some of the episodes of your podcast,
• 58:35
  where you, I don't remember the lady that you interviewed, who was
• 58:38
  responsible for interviewing all of the wasps they call themselves and
• 58:42
  the wafts, which were the women air.
• 58:44
  Yeah.
• 58:44
  Ferry squadron or whatever, correct.
• 58:47
  My acronym was an amazing story.
• 58:49
  And I'm very passionate about World War II history myself, but that's
• 58:52
  a side of World War II history.
• 58:53
  Actually, I didn't even know about it.
• 58:54
  And I was like, wow, this is amazing.
• 58:56
  You know, women get downplayed in movies and the press and history.
• 59:01
  It's changing, you know, of course, but you know, my experience with
• 59:04
  the women racing drivers and having grown up in a house full of women,
• 59:08
  Liz Taylor and everybody, and, you know, she was a wild, wild woman.
• 59:11
  child for sure.
• 59:12
  So there's some Liz Taylor and B as well.
• 59:15
  It's a shame.
• 59:15
  This world is very conservative and patriarchal and quasi
• 59:19
  fascist and, you know, it is.
• 59:20
  It just is.
• 59:22
  And the United States is.
• 59:23
  And women were given second class status and still do carry that.
• 59:27
  Glass ceilings are real.
• 59:28
  It's better now, but it is so hard.
• 59:30
  Uh, a CEO told me one time, I said, What, what is it like
• 59:32
  climbing to the top being CEO?
• 59:34
  And she's like, well, that glass ceiling was tough, but I basically had to put
• 59:37
  a suit on and become a man to do it.
• 59:39
  To be one of the boys.
• 59:41
  And that may be very sad, but it's just the truth of our reality.
• 59:44
  And of course, B gets into the ancient druid women, the divine feminine, in
• 59:48
  that chapter 109, and she learns that the reason the Vatican and everyone
• 59:52
  went after druids and witches, witch is another word for woman druid, and these
• 59:57
  were not evil people doing black magic, they were doing white magic, being very
• 1:00:01
  conscious and everything like that, and that's why they were gone after.
• 1:00:03
  She learns this in chapter 109.
• 1:00:05
  She learns the whole shebang in McMaster's view.
• 1:00:08
  It's the gift of the lamp, which is based on the hermetic, uh, and other things.
• 1:00:12
  It's kind of funny how your mind runs away sometimes.
• 1:00:15
  So I know I, and not again, I'm going to, I'm going to make another
• 1:00:18
  Downton Abbey reference here because As I painted this picture of Michelle
• 1:00:23
  Dockery playing Bede in my head, that was like my visual cue there.
• 1:00:27
  I'm like, okay, you know, the, the, the bobbed off black hair and that
• 1:00:30
  scowl and everything, then there's Luz and I love the story you tell.
• 1:00:34
  And when you introduce his character and he's the humble mechanic,
• 1:00:39
  you know, or he's rather the fabricator and he's driving this.
• 1:00:42
  Big old ox cart of a Mercedes truck down a hillside.
• 1:00:46
  And he sees Ferdinand Porsche broken down and there's this
• 1:00:48
  whole back and forth with him.
• 1:00:50
  It's funny, this like almost runaway truck scene where he's hauling
• 1:00:54
  ass down these switchbacks and Porsche's like doing the mommy arm.
• 1:00:58
  And you know, this is the way I'm painting the picture, but he's
• 1:00:59
  like, he's okay with it because he's also almost like a talent scout.
• 1:01:03
  He's like in the back of his head.
• 1:01:04
  He's going, this kid can drive.
• 1:01:06
  Where the hell did he come from?
• 1:01:07
  Why don't we know about him?
• 1:01:08
  And obviously that sets him in a totally different trajectory.
• 1:01:11
  It changes his life entirely.
• 1:01:13
  He was Hitler Juin, right?
• 1:01:14
  He was Hitler Youth.
• 1:01:15
  He was NSKK motorcycle, basically police officer patrol.
• 1:01:20
  This character's so multifaceted.
• 1:01:22
  But then I drew this sudden parallel.
• 1:01:24
  I went, oh my God, it's Tom Branson, the mechanic.
• 1:01:27
  He was IRA, he was patriotic, Ireland, all this kind of thing.
• 1:01:31
  And I'm like.
• 1:01:32
  Sort of similar, but not distant cousin.
• 1:01:34
  Right.
• 1:01:34
  And then I started to realize the interaction that my made up Lady Mary
• 1:01:39
  character was having with him in their first interaction is how she interacted
• 1:01:43
  with Matthew Crawley the first time.
• 1:01:44
  And then it became more like Henry Talbot.
• 1:01:46
  And I'm like, here I am fantasizing.
• 1:01:48
  And I'm like, no, stop, stop.
• 1:01:51
  The train has left the station.
• 1:01:52
  Right.
• 1:01:53
  So Those are some of the things that maybe to draw people in, hoping you guys
• 1:01:58
  see the fantasy, see the type of thing that John, the picture he's painted here,
• 1:02:02
  but set in World War II Germany instead.
• 1:02:05
  Portia was a talent scout.
• 1:02:06
  He saw Baron Rosemeyer and said, this guy's got the balls.
• 1:02:10
  I think as you and all your fans know, gearheads and racers and car
• 1:02:15
  nuts, we're birds of a feather.
• 1:02:17
  And so there's two strangers and you know, and the truck was actually fairly new.
• 1:02:23
  It was, it belonged to the NSKK.
• 1:02:25
  It was a Mercedes diesel and Porsche did design the Mercedes diesel.
• 1:02:28
  He's like, hey, I designed this thing, you know, for Mercedes.
• 1:02:31
  Like, Oh, I know professor.
• 1:02:33
  You know, he was very enamored with him.
• 1:02:34
  He's hauling ass to impress him Porsche's getting nervous because he's like i'm
• 1:02:38
  with some idiot who can't drive and he's hauling ass and then the gearhead
• 1:02:42
  thing Switches on like a differential boom and Porsche's like go faster.
• 1:02:48
  Luce is like, oh my god And so if any racing driver as you know, we can get
• 1:02:52
  into anything a van a truck or anything and drive it at 10 tenths of the limit.
• 1:02:57
  You can get in anything because you know instantly, you know how everything
• 1:03:01
  handles and okay now in two seconds you can take any rental car and take it to
• 1:03:05
  its limits because you know where the limits are and Lutz is naturally like that
• 1:03:09
  because he does all these runs and I grew up on dirt bikes that dynamic movement
• 1:03:14
  becomes instant second nature and so.
• 1:03:16
  That's what Lutz and Baron Rosemeyer share.
• 1:03:18
  And that's what makes them good drivers.
• 1:03:20
  Hell, Baron Rosemeyer didn't even, never drone a car before.
• 1:03:23
  So he had none of the bad habits.
• 1:03:25
  Lutz was the same way.
• 1:03:26
  I wrote, that's why they became best friends.
• 1:03:28
  And all those pranks and everything, that's all based on true stories.
• 1:03:31
  And that scene too, with Portia and Lutz going down the hill and
• 1:03:36
  like you to your point, you're in a truck and you're hauling ass.
• 1:03:38
  And I kind of had this thing in my head.
• 1:03:40
  Like, I kept thinking Portia's going, I designed this thing, but I never
• 1:03:44
  designed it to operate like this.
• 1:03:46
  And it suddenly kind of melted his brain.
• 1:03:48
  He's like, to your point, if we could do this with a truck.
• 1:03:51
  What can we do with the race car?
• 1:03:52
  But then I also had this flash forward, like Sabine Schmidt in a Ford transit at
• 1:03:57
  the Nürburgring type of moment where it was like, that's who Lutz is internally.
• 1:04:02
  Like he's Sabine Schmidt.
• 1:04:03
  Like he's that type of driver, you know, where he's just naturally
• 1:04:06
  gifted and naturally talented.
• 1:04:07
  And, or as we say, he's full send his risk mitigation button.
• 1:04:11
  It doesn't exist, you know?
• 1:04:13
  And I thought that was just awesome.
• 1:04:14
  And it was a great way to introduce that character.
• 1:04:16
  And then as they all begin to interact.
• 1:04:18
  Later in the book together.
• 1:04:19
  It's just, it's a good story and I don't want to spoil it.
• 1:04:22
  So I'm hoping more and more people will, you know, pick up a copy of
• 1:04:25
  little Anton and begin to read it.
• 1:04:27
  You know, you've mentioned a couple of times, let's call it book number
• 1:04:30
  four, the sequel to the sequels, the sequel to the brick and the stick.
• 1:04:34
  What is lion tiger bear about if you want to give us a little bit of foreshadowing.
• 1:04:39
  Loots is in it, but in a very strange way, ruin that for you
• 1:04:44
  does play a small part in the book.
• 1:04:46
  But B and, and Alice are back.
• 1:04:48
  And it's the Desert War in 1942.
• 1:04:52
  Bea gets shot down near Siwa Oasis.
• 1:04:54
  And the Germans, the Italians, the African Corps had occupied it.
• 1:04:57
  So she does a whole adventure there.
• 1:05:00
  And then she and Bernie and Alice and this new character Guafa, who is a
• 1:05:05
  black African Mali, very capable man, he used to steal airplanes and trucks.
• 1:05:09
  So he's kind of a gearhead with Bea.
• 1:05:11
  There's a scene with them.
• 1:05:12
  Bea's got An engine on fire in an Italian fighter.
• 1:05:15
  She's in a C 47 cargo plane.
• 1:05:17
  Troops firing out the windows, you know.
• 1:05:19
  It's based on a true story.
• 1:05:21
  They would smash the windows open and start firing at the plane.
• 1:05:24
  If you yaw the plane back and forth on a pilot.
• 1:05:26
  She's doing all this funky aerobatics.
• 1:05:28
  And so this guy comes up and helps her fly the damn thing.
• 1:05:31
  Got one engine on fire, another one.
• 1:05:33
  And they were able to restart one of the engines.
• 1:05:35
  It's a radial engine, Pratt Whitney.
• 1:05:38
  Even with three or four cylinders gone, it'll still run.
• 1:05:41
  Uh, B and her team, they go to Cairo.
• 1:05:43
  It, the book is much more into the occult Atlantis lore and German anti gravity
• 1:05:47
  experiments, and they go on this adventure operation in the Zagros mountains of Iraq.
• 1:05:52
  So it takes place mostly in the desert regions.
• 1:05:55
  The Germans were in Iraq in 1941, not a lot, but there was a Luftwaffe unit.
• 1:06:00
  And Portia comes back as a character.
• 1:06:02
  I'm not talking about it.
• 1:06:04
  I can't wait to read it.
• 1:06:06
  He's in there.
• 1:06:06
  Don't worry about it.
• 1:06:08
  He's in there.
• 1:06:08
  So his journey is not complete.
• 1:06:10
  When you get towards the end and Bea has been captured by the
• 1:06:13
  Germans, she goes through some horrible, torture and other things.
• 1:06:17
  And she comes out with PTSD.
• 1:06:19
  And I've learned all about it from talking with these young veterans
• 1:06:23
  and the older guys to Vietnam.
• 1:06:25
  So it comes from firsthand accounts or battle fatigue.
• 1:06:29
  She goes through combat and it does change her as they did to many young
• 1:06:33
  people grew up in a hurry in World War II.
• 1:06:34
  And my dad was 17 when he got in the Navy.
• 1:06:36
  These young people They grew up really fast.
• 1:06:39
  And so a lot of those things, I, I talked to veterans about it.
• 1:06:43
  And actually I've gotten good comments from veterans about the book.
• 1:06:46
  It's almost poetic justice in a way, because in the first volume,
• 1:06:49
  when she is going through her SIS training and they take her up into the
• 1:06:53
  Highlands of Scotland and her trainer.
• 1:06:56
  Is hilarious.
• 1:06:57
  I had this whole army of darkness moment where I thought she was going
• 1:07:01
  to turn to him and say that whole scene where the I'm the king of
• 1:07:03
  Scotland and the king of this man.
• 1:07:05
  Yeah, you're the king of Jack and shit.
• 1:07:06
  And Jack just left town.
• 1:07:07
  I expected her to like, come off totally like that, but they broke her down.
• 1:07:11
  That was his mission and to rebuild her.
• 1:07:13
  But she said at one point, I'm never going to need this.
• 1:07:17
  Much like some students say about the things that they learned in school.
• 1:07:20
  I'm never going to need this kind of math.
• 1:07:21
  I'm never going to need this kind of grammar or English.
• 1:07:24
  And I think bringing the story to that point is poetic justice.
• 1:07:29
  She learns her lesson, maybe not necessarily in the most delightful way.
• 1:07:33
  It brings it all together.
• 1:07:35
  And I very much appreciate that.
• 1:07:36
  It's based on true accounts.
• 1:07:38
  My grandfather, Paul Mellon, was in the OSS.
• 1:07:41
  He was an army major in World War II, and one of his jobs was training French women
• 1:07:47
  in England to jump out of C 47 Goodyear behind the lines, and they were trained by
• 1:07:52
  the SOE, the Special Operations Executive, and that training, which that happened
• 1:07:56
  later in the war, but that training was extensive, hand to hand combat.
• 1:08:00
  This is 1937.
• 1:08:01
  There's no SOE, the SIS.
• 1:08:03
  very small.
• 1:08:04
  They don't have any funds.
• 1:08:05
  So what is her boss McMaster going to do?
• 1:08:08
  Well, he sends them to the best soldiers he knows of, and that's
• 1:08:10
  the Seaport Highlanders in Scotland.
• 1:08:12
  And they're like, what the hell are we doing with this woman?
• 1:08:15
  And you know, it was for king and country.
• 1:08:17
  And so they did it, but they did it the only way they knew how, and they
• 1:08:21
  don't like the fact that she's a spy.
• 1:08:23
  They call her a goddamn sneak thief and worse.
• 1:08:25
  And that's how they would do it.
• 1:08:26
  And of course, she realizes she was so angry at McMaster for that training.
• 1:08:31
  And then he says, do you know what those guys had to go through?
• 1:08:33
  She's like, yes, they were humiliated.
• 1:08:35
  They were humiliated in front of their fellow soldiers and catcalled
• 1:08:39
  and yelled at in the mess hall.
• 1:08:41
  And so she sends them a case of whiskey.
• 1:08:43
  She grows up.
• 1:08:44
  You know, these are some of the things that I went through in my life.
• 1:08:47
  And everyone goes through some things.
• 1:08:48
  All of a sudden you grow the hell up.
• 1:08:50
  And then she needed a lot of growing up.
• 1:08:52
  I like those chapters.
• 1:08:53
  I fought with my editor.
• 1:08:54
  He said I should condense it into one.
• 1:08:56
  That may be true.
• 1:08:57
  But because later in the series, you know, there's going to be several more books.
• 1:09:01
  Where does Bea get her training and instincts from?
• 1:09:04
  Well, Seaport Highlanders and also the Nazis training.
• 1:09:07
  So she has double training.
• 1:09:09
  And a lot of women made very good soldiers.
• 1:09:11
  It's a myth.
• 1:09:13
  They went behind the lines for SOE and French resistance and
• 1:09:16
  they were incredibly brave.
• 1:09:18
  And capable.
• 1:09:19
  I had a woman write me, why are you so violent with all this?
• 1:09:22
  I said, this is based on truth.
• 1:09:24
  Dr.
• 1:09:24
  Ferdinand Portia senior, he passed away in 1951.
• 1:09:27
  If I remember my Portia history correctly.
• 1:09:30
  So this means that the torch will be passed at some point in your
• 1:09:33
  series of books, specifically to be, because she's going to outlive him.
• 1:09:37
  Obviously she outlives Amy Johnson.
• 1:09:38
  She outlives a lot of other people in the story.
• 1:09:41
  So is the future of the series If we were to imagine and
• 1:09:45
  theorize, is it all about B?
• 1:09:47
  What, what does the future beyond Lion, Tiger, and Bear look like?
• 1:09:50
  Kind of as you're just ruminating on these ideas.
• 1:09:53
  B is still the main character, but she has this team of people.
• 1:09:56
  Uh, the four of them, Bernie, Alice, Guafa, uh, the African guy from Mali.
• 1:10:01
  And they are in World War II.
• 1:10:03
  I dig out a lot of little known history.
• 1:10:05
  That's my thing.
• 1:10:06
  MI6 did indeed have an occult division.
• 1:10:09
  And occult is just a word meaning hidden knowledge.
• 1:10:12
  Doesn't mean.
• 1:10:13
  black magic and cats, which is mysticism.
• 1:10:15
  Yeah.
• 1:10:15
  Ancient wisdom and philosophy.
• 1:10:17
  And, but they've got to go do a job against the German SS on an air bay.
• 1:10:22
  And everyone will recognize in the first Indiana Joan movie, they show
• 1:10:25
  the Germans digging for the lost art.
• 1:10:28
  Well, that's based on truth.
• 1:10:29
  Yeah.
• 1:10:29
  That's the Ananerbe SS.
• 1:10:31
  Although Spielberg watered it down, he didn't call it that,
• 1:10:34
  but that's who they were.
• 1:10:35
  They didn't have the SS uniforms.
• 1:10:37
  He didn't want to go there, but that's the Ananerbe SS.
• 1:10:39
  And they deal with those guys intimately in this book.
• 1:10:43
  A lot of fun, this new story.
• 1:10:45
  And Portia is a great character because he's now he's confronted with unimaginable
• 1:10:49
  engineering and also, you know, these metaphysical and wild adventures.
• 1:10:54
  And it's funny, he's going back with this real life physicist named Walter Gerlach.
• 1:10:58
  And they're loggerheads over everything.
• 1:10:59
  He's like, you're just a simple mechanic.
• 1:11:01
  I'm a quantum physicist.
• 1:11:02
  It's like, screw you.
• 1:11:03
  And, you know, it was a lot of fun.
• 1:11:06
  So when does Lion Tiger Bear come out?
• 1:11:08
  In about a month, it should be on Amazon in about a month.
• 1:11:10
  The faster read is, my wife read it in a day and a half.
• 1:11:13
  Where can folks find the books if they're interested in picking them up?
• 1:11:17
  Amazon, or you can go to my website.
• 1:11:20
  LittleAnton.
• 1:11:21
  com.
• 1:11:21
  I have all that information and links.
• 1:11:23
  And there's sample chapters to read from the new book, too.
• 1:11:26
  And there's something special about the purchase of the book, which actually is
• 1:11:31
  very near and dear to us here at GTM.
• 1:11:33
  And what's that, John?
• 1:11:34
  Well, I donate all my profits to Wounded Warrior Charities.
• 1:11:38
  My wife and I have the honor of working with wounded veterans
• 1:11:40
  twice a year at our farm.
• 1:11:42
  They come for a black powder deer hunt and a picnic and everything.
• 1:11:46
  We're going into our sixth year now.
• 1:11:48
  It's our way of giving back to these young men and women, and
• 1:11:51
  I give out copies of my book.
• 1:11:53
  It's just a very rewarding thing.
• 1:11:54
  There's very few farms in Virginia that people are afraid.
• 1:11:57
  Just me and this one other guy in Rappahannock County, that we do this.
• 1:12:01
  I think it's a shame, and I have a small foundation that I give away.
• 1:12:04
  everything.
• 1:12:05
  All my work, research, everything I do, you know, I do it for free, obviously.
• 1:12:09
  And we thank you for it.
• 1:12:10
  And again, we try to do a lot of different philanthropic projects here at GTM.
• 1:12:15
  And we've worked with folks like Peter Klein at Vet Motorsports, who
• 1:12:18
  worked at Helmets Off to Heroes, Wounded Warriors, et cetera.
• 1:12:21
  The DoD is very near and dear to our hearts because jokingly, a lot
• 1:12:25
  of folks refer to us as the DoD.
• 1:12:26
  As the car club of the DOD sometimes.
• 1:12:28
  And so for us, it's really important that we're doing these kinds of
• 1:12:31
  things for the veterans that are in our group for our enlisted,
• 1:12:34
  there's car enthusiasts and whatnot.
• 1:12:36
  So this is really cool.
• 1:12:36
  And it's, it's an interesting intersection between military history, car history
• 1:12:41
  and everything that is in this series.
• 1:12:43
  And I urge people to pick up the books and check them out.
• 1:12:46
  John, had it not been for our initial chance encounter during 2018, 2019
• 1:12:52
  classic car season, and you kind of handed me a book going, Hey, check this out.
• 1:12:56
  I wrote this.
• 1:12:56
  And I'm like, okay.
• 1:12:58
  And the conversations that we had, I wouldn't have really taken the deep dive
• 1:13:02
  into this universe that you've created this, this let's call it alternate or
• 1:13:05
  revisionist history of this part of World War II centered around characters like Dr.
• 1:13:11
  Portia, like B, like Lutz, et cetera.
• 1:13:13
  It has been.
• 1:13:14
  An epic ride to use your word.
• 1:13:17
  It's a very enjoyable read.
• 1:13:18
  I highly recommend it for a lot of people.
• 1:13:21
  And so what I want to tell the audience is to learn more about our
• 1:13:24
  guest tonight, John W Warner the fourth, you can find him on Goodreads.
• 1:13:28
  You can also visit little Anton.
• 1:13:30
  com for more information and get behind the scenes information on the series, on
• 1:13:35
  the book, John's been on history channel.
• 1:13:37
  He's got YouTube videos, there's podcasts.
• 1:13:39
  Which is also known as Beyond Little Anton.
• 1:13:42
  There's not a ton of episodes.
• 1:13:43
  I listened to them all.
• 1:13:44
  They're really, really great.
• 1:13:45
  And it's fun to listen to John kind of go deep in with his guests.
• 1:13:48
  Hopefully there'll be more of those episodes later on.
• 1:13:51
  Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
• 1:13:52
  And you can also find John on all the social media majors at Little Anton book.
• 1:13:58
  That being said, John, it's been an absolute pleasure.
• 1:14:00
  It's been an education and I can't thank you enough for coming on and
• 1:14:04
  doing this crossover episode from Beyond Little Anton with us here at
• 1:14:07
  Grand Touring Motorsports on Brake Fix.
• 1:14:09
  That was a lot of fun.
• 1:14:10
  My pleasure.
• 1:14:16
  That's right, listeners.
• 1:14:17
  If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon
• 1:14:21
  for a follow on Pitstop Minisoad.
• 1:14:24
  So check that out on www.
• 1:14:28
  patreon.
• 1:14:28
  com forward slash GT Motorsports and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes
• 1:14:33
  content from this episode and more.
• 1:14:36
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:14:39
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:14:43
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:14:43
  org.
• 1:14:44
  You can also find us on Motorsports.
• 1:14:47
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can
• 1:14:51
  call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:14:59
  org.
• 1:14:59
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:15:01
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:15:04
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that
• 1:15:08
  GTM remains a no annual fees organization.
• 1:15:12
  And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes
• 1:15:15
  like this one at no charge.
• 1:15:17
  As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for
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• 1:15:49
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