Boom! This is Books & Biceps #366!

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The Million Dollar Car Detective: Inside the Worldwide Hunt for a Stolen $7 Million Car by Stayton Bonner

Saturday Night Live has the exclusive five-timers club for actors who have hosted SNL more than five times and we have the even more exclusive back-to-back club for authors who have done our B&B behind-the-book Q&A for two books in a row.

With that in mind, I’d like to formally congratulate my man, Stayton Bonner, for joining this list with our conversation below about his awesome new book, The Million Dollar Car Detective. Stayton’s interview last year for his USA Today Bestseller, Bare Knuckle, was one of the most popular we’ve ever done, (you can check out that interview here) but I’m confident you’re going to like this one even more.

Here’s the logline for the book:

A stolen car worth $7 million. A broke private investigator. Best friends turned worst enemies. And the global manhunt neither saw coming.

This book is a thriller, a mystery, a detective story, a history of cars, a history of racing, a history of cars in movies and a profile of several fascinating, unique guys all rolled into one. And it’s told so well you’ll feel like you’re reading a sprawling novel. Stayton spent seven years researching this story and his thoroughness shows. I couldn’t be happier to share a book that I know you’ll enjoy from an author and friend who works his ass off to put out consistent, excellent work. Please enjoy our interview below and make sure you grab this book ASAP.

ONE

FINKEL: You start the book by introducing us to Joe Ford and his “particular set of skills”, which are eclectic and interesting and bring us into the world of studying and recovering stolen seven figure cars. As you followed him for this project, what was the moment you remember most where you thought, “man, this guy is so good at this.”

BONNER: In my 20 years as a journalist, this was the most amazing story I ever came across—it’s The White Lotus meets Catch Me If You Can meets James Bond. I first found out about Joe Ford, the car detective based in Boca Raton, and his search for a missing $7 million car, when I came across a small story online about the car’s theft in a Milwaukee newspaper. I reached out to Joe and then spent the next seven years reporting his story, amazed by his unique skillset that combines detective sleuthing with a detailed knowledge of rare cars. Perhaps just a handful of people in the world possess that type of insight. The FBI, for instance, has teams of specialists dedicated to recovering stolen art. But there’s no such equivalent for the world of rare cars. When I spoke with police and the FBI, they all said Joe was the guy they called. 

That’s fascinating enough. But there was a personal story that pulled me in as well. The alleged thief was based in Switzerland, a car expert, and a former friend of Joe. They were best friends turned worst enemies who end up on opposite sides of a global manhunt involving the FBI, Interpol, and one determined Milwaukee cop. In addition, Joe was chasing the car to make a payday to help his daughter be more comfortable as she coped with a disease that was slowly making her go blind. Those elements pulled me in and took the story to a whole new dimension of depth and intrigue.

TWO

Early on you bring up Ralph Lauren’s status as a world class car collector. I admittedly don’t know much about Ralph Lauren beyond his name in fashion, but damn, who knew the guy behind Polo cologne has one of the most amazing rare car collections in the world. What makes his collection so legendary?

Ralph Lauren grew up as a kid in the Bronx obsessed with cars. So when he made his wealth, he decided to focus on collecting his true passion—former racecars that were rusted heaps of charred junk and restoring them to their original glory. When he started doing this in the 80s, the old Ferrari racers that had won Le Mans were basically worthless, battered artifacts sitting in dusty barns. But Lauren found them, bought them, hired restorers to rebuild them using original parts and ancient machinery, and basically single-handedly helped uplift the high-end rare car to a pedestal of artwork on par with Picassos and Basquiats. As one car dealer told me, collecting cars is just a lot more fun than buying equities.

THREE

One of my favorite side stories in the book is about the original Gone in 60 Seconds movie. I really liked the Michael Bay remake with Nic Cage, but the original sounds insane! Can you share a little bit about who H.B. Halicki was and how he raced cars, destroyed cars and filmed the movie? Also, how he kind of spawned a car theft industry in LA.

The story of the making of the original Gone in 60 Seconds takes up a whole chapter in my book because it’s so crazy and fascinating. H. B. Halicki was an impound and tow-shop owner in LA.  In 1968, he was indicted for allegedly being part of an auto-theft ring that targeted late-model cars at airports in Los Angeles and San Francisco (charges were later dropped.) In 1973, inspired by movies like Bullitt, he wrote an outline for Gone (no script was ever created), hired friends and family, and then funded, directed, starred in, and stunt-drove for the film. It includes the longest chase in movie history—a forty-minute sequence in which ninety-three vehicles were destroyed. Performing many of the stunts himself, Halicki nearly died during filming. He hit a streetlamp at ninety miles per hour, almost T-boned an actor while crashing into a police roadblock, and even jumped a car 130 feet in the air, compressing ten vertebrae in his spine upon landing.

Gone in 60 Seconds achieved cult status. Yet it was the first half of the movie that would resonate with a different audience—car thieves. Drawing on real-life knowledge, Halicki spotlighted various techniques for stealing automobiles in the film, including how to use vehicle identification numbers (VINs) and parts from legitimately bought cars to launder stolen ones. According to an investigator I interviewed, the movie inspired a new era of car thieves.

FOUR

Count Albert de Dion is one of my other favorite people in the book. He feels like a fictional character but he’s real. What is the most unbelievable aspect of his life and what his legacy is in car racing?

In its early days, car racing was a sport for the elite, the playboys and counts of the world who could afford to buy these new contraptions and then race them in grueling dangerous battles through the streets, helmetless with cigarettes dangling from their mouths and often dying in spectacular fiery crashes. De Dion was an aristocrat, womanizer, dueler, and pivotal advocate of the automobile. Born in 1856, he was known as the “white carnation,” a playboy of Parisian society. After purchasing a toy locomotive for a friend’s child, he became fixated by the idea of mechanized speed and devoted his life to creating the world’s best racing car. At the time, the vehicle was in its infancy. Inventors were making prototypes powered by everything from steam to electricity to gasoline. Using his fortune, de Dion founded an automotive company, hired a pair of toy-making brothers-in-law, and put them to work with a single goal in mind: to create a car fast enough to defeat his opponents in races.

What was fascinating is that the automobile became a symbol of the aristocracy, one that was hated by Europeans embracing the burgeoning principles of democracy. The working class perceived the rattling contraptions of the wealthy as a threat to their horse-drawn livelihoods. At one point, the count even drew a sword against socialist Gérault-Richard, the two battling in France’s final duel of honor.

FIVE

The Ferrari Spyder 0384AM takes center stage for a while in the middle of the story. I’ve seen the pictures, but what makes the car so mesmerizing in person? It’s described as a work of art on wheels.

The story of the theft of an $18 million 1961 250 GT SWB California Spyder, one of sixty rare cars found in a French barn in 2014, is fascinating for many reasons. The former nuclear scientist who worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos and then became a hermit in a garage collecting cars and creating oddball vehicles, including one with aircraft tires. The thieves and crooks, including one who worked as a car consultant on the 1981 Burt Reynolds film The Cannonball Run, who stole the vehicle and shipped it overseas to a Ferrari racing legend in Belgium. How Joe Ford then chased clues around the world to help retrieve it. But what ultimately sticks in my mind is the sheer sleek marvel of craftsmanship that went into the Spyder. It’s the perfect combination of elegant design with powerful performance. 

BONUS QUESTION

Of all the rare, exotic, awesome cars you came across in this book. From cars in movies to cars that won famous races to cars designed by guys like Enzo Ferrari himself… If you could snap your fingers and own ONE car you write about in the book, not to sell, but to own for life, which car would you choose and why?

The epilogue of the book covers the one car I’d keep—the Aston Martin DB5 from Goldfinger, the most famous stolen car in the world. Two Aston Martins were used in the 1964 film, one for road scenes and another for shots with gadgets, which included hidden Browning machine guns, retractable tire shredders, oil sprayers, and a Martin-Baker ejection seat taken from a fighter jet. Today the original road car resides in a private museum in Cincinnati. The gadgets vehicle, however, is another story.

In 1968, after filming the driving scenes in the movie, as well as the 1965 film Thunderball and an episode of The Saint with future Bond actor Roger Moore, the Aston Martin was stripped of its gadgets and sold to a series of businessmen before winding up in the possession of Anthony Pugliese, a real estate developer in Boca Raton who also owned a witch’s hat from The Wizard of Oz and Harrison Ford’s bullwhip from Raiders of the Lost Ark. For the next decade, Pugliese lent out the car to exhibitions and stored it in his private hangar at the Boca Raton airport, ultimately seeing his investment rise to an insured value of $3.2 million.

Then, in the middle of the night in June 1997, a thief sliced through the hangar’s door, cutting its metal latch and alarm wires. The keys weren’t kept in the hangar, so the thief either hot-wired the vehicle or pushed it out. The guards on duty saw nothing. One, who had been asleep, was later fired.

Within days, the theft was national news, leading to theories about who’d taken the Aston Martin and sightings across the US. Yet the stories always proved false. Reportedly, police detectives at one point suspected Pugliese of planning the theft, but that theory didn’t pan out either, and the case went cold, until Joe picked up the scent. Pick up the book to find out what happened!

Order your copy of Million Dollar Car Detective here.

I had a HUGE flexibility breakthrough in the Flex Factory on Thursday morning and I HAD to share this video.

This is insane to me. Nine months ago I couldn’t reach down and touch my shins. I winced bending to put my shoes on… And at my swim meets I couldn’t get down to grab the blocks and explode off for the start…That’s why I had to show off this morning. The ground was TOO CLOSE for my reps and I needed blocks for my new full range of motion. Wild. At 47 I’m more flexible right now than I’ve been in my entire life. Check this out:

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