Beyond Little Anton

John W. Warner IV - Author & Historian for Little Anton

From John W. Warner IV — former pro racing driver and son of Senator John W. Warner III (Ret.; R-VA), former Secretary of the Navy and Chairman of the Armed Services Committee and Catherine Mellon, — comes a gripping WW II historical novel about espionage, covert tech, and a high-octane, madcap love affair during the height of Grand Prix racing and the rise of the Third Reich. In this debut novel, Warner masterfully interweaves a fictional adventure within factual reportage to disclose the hidden history of technological inventions that powered high-performance cars, planes and war machinery of the 1930s and 40s - and the prominent leaders who exploited them.

Contact: John W. Warner IV at jww427@gmail.com | N/A | Visit Online!

               

• The Dr./Prof. Ferdinand Porsche story, which includes folks like Ettore Bugatti, Hans Stuck, and more!
• Planes, Trains and Automobiles: the technical side of WW2
• “The Peoples Car” (aka Volkswagen)
• The Little Anton series and its newest book: Lion Tiger Bear
• The “mad cap cast of characters” in the series; and many scenes in the book series.

and much, much more!

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the auto sphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrol heads that wonder. How did they get that job or become that person?

The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Crew Chief Eric: Tonight, our guest is an author and historian with a passion for hidden history, revisionist, historical narratives, vintage cars, and the unsung heroes of world war II. His father, a five term U. S. Senator from Virginia, his mother, the daughter of a renowned Pittsburgh born philanthropist, his stepmother, a famous celebrity.

If you haven’t guessed it by now, we’re honored and excited to have John W. Warner IV, on Break Fix, a former IMSA pro driver turned gentleman [00:01:00] farmer, car collector, and passionate petrolhead, to talk about his historical fiction series, Little Anton, which is part satire, part love story, and a dash of espionage.

And I promise, John. We wouldn’t talk about aliens. Maybe. So welcome to Break Fix, John. Howdy, how are you doing? Let me put this in perspective for our folks that are listening in. You and I have had the pleasure of meeting up several times during the course of the last couple of years. Last names withstanding, John.

I didn’t really realize how tied into the automotive and motor sports world you were until we both participated in the classic car tour back in the 2018 2019 season, where I was introduced to John W. Warner IV kind of behind the scenes. I got to see some of your collection, your racing memorabilia, hear your war stories, pun intended.

Which leads to our first question. Were you always into cars? Was that your thing? Has it always been a passion? How did you find yourself behind the wheel? [00:02:00]

John W. Warner IV: Well, I have a dual passion, everything to do with space and Star Trek and UFOs and all that. But also I had a passion for cars at an early age. When I was in college, I scraped together all the money I had in the world.

And I borrowed five grand from my dad. It was a lifetime Lincoln driver. And he says, what, what the hell kind of car are you going to get, son? And I said, Oh, don’t worry. It’s going to be a Ford. As long as it’s a Ford, I’m fine with it. Here’s five grand, pay me back later. And so I went down in Charlottesville, I went to UVA, Brady Bushy Ford there, they had a used car building and inside was a lime green 1972 Pantera.

That’s Ford adjacent. Yeah, I was like tell me about it because I was kind of gearhead and he’s like well This car’s got no radios too loud And the former owner was a gt40 driver and he pulled the motor and blueprinted it And it’s got a solid lifter cam and you know big holly double pumper higher compression and all that jazz and I said I’ll take it.

Where do I sign? And I [00:03:00] took a salesman for a little drive. This is before I learned to race because my father got me into racing. Really? I gave him a ride in the car one night at 140 miles an hour. Same thing with the salesman. My dad said, Oh, Jesus Christ, you’re going to kill us all. Go get some professional driving lessons.

I’ll pay for them. I insist the next week I was off to skip Barbara racing school. This was the summer of 1983. I met Paul Newman and Tom cruise was there in my class. He was late. I was friends with Newman from then on. I actually dated his daughter later in life. They were a wonderful, nice family. They were just the nicest people.

And he and I raced together later on in a grand am IMSA. American Le Mans series at Daytona and Sebring.

Crew Chief Eric: You

John W. Warner IV: know, my father got me into it.

Crew Chief Eric: You know, that’s not something I would have guessed. I don’t know why I didn’t put those two things together. So was your dad passionate about cars and racing?

Lifetime

John W. Warner IV: Lincoln, man. Oh no, he was a 55 mile an hour guy. I usually had a driver, you know, in the Senate days, but he always instilled responsibility and safety [00:04:00] with me all throughout my life. He said, listen, you know, you’re a good responsible kid, but you’re 21 and you need to learn to drive because this thing will kill you.

And he was right. How it didn’t kill myself. I don’t know. That was a genuine 160 mile an hour car with that engine in it. I did it late at night, one time with a friend. He knew that it would save my life, and it probably did. That’s one of a few Widowmakers that you’ve owned. I’ll tell you that Pantera was a really nice handling car.

Engine would protrude into the cabin. Talk about mid engine. It was more mid engine than either the Ferrari 308 or the Boxster at the time. And I’ve owned two Boxsters, and they handle like shit compared to a Pantera. I mean, they’re wonderful cars. Beautiful sounding engines, but they don’t have any torque.

Pantera would eat it alive. The Pantera is a very neutral handler, and so you could go into a turn, a really tight turn, hot, and lift off the gas, and the nose would point in gently. Beautiful understeer built into it, just enough. When I came back from racing school, you know, I could drive all of a sudden.

I noticed that the car was very neutral to balance, so I [00:05:00] think it was a very safe car, actually. Your dad put you in racing school, but what did your mom think about all this? Well, she was more of a car person than dad was. She taught me to drive one day. I was 12 years old. Out in the rural Virginia in 1974, you know, it was no big deal for a parent to have a kid drive them to the store.

Today it’s a different deal. She said, you know, put the booster seat in and said, drive. There’s the clutch. That’s the brake. That’s the gas. It’s four speeds. She had a BMW. It was a 3. 0 CS coupe. And I said, okay. And then dad, I think two years later, it was like, come on, I’m going to teach you to drive my Bronco.

He had a 75 Bronco. And I said, Oh, mom already taught me to drive when I was 12. He’s like, what? Both parents instilled that in me.

Crew Chief Eric: Not to foreshadow what we’re going to talk about in a little bit here, but did your passion for Porsches start at an early age or did that come at a later time?

John W. Warner IV: That came at a later time.

I had always noticed them and liked them. Boy, I’ll tell you, a friend told 911 turbo back then before I bought the Pantera. And I’m glad I didn’t, was a novice driver [00:06:00] and the trailing throttle oversteer on those old ones is bad. Once you master it, it’s great. Back then, I kind of knew that from reading road and track.

And I was like, you know what, it was the Pantera with badass. You know, it had every bit of 370 or 80 horsepower, which was a lot back then in 83. It could take on anything in the world.

Crew Chief Eric: And in lime green, they saw you from a mile away and they heard you from a mile away too.

John W. Warner IV: They did. The state trooper, one, one guy pulled me over in Charlottesville and he said, Son, this car is too loud, too low, and too green.

And he gave me a ticket for no front license plate. I don’t know how I never got a ticket for speeding in that thing. It’s a miracle. But I got a ticket for everything else. Another Porsche question. What was the first Porsche you ever purchased? I had a couple of girlfriends with Volkswagen Bugs. I was really impressed with those.

I had a girlfriend with a 914. And I was amazed at how it handled in college. And so, I bought it from her, but immediately sold it two weeks later to a friend. Friend of mine, but I was impressed with the handling. My first Porsche that I bought was the race car actually. I [00:07:00] bought a nine 11 GT three R water cooled from the factory.

You know, it was factory race, car racing for a German team. And they’re like, ah, we had . You SISs, man. They would call me Ner and so on. Speed Vision at the time. W-E-R-N-E-R. Ferner Johan Vener. Yeah. before the race. And so my first car was the race car. But then when I got home, I bought a used 9 11 c four s from a friend.

I love that car, but the race car was awesome. We had problems with the early water cool blocks like at the date of going to 24 hours. We blew through a Brock and practice. But the factory FedEx is one overnight in Germany, a long block. That’s Porsche for you. I mean, I raced on a German privateer team, but they had factory support in the back door because they were German.

Let’s expand

Crew Chief Eric: upon that a little bit more. So, you know, you went through racing school, Paul Newman, Tom Cruz, all these kinds of things. And then you find yourself in IMSA. You know, what was ALMS then is still now IMSA today, soon to be merged with the WEC to become whatever these new classes are that they keep talking about.

So late. [00:08:00] 90s, early 2000s and three of the major cars that stick out. One of them, you mentioned the 911 GT3R, Corvette C5R and a Toyota. Of those three, which did you prefer?

John W. Warner IV: Well, definitely the Porsche. I’ll tell you that the Toyota was a spec series. It was a sports Toyota pro series. They were very good mid engine.

open sort of a mini prototype. I have a guy, Riley and Scott, why don’t you move up into that? And I said, no, I’m going to do a couple of years in a 9 11 before I do a prototype. I had just done a year, two seasons of Grand Am and a Corvette CE 5, which I really liked. The only problem with the Corvettes was the slicks got greasy about 40 minutes into their last now, depending on track conditions and heat, you’d be going through the corner, just sliding around.

But the Porsche kept its weight on the rear wheels and it had a distinct advantage in the corners and the Corvettes were allowed to have a little more power so you could pass on the straights. But. I found I could dive into the corners and beat people that way in a Porsche. I was like, why would anyone race anything else?

I mean, I really felt that [00:09:00] way. I don’t plug for the Porsche factory or anything, but that car saved my life on many occasions. And I just got a real appreciation for the engineering that went into it. It was evolutionary. I had a brief couple races in a, in a rented air cooled, and then briefly, I, I, I did a, the GT one with the twin Turbos, Newman raced that, and the 2001 Daytona did a race or two in that.

It had definitely had turbo lag problems and other electronic problems. It wasn’t the car, the car was set up.

Crew Chief Eric: Great. We talked about it on an episode in season one about the gentleman drivers, and I’m wondering, were you officially on a team or were you considered a gentleman? Driver. And I don’t mean that in an offensive sort of way, more of a curiosity sort of thing.

John W. Warner IV: I’m not even sure what the definition of gentleman driver is other than just some rich ding dong, you know, going to rent a car. I didn’t do it that way. My father told me some good advice. He says he came to a race of mine when I was doing SCCA National in Austin Healy. I said, I’m moving up to this Toyota Pro thing.

He’d always tell me never do anything half assed. And don’t jump into something that you’re not prepared for. [00:10:00] And so I really was very conservative. I raced with some very rich guys who would buy a brand new car, but they didn’t have jack shit per experience. And they would obviously spin out and they couldn’t take the heat of professional racing.

That happened on a number of occasions, but I had five years in the Toyota series, two years in the SCCA pro and the vets, and then the grandam and the vets and other things. I really worked my way up slowly because I didn’t want to be this rich dilettante, not knowing what the hell they’re doing, but they’ve got the money to buy two cars or a stable of cars.

I never did that. I rented cars until the Porsche and then I had to buy it. I enjoyed racing with drivers who came up through the ranks like I did and didn’t just buy their way in. That’s a really dangerous thing to do and people get killed all the time and their arrogance. They’re like, I built this company.

I’m CEO. I’ve made 700 million and I’m going to buy a brand new Ferrari race car and they stuff it into a wall. I’ve going to race at school of two weeks. Pro racing is, it weeds out the children from the adults. Some of the [00:11:00] women I raced against, one was a paraplegic. She was the best racing driver I ever saw.

Car caught fire. She called herself out of the car by herself. And we were all there clapping, you know, holy shit, you know, that’s real balls was that woman. I always tell that to people, you know, I have girlfriends, you know, you do all these macho things. I said, Oh no, I raced against some very good women who take it very seriously.

Crew Chief Eric: And you would have come up through the same era as. Like Lynn St. James and Willie T. Ribbs and all those folks that were in Trans Am in the 70s, 80s, and 90s as well.

John W. Warner IV: Sort of. I mean, I, I, I, 83, I was 21. So I started early, but I went through the Skippy series for four or five years. I really didn’t think I was going to go beyond that.

I thought it was just going to be a hobby and everything. My dad said, don’t do anything half ass, so I didn’t. But by the time I got into the Toyota stuff, I won a minor award for most improved driver. It’s like 40 of us. And my crew chief said, it’s time to move on. The problem with those cars, they were momentum cars and they didn’t have a lot of power.

They would go. 145, but I wanted [00:12:00] to be in a GT three or two.

Crew Chief Eric: What do you think are some of the, other than the quadriplegic pulling herself out of the car at Sonoma? I think it was the racetrack, if I recall the story correctly, what other memorable moments from racing? Like maybe some folks that, you know, you encountered that maybe kind of puts you in all like one of the characters in your book.

Hans Stuck Senior. Did you ever meet Hans Stuck, his son?

John W. Warner IV: I wish I had. I was going to race in Europe for the, not the Super Cup. It was another series in 2002, but my back went in and I never got to Europe. I was going to move there for a year. I was going to live in Munich or somewhere with this German team, but it all fell apart.

I met Newman early on, but my sister knew him. I dated his daughter briefly for a few years, and he and I became good friends. Around Daytona, 24 hours in 2001, it rained all night. Oh, that was awful. He was in the class above me. I was in the GT3, he was in a GT1 Porsche. And he would flip me the bird every time he passed me on the oval, you know, on the high back in the rain.

You know, I’m like behind Dale Earnhardt, his son. They [00:13:00] were in the vets. I’m like, Oh shit, what am I doing here? You know, going 180 and you’re following a little red light and all this spray. You’re praying the guy ahead of you knows where to break for the turn one. I thought I was going to die that night.

Unreal. I didn’t really meet any, I met, you know, Mario Andretti and some of the big drivers through Newman. I would hang out in his IndyCar pits with the family. And that was a lot of fun. I thought Andretti was kind of arrogant. You know, it’s like, don’t beat your heroes. You know, I was lucky. I mean, Newman was this down to earth guy.

He was a really good driver. I wish I was as good as he was.

Crew Chief Eric: Of all the racetracks that you’ve driven on, What’s your favorite? Or your least favorite. Of the tracks you wish you had driven, is there still something on your bucket list?

John W. Warner IV: Well, I can’t drive anymore. My back’s too bad. I’d always want to go to Le Mans.

Check that out. My least favorite? In the old days, Mossport in Canada had a hill that went down to a bridge. I was there one time and they were like, All right, the drivers, I mean, the guy just died yesterday in practice. And we’re all like, Oh shit, really? [00:14:00] They come down this hill at full speed, then there’s no protection against the bridge.

Now they fixed that over the years, but man, back in the early 90s when I was there, oh my god, that was awful. The rest of the track was great. Sears Point, you got me. How you drive that track fast, it’s beyond my, I don’t, weird setup, turn, I never could get it right. I never got it right. My favorite was Sebring.

It was flat. You had the nostalgia of it. Turns were perfectly proportioned. It was pretty fast. There was room to pass, you know, on down the line, flat out best. And I like Summit Point, West Virginia, which is my hometown track. It’s a really good track. It’s bumpy as hell. But if you can learn to drive there fast,

Crew Chief Eric: you’ll learn to drive anywhere.

That’s very, very true. You’ve alluded a couple times, you know, back injury, back pain. Is that the reason you got out? What happened? What made you leave racing?

John W. Warner IV: No pain. I was getting ready for the 2002 season. I did a few practice runs in the 9 11, went back to the hotel, and I was like, [00:15:00] oh my. God, I chugged a half a bottle of Tylenol and nothing happened.

And I just said, there’s something wrong with me. And I went to the doctor and I’ll never forget it. He laughed at my MRI. He said, you’re done. Two races prior to that in practice, I was at road Atlanta and one of the Audi prototypes bumped me going in the downhill full speed. And I spun around into the wall.

I don’t know, 140. I can’t remember what it was. Pushed the engine up against the firewall. Didn’t break through. Car saved my life and I blacked out for a few seconds, but it was just an aggregation of all my accidents. I was riding Harley’s and I was in good shape. I would go to the gym and I just thought I was invincible.

I was 40 years old. I had just turned 40. And uh, the doctor’s like, you got compound fractures. You’ve got fractures in your pelvis. You didn’t know about. I was like, Oh, really? And he’s got, you’ve got two smashed discs. You’re done. And then weirdly enough, couple months later, I figured I’d take out the 2002 season and get an operation and get back into shape.

I went head over heels and a mountain bike on the street about seven [00:16:00] miles an hour. And I hit everything. I broke my right femur. I had about 30 fractures in my pelvis. That’s when the compound fractures in the lower lumbar vertebrae started. I was just a mess. Wow. I’m still in pain to this day. I had three operations.

Crew Chief Eric: This is really the jumping off point as to where you get to your writing career. Let me put a pin in that for just a moment. Let’s come back and revisit this being in pain, coming off the bike, your last accident there. Thanks Some lighter hearted questions before we get into the meat of the conversation, which is your book series, little Anton, I’ve seen your collection of cars.

So I know it’s quite eclectic, but what are your favorite kinds of cars? And what would you consider the sexiest car of all time?

John W. Warner IV: You’d have to put it in a specific category, the sexiest car all time. If I had to pick one. a sports GT car. I would do the Maserati Ghibli of the early seventies. I’m an artist.

I can tell you there’s not one awkward line or anything on that car. I don’t, I’ve never owned one, but I’ve seen [00:17:00] one in person. It’s so low and proportioned so beautifully. And actually it’s a very good car too. I mean, Maserati could really build a car with, with that engine was raced. It’s just perfect.

My back wasn’t bad. I’d probably invest in one. It’s such an amazing car to look at. It’s breathtaking in person. ferrari, Daytona and GTO other one sedan would be continental suicide door. own. I’ve owned it for al my wife and I just stare Post war four door American car ever made, in my opinion. The Ford and Lincoln guys got it right.

The proportions, I mean, the Kennedy White House was filled with them. Because Robert McNamara used to be CEO of Ford. And Jackie Kennedy driving. I remember the Kennedys driving the cars when I was a little kid in the 60s, Cape Cod. My sisters were friends with them. I remember, you know, you get 10 kids on the back of the convertible.

Those two cars, but I have to say for America, the [00:18:00] 63 Stingray split window. I’d pick that over all other cars. My God, that thing is just perfect. What do you consider like the ugliest car ever? I don’t. That’s one of the questions in our meetings that people pass around. There’s a million answers. You know, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

One person’s idea of something good looking is another person’s cool and weird. There’s no answer to that.

Crew Chief Eric: That is the most neutral answer we’ve ever received to that question. And I’m not, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.

John W. Warner IV: There’s some ugly cars out there. To someone, it’s always cool. That’s very true.

Crew Chief Eric: So are there still some cars on your bucket list that you’d like to own outside of, you know, a couple of the

John W. Warner IV: ones that you’ve already mentioned? 49 Cadillac. Fastback, sedan, definitely on my list as my next car. I don’t want to drive a super duper expensive car. It makes me a little nervous because I like to drive my cars.

I barely even clean them. I’m in the poet’s group, you know, that category. We just drive our cars. I don’t go to shows and do the trophy thing. I could care less. I keep them relatively dust free, [00:19:00] but I don’t wash them a lot. Pre war cars, I just can’t do anymore. I need power steering now. That bike accident ruptured my rotator cuff and it’s just gotten worse, babe.

I’m almost 60 now.

Crew Chief Eric: Is there anything modern that would be on your list? Something that’s caught your eye in the last maybe 20 or 30 years?

John W. Warner IV: Oh yeah. I go to this local Sterling, Virginia Ferrari dealership. I know the guy. He’s Italian. He likes to drive fast. So I drive all the new modern Ferraris and back there they got a road circuit.

We really hammer the hell out of them. So I’ve test driven all of them. The new, uh, Roma looks nice. But all these new sports cars, they look like angry insects, you know, from a sci fi movie. I just can’t get over the styling. Maybe that’s just my age. I just don’t like it. Everything’s so techie in the Ferraris now.

I have a 1968 365 and that’s just such a pretty car. Beautiful, elegant car with no fuss and electronics at all. I’m guessing I’m kind of a Luddite that way, but as far as new cars, that’s a good question. What would I like to drive? I think the Bugattis are silly, even though Porsche has a hand in that engineering.

Now, professor [00:20:00] Porsche would admire the design engineering, but he would not have liked the weight. He was into lightweight, and so was Jerry, of course, his son, and so to see this behemoth, you know, 16 cylinders and 50 radiators and 20 intercoolers and 50 turbos, even the professor, I think, would say, whoa, it’s just too much.

I think it’s, it’s just a. Toy for weirdos. I blow down in my old age, I, I don’t get the rush of adrenaline. I, it’s not pleasurable anymore. I collect old Cadillacs and Packers. My wife and I just love cruising. Uh, we still have 3, 5, 6 Ferdinand that we drive. I go around corners fast in that, but you know, that’s only got 105 horse.

That’s a lot

Crew Chief Eric: for a 3 56.

John W. Warner IV: Yeah, it’s got the 1800 cc kit on it. Oh, there you go. Maybe 110 on a cool day. Boy, it’s, it’s so much fun to drive and it’s actually rides pretty smooth. I can get away with it. I couldn’t ride it for four hours, but I can do an hour and a half without hurting too bad.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s funny.

We’re talking about a 356 here for just a minute because, you know, I’m a [00:21:00] petrol head of a different generation. I grew up in the era of the 930 and the Countach and the Testarossa and the F40 and things like that. So those cars get my attention, but I’ve always had an appreciation for air cooled Porsches because That’s what I grew up with as well.

There’s a common misconception when it comes to who designed what oddly enough, I recently had a mutual friend of ours, Sal Fanelli on an episode of break fixed as well, to talk about Porsche diesel tractors. And he dove into the Porsche history as well. And you know, who’s designing what, and when the tractors came out, that was still during the last couple of years of professor Porsche’s life.

And I’m like. Did he actually design the tractors, which kind of begged the question. As I looked over things, he designed a beetle ferry designed a three 56 and Bootsy designed the nine 11. So it’s kind of interesting to see the generations of the Porsche family and how they’ve evolved everything.

John W. Warner IV: People don’t crack the big books. I talked to the guy at the Gamoon Museum for hours with a translator. No, no, no, no. Professor Portia designed the first 356. Ferry took it from [00:22:00] there, but no, he designed it. Portia, people forget his World War I and earlier inventions. Before the tractor, he invented a front motor tiller tractor in the teens, 1914 or something.

For the German people, he was always about efficient designs of things. You know, he was an airplane engine designer, designed engines for flying boats, all in my book. People always think, you know, the beetle and everything. He designed a lot of different things. He was a well known genius in the 20s, teens and 20s, Germany and Austria.

It wasn’t this fame that he got with Hitler. Hitler was a nobody when he met. Porsche in 27. Porsche was a famous man. Him and Bugatti were walking. That’s a true story. Lerner and his entourage show up stinking like motor oil and armpits. And they were like, no, this guy’s a whack job. The old man designed the tractor as well.

Ferry designed the 550, I think, you know, obviously, and I’ll, you know, the later 356 race cars and all that, the four cylinder race car series, and then everything after that. Bootsy, you know, I’ve No, the old man did the 356 [00:23:00] his prototype for it still exists somewhere and it’s pre war. It didn’t have an engine, I don’t think it might be in the Porsche museum.

I can’t remember. The 356 was designed loosely based on a Berlin to Rome aerodynamic car, but that was basically the Genesis for the 356, the chassis and everything, sort of the aerodynamics. People get a lot of that stuff wrong. It’s no wonder because road and track and all these car magazines, those guys.

They don’t do much research. They do the minimum. They’ve got a deadline. When I started this book, I’m a very detail oriented person as Porsche was, and the Germans are known for that and Austrians. I hate it when Hollywood movies like Indiana Jones or whatever have even war movies and books and things, they get the details wrong.

I went to extra lengths to get the details, right? I don’t introduce a gun or a plane or a car until, you know, The moment in history that it was introduced. I don’t play fast and loose with facts. I hate that in movies and books and things. Oh, they’ll never notice. And most [00:24:00] people don’t. I understand that.

And so I, in my books, I get a lot of compliments over the email of people like, you really sweated the details. You’ve got things right. I went on the Axis forum and the one guy that said, Oh yeah, you get things really right in your book. You don’t screw around. So I’m very proud of that. I do have revisionist history, but There’s a lot of true stories in there mixed in.

I do write fantasy, but it’s all based in probable reality. And Peinkel does something, I put the serial number, you know, it’s that kind of detail. I don’t want World War II, especially the, you know, the German buffs coming after me and going, this guy’s a hack. But, you know, I, I write every book I can on the old man.

And, uh, no, he doesn’t get enough credit. Everyone thinks Ferry Porsche did everything. And it’s like, nope. He didn’t. He helped his father. He was there every step of the way. And he was a very good engineer and designer in his own right. A lot of it is, you know, the father and son.

Crew Chief Eric: Very much so. And especially in those last years of his life, because a lot of people also don’t realize that he was put in jail or in prison for being associated with, you know, potentially with [00:25:00] war crimes and whatnot.

And obviously with the third Reich and all that, because Hitler did have him under contract to build the people’s car and all that kind of thing.

John W. Warner IV: Another reason the French put Ferdinand Porsche in prison for two years. Not just because of his war crimes. He was just an engineer. You know, I’m not going to debate that, that they pressured all the industry.

Join the SS. Before the war, he had been working with Renault, had licensed his torsion bar suspension. I can’t remember if there was some foul deal going on at Peugeot. And they got pissed at him, and then the war started. And so that was another reason why they kept him in jail, was that bad deal with the two French car companies.

So I just want to throw that out there that, and in my new book, Porsche, you know, he admits that they’ve got 20, 000 Russians, Jews, and other people working at the Wolfsburg factory. And my character B shakes him and says, don’t you dare go up against the SS, they’ll kill you. And they don’t care who you are.

Crew Chief Eric: I think that you’re right. It’s pulling a thread. Like Ferry kind of continued, you know, the 356 A, Bs and Cs and all those that are more popular than the earlier Khmun cars. You know, [00:26:00] I associate with Ferry specifically because he was left with the companies like, what are we going to do with this now?

And they had to keep things going, put bread on the table, et cetera. And obviously they had a reputation to maintain having that legacy that his father had already built. Kind of interesting how all that played out. plays out and much like the intro, it’s those unsung stories. It’s kind of clearing up some of the more commercialized and watered down versions of Porsche story, even Enzo story, Lamborghini, going back into all these legacy car designers and families that are now known worldwide.

And I have a very pointed. Portia question to ask you this question came up internally a long time ago and it raged a really fierce debate about ethnicity versus citizenship. And actually Portia senior was the crux of the argument, oddly enough, and it was whether he was Austrian or check and where did he align himself and how did he identify as a person?

And so I want to ask you this. Two ways. One, because you’ve found a way to bring his [00:27:00] story to life and fill in a lot of gaps, especially through your research. And two, because you are a known Porsche historian. So what is the truth there? Was he Czech or was he Austrian?

John W. Warner IV: Well, both. He was born in the Austro Hungarian empire.

In 1886, he was an Austro Hungarian. You know, that region is Bohemia. So you could say he’s a Bohemian, which he was. Today, it’s like Silesia and part of the Sudetenland. So he was all that, but he did identify with Austria.

Crew Chief Eric: He never really identified with Germany, though. He was always Austrian in his heart.

John W. Warner IV: My aunt was Austrian, and so she was able to give me some intel on that. Austrians are very proud of their heritage. They call the Germans pivka is the German pronunciation. And I say that in the book, he and Oscar make fun of the Germans. It’s like someone from New York talking about California. It’s like, well, we’re Americans, but not really.

Yeah. I don’t know what language they’re speaking. And so there are subtle differences in the German from region to region, Swabian German versus Prussian and other things. So, People identified with [00:28:00] region, but he identified himself as Bohemian and Austrian.

Crew Chief Eric: Part of the argument was, it didn’t matter what the paperwork said.

It didn’t matter that the lines had been redistricted, and the area that he lived in is now what we know as Czechoslovakia. It wasn’t

John W. Warner IV: back then.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly, exactly. person, you identify a certain way and we could extrapolate that into a lot of different things. But in this sense, patriotically, you know, his ethnicity.

So I wanted to confirm at least from your knowledge that yes, Portia senior, if you asked him, he would have said, I’m Austrian.

John W. Warner IV: Yes. And he was proud of being from Bohemia. They’ve changed the name of this town from Mappersdorf to something else, but he was Austrian. Hitler had an affinity for him. He was a fellow Austrian.

People always think Hitler’s, German. He’s not, he’s Austrian. And for us here in America, what’s the difference. But over there, there’s a big difference. Like I said, when I did this Porsche tour and history mission that I did in Germany, I went to Germany twice to research the book. He was Austrian and my aunt was Austrian.

And they were like, Oh, don’t you ever call us Germans. They’re friendly. And they’ve always had [00:29:00] cross pollinization. It’s a myth that Austrians welcomed Hitler with open arms in 1938. Most of them were not happy with the Anschluss. And Porsche and his family, I wrote it that they’re not happy either. My editor liked that quote.

I have a very short chapter of him and Ferry listening to radio. And my editor liked that above all else in the book.

Crew Chief Eric: Hitler favored Portia. Obviously, he contracted Portia, well known at the time, as you said, Hitler was a nobody when Portia was already on the scene. It made me wonder, though, what Outside of fame and notoriety and the celebrity that Porsche had, Hitler was very much a Mercedes man.

Let’s put it that way. So why didn’t he go to Mercedes and have them build the people’s car? A group that was already established. Porsche didn’t have a factory. Porsche didn’t have the assembly line and all these people behind him to build the Volkswagen originally. So That’s a part of history. I’ve never understood why Porsche above Auto Union or Horch, DKW or [00:30:00] NSW or Wanderer or any of these folks that were still around, but Mercedes above all, because he was such a fanatic about Benzes.

John W. Warner IV: It’s a complex story and most people don’t know it because it is so complex. I write it as clear as I can in the book. He opened his Porsche design firm in 1930, in the middle of the depression. The lightweight, inexpensive people’s car was not his idea or Hitler’s. It had been floating around Germany for a while.

French had an idea to do it too. The problem was steel costs money and engineering costs money and got to sell millions of these couldn’t figure out how to do it. Cars were a luxury item, even for middle class people, they were a luxury item. And so Joseph Gans, I think was the originator of his lightweight car, which, and Porsche had met with him.

People say, Oh, he stole his idea. Well, everyone was stealing each other’s ideas. He admired Gans, and I wrote that in the book. Saw Gans’s car, it was very promising, but I could do better because his engine’s water cooled and all, too many things to break down. Hitler [00:31:00] had the idea. Mercedes had toyed around with it.

They couldn’t figure out how to make it work economically. A lot of the horch is luxury. Auto union wasn’t interested. It was just a third rail thing. It was like, we can’t do it. And it took Hitler and the Reichsbank and everyone to force it to be done. The car manufacturers didn’t want to do it because Mercedes is the luxury brand.

It wasn’t like today where they’ve got a million cars for sale. They had like five. And they didn’t want to build some dinky toy. Oh no. And Porsche had the dream to do it, and Hitler had the dream to do it. I think Alfred Rosenberger and Hans Stuck had something to do with it. It’s a little unclear, but they ended up in Hitler’s office and they were like, we can make this work, but man, we’re going to need money to do it.

And he’s like, don’t worry about that. I need to auto mobilize the populace. That’s a verb. People think I made that up. I didn’t. Hitler was very enamored with Mercedes. They picked him up at Landsberg prison in 1923. with two supercharged S Class. They knew the value of political people on the road.

Mercedes was trying to market itself. Hitler [00:32:00] was a bit of a gearhead. In his letter, which I publish in the book, I publish it verbatim. He says, I need, require this and such gear ratios and for this amount of RPM and which is more efficient. He had some knowledge of that. He wasn’t stupid. He was just crazy as a madman, but he wasn’t stupid by any means until the drugs and everything later on, or got to his head, he’s a megalomaniac and all that.

But in the early days, he definitely a psychopath, but that really didn’t mature. But when Portia met him, the stories I was able to piece together was Portia and Bugatti were not impressed with this politician, but Portia was impressed with the letter that he wrote to Jacob Verley. And said, God, this guy’s not half idiot after all.

He likes cars and everything like this. And it really is true that Hitler knew who Porsche was. The troops in the trenches in World War I, the German troops, they know who was designing the Fokkers and the engines and all that. It was the Red Baron and everybody. But it was Porsche. They knew. He was a famous man.

And of course he did artillery trains and mortar stuff. And he [00:33:00] developed a lot of things. That history is forgotten. That’s why I made this book an epic throughout 45 years or more, because I wanted to showcase his early life. No one talks about it. And I didn’t know a lot about it until I started to research it.

It was astounding. He was recognized as a genius in World War

Crew Chief Eric: I. So as we dive into your book a little bit, you reminded me of that scene with at the beginning stages of the book where It’s told almost from Professor Porsche’s perspective where he’s there working with the Mercedes race team whatnot and there’s Bugattis chasing them down in another one of the, in his own vehicle.

And he refers to him as this arrogant Frenchman. And that’s another thing that’s always funny is Bugatti is associated somehow with Italian cars, even though they’re French. He’s French. It’s, it’s an Italian sounding name. I found that whole scene to be extremely comical and I think it’s a great jumping off point for going back to what we put a pin in, which was how did you go from pro racing driver to automotive historian slash author?

John W. Warner IV: Well, I’ve always been interested in history. [00:34:00] My degree at University of Virginia was in Russian history and Russian studies, Cold War and all the whole history. So I had a history background. And a good friend of mine, when I was laid up in 2006, you know, I was in terrible pain. He said, look, buy a laptop and teach yourself to write.

You wrote really good, funny stuff in high school. You need to do it. I was like, all right. I didn’t really want to do it. That’s how I got into it. I had a history background. I traveled all over the world with my dad carrying his suitcase. I went to Russia with him to meet Gorbachev with Bob Dole and a bunch of senators.

I was the only one who knew anything about Russian history or culture. And these guys were like, Oh, we’re not going to the Bolshoi. You’re going to go to bed early. And I said, every one of you is going to go to the Bolshoi. That’s a rude thing to do. The Russian people take their culture seriously, their literature and all this.

And, uh, I was, read a lot of books on World War II. I, I can label myself now as a World War II historian. I have enough knowledge. And of course I’m a portrait historian. Honestly, when I went to the museum. They were very nice, but they didn’t know jack shit. And they would not talk about World War II. And they didn’t know anything.

I had to [00:35:00] go to Gmund. I had an Austrian guy on my Porsche tour. And he said, I know some people that know some people. And I talked to people in their 90s who had been through the war. This is 10 years ago. So I had firsthand accounts. I met an old woman who had met the professor when she was a little girl.

One’s degree of separation, you know, the museum and all this stuff. They want that World War II history to go away. In Germany, they’ve got this thing. Well, if they outlaw the swastika and they outlaw fascism, it’ll go away. It won’t, they’re doing everyone a disservice by trying to ignore it in some ways, the Porsche Museum needs to get over it.

I mean, they should have a model of the Porsche Tiger tank and that’s in my new book. You know,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s another thing that I was surprised. It was somewhat referenced, but not directly in the early chapters. Cause you do cover a lot of the world war one efforts and some of those scenes, I love the way they were graphically represented.

He’s out there on the mountain. It’s cold breath of the soldiers, all this stuff and the anxiety. And it painted this awesome picture. And I liked the fact that the book isn’t too technical and having a [00:36:00] background, even as a petrol head, it resonates anybody that has any mechanical background, you get it.

It’s not so over the top that my wife couldn’t read it. Not that I want to insult her intelligence. Cause she’s very bright, young lady. It’s very different than what I expected as I was diving into the book. So. It’s the

John W. Warner IV: great doorstop.

Crew Chief Eric: No, I mean, I don’t want to be overly complimentary, but what I, what I want to say is it’s interesting how you were able to fill in the gaps and get all this research material on something.

I don’t want to say as obscure as Dr. Portia’s life, but something that isn’t as annotated as let’s say Henry Ford’s life is right where you can dive into the history of Ford and figure out a lot of things and fill in the gaps very easily.

John W. Warner IV: Plus Ford was a Nazi lover too. I mean, he. Portia hated the Nazis and the SS, but it’s funny.

Henry Ford was good friends with Hitler as well.

Crew Chief Eric: You were able to thread it all together and piece it all together based on interviews, scraps of information, stuff that people probably wrote down for you on a napkin. But the thing about the book that really [00:37:00] got my attention is it’s very dialogue forward.

I’ve read plenty of historical fiction, you know, alternate history books and things like that. They’re very dry. They’re very, whatever. And, and I’m not saying. That’s what was my prejudice going into this book. But what I came to realize was there’s these characters, there’s these other stories, there’s these, these underlying arcs.

And how do you just conjure up this world

John W. Warner IV: around Dr. Portia? It wasn’t easy and I’m not patting myself on the back. I knew the story somewhat of the silver arrows and the auto union silver fish, which most people don’t get. ever. They call them the Silverfish. And actually, Hitler picked the color as their national racing color.

He polished an aluminum car in the 20s once. I think Neubauer did it to save weight, but that was a myth. The silver paint was made with fish scales. I put that in the book. Porsche’s, you know, in World War I, he really was out there in the mud, and he had that electric land train. He was very proud of that, and it did work.

It hauled, you know, mortars and stuff up the Austrian Alps to fight the [00:38:00] Italians. And, uh, he really was on the front lines. The books just say he was there and nothing else. And so I had to fill in, you know, he was from a family of pacifists. He hated war, but he was also very patriotic about Austria and then later Germany.

But, you know, his boys were at the front dying. And to ask an engineer, we need this airplane engine or Design this or this electric train thing. He’s going to do it because you know, those are his young countrymen dying. And you know, his story with his brother is true. His older brother. That’s the name of the book.

There’s not much. I tried to find some of the family members to tell me exactly what happened, but no one knew. But I’m not going to spoil that for the readers. The book is a tough read for other than for gear heads or World War II people. It is a tougher read, but I wrote it kind of with that. I was like, you know, regular folks aren’t going to read this.

And then it, the story became more metaphysical and it got bigger. It’s really three novels in a long story format. Portia, you know, it was hard because the books are just technical. And I had to piece together scraps, like stale bread and [00:39:00] the cookies in his pocket. That’s true. He and his brother Oscar were close.

You know, they had long talks. They would go hunting for stag and mushrooms and his wife would make mushroom soup and, you know, these little things that gave him humanity. Whereas all the books are about racing and technical and the Volkswagen Beetle and Hitler and the Tiger Tank. And little about the man, what he was really like.

And so I had to piece that together from a million different That’s why the book took me 10 years to write. But it takes on this life of almost a

Crew Chief Eric: biography.

John W. Warner IV: It is his biography. I wanted to do that in a novel format. My editor had a cow with it, but we made it work. It’s still too long for one story. I should have split it into two.

Two or three different books with beginnings and endings, but it is what it is. It’s just three books.

Crew Chief Eric: One of my things that I had to come to terms with as I’ve been reading it, fully admitting here for the audience that, you know, I haven’t finished it yet because it is quite long. I’m on the old version of Little Anton, which is in two volumes.

The first one is massive and the second one is like a riot. It’s like an appendix. It’s the [00:40:00] first volume. Brick and the stick. Yeah, exactly. The brick and the stick. Exactly. It’s my

John W. Warner IV: wife’s name for it. Yeah. As far as I know, I could be wrong. The only single novel that’s sold in a three part set, I don’t know of any others.

My publicist and my editor, we are all like, no one’s ever done this before. And I was like, well, I’ll do it. .

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, there you go. But that leads to my question and, and kind of my thought is when I tried to grasp, when I was reading it, and for somebody that may be reading this book for the first time, what you realize is.

You dive right into the Porsche family story in the early, early days, Dr. Porsche as a kid, and it kind of builds from there quite quickly into him being a young man and getting into engineering. I’ve seen some other things explained about his early days and how he got into electronics and he was auditing classes in Austria, and I’ve seen other versions of that story too, but I liked the way you painted that picture and how you got us to his as an adult, but what ends up happening though, as you’re reading it, suddenly you’re introduced.

These other characters, to use your words, a mad cat cast of characters in [00:41:00] this

John W. Warner IV: book.

Crew Chief Eric: And I love the personalities that you brought forth of, let’s say the Mercedes engineers, you know, and folks like you mentioned, like Neubauer or even Hans Stuck’s father, Hans Stuck senior, right. And things like that, where you personify them, they become real suddenly because they are too far in the past for any of us reading it now to have been maybe intimate with their story or having even met them.

But what ends up happening is you flip the script suddenly and you’re like, wow, we’re talking about B and we’re on safari in Africa and we’re setting the story. And I’m like, wait, this is like a whole nother book, which kind of posed a question. It’s like, why didn’t we just stick with Portia in one book and then do some sort of crossover and do B in her book.

But I, as I’m reading it more at first, I was like, oh, maybe this is going to be to quote a movie title. And you know, Melvin goes to dinner, which is like, I come to Jesus type of thing. No, it’s not that this has to play out this way. In order for us to get to where this all comes to a head and all these characters are now interacting with each other very, very closely.

And so that makes it really exciting.

John W. Warner IV: I did a very complex [00:42:00] thing for my first book, but that’s me, you know, the Porsche way. I designed it like a, like a race car. Bee, Beatrice, Ferdinand, Porsche, and Lutz are the three main characters. And their lives intertwine, and they become tightly intertwined in the third part in book two that you have, but the third part, the third book, and around this project that’s classified in Germany.

Then it all comes together, and then the reader’s like, oh shit, no wonder he went off on all these tangents. They’re all coming together. Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Boom.

John W. Warner IV: They’re all in the same building together with this project. And it’s like, Oh, that’s why he named the book little Anton. I take a very circuitous way to do it, but I did it.

The original version was 1300 pages.

Crew Chief Eric: Whoa.

John W. Warner IV: Yeah. It was difficult to do. And it took me a lot of revisions. I mean, my editor and I went back and forth for a year doing that. Now you would send me tranches of book. He’s like, I don’t know how you’re going to do this, but you need to do this. [00:43:00] I said, you’re right.

I got to cut this out and redo it. It took a lot. It’s way too ambitious, but I did it, but it all comes together in the end. I assure the reader that, and I think I mentioned that somewhere forward. Yes, you do. It requires an explanation. My new book is only 400 pages. You’ll read it in a day and a half goes so fast.

This was a little bit more. Sophomoric and retrospective in places and it is very technical in places It’s not for you and me or your fans, but for the average reader like my wife They don’t know what 4. 5 liter engine mean the average person can glaze over that Who cares about a 12 cylinder engine versus a v8?

Who cares as long as you understand what’s going on? And I try to explain things in the simplest way I could but just was a little much It’s definitely a gear heady book. Bea is an interesting character. She’s just the total opposite of Portia. She’s an absolute fuck up, although they both are rebels.

Yes, very much so. Young Portia was a rebel. Mercedes fired his ass. They were like, you’re too wacky for us. You know, the [00:44:00] genius. Say what you want about Hitler, but he recognized his genius. Building the Volkswagen Bug, simplicity is not simple. And that’s a quote from him. Damned if I know where I got it from, but I think he said it to Hiller when they laid out his race car, the C Type Auto Union with 16 cylinders, two stage supercharger.

That was the opposite of the bug. I mean, that was the most advanced automobile in the world. People still marvel at it today. You can see videos of it firing up. The characters in the book, a lot of that comes from my father’s military background, uh, my Access to the government and the U. S. Senate through him, spending time in the Pentagon.

Uh, I know race team people. I know a lot of engineers. I’ve talked to airspace engineers. In fact, I consulted an aerospace engineer to make sure I got everything right on a lot of that stuff, you know, be as a pilot and everything. And so it’s a complex book, but it’s really about friendship and love. I mean, it’s a love story, plain and simple.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t want to give away where that comes in. And folks, it’s not a Portia’s mistress. So get that out of your head. It’s something completely different.

John W. Warner IV: [00:45:00] As far as I know, he didn’t have a mistress. He was very much in love with his wife, Aloysia. She was his, like my wife, she’s like his right arm. Fairy on the one arm and his wife on the other.

And he really drew upon that strength.

Crew Chief Eric: And there is also, hidden in here, a bit of a, we’ll call it an homage, but it’s a bit of an amalgam. There’s a character that’s hidden, but not so hidden. And it’s a bunch of your mother’s side of the family combined into one character. And if I remember correctly, his name is Redway Mellon.

I thought that was really funny only because I know a little bit about your back history and your family tree and whatnot. So for the average reader, they may not know that, but this is the melons, as I said in the intro from Pittsburgh and that whole lineage. So what was that like and why did you choose to bring all that in as well?

John W. Warner IV: My grandfather was an OSS agent. He was the forerunner of the CIA in World War II, and he told me a lot about a lot of classified projects he saw with General Patton at the end of the war in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. If somebody wants to watch my interview, it’s on [00:46:00] Dark Journalist, which is on YouTube, and he does deep state UFO things.

But this is true history. Some of it’s documented. But the Mellon family, we’re a small family and we’re in the committee of 300, 300 rich families, Rockefellers, Morgans, Duponts, the founding families, they call them. Some people call us that we’re not a big family. There’s about 130 or 40 of us alive at any given time.

And I’ve been told by people in Washington, friends of my father and ex CIA and military Pentagon people that there’s been over 40 melons since World War Two. In military intelligence. I do not have their name. However, my friend and cousin, Chris Mellon is currently involved in the UAP UFO Nimitz thing.

You know, he writes articles for CNN, you know, Washington Post and New York Times. He’s in there. And so he and I have had a little chat about that. cross pollinization. I wanted to put a Mellon character in there because he’s not a very big character, loosely based on actually my cousin and my dad and all this.

So he’s a composite character. We Mellons have had a [00:47:00] hand in all that stuff, even going back to the 30s. My great grandfather Andrew Mellon had intimate dealings with Halmar Schacht. Which is Hitler’s private banker and that’s through Sullivan and Cromwell, which is Alan Dulles and John Foster Dulles and was very corrupt.

Andrew Mellon was pretty much a fascist and they were doing business with Hitler. Oh, he’s a Republican. They were investing in Nazi Germany. So Alcoa Aluminum, the melons, we sold a lot of that to Germany and they made Messerschmitts and Heinkel bombers, you know, standard oil. Went through Portugal, Ford trucks, Chevy trucks, GM.

It’s a true story that when the Allied, you know, our B 17s, the American Air Force was bombing the Ford truck factories in Germany. Germany under contract. We had to repay them to rebuild them out. And Chevrolet, GM, and Ford. That’s a true story. The Wehrmacht rolled into Russia with Chevrolet trucks on firestone tires.

The Japanese Zeros had firestone tires. They were new old stock. Wars, business. I mean, no one knew who was going to fight, [00:48:00] you know, in the thirties. There were tons of weapons and trucks and everything sold. I just find that interesting. And I mentioned that when Porsche didn’t know Henry Ford and they were, they were friends and Henry Ford gives Porsche, he says, your genius comes from reincarnation.

And of course, Henry Ford and General Patton said that’s where their genius came from. lives. The book does delve into some metaphysics and philosophy.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s two threads I want to pull here. And one of them is to go back to what you said about the book being technical and maybe complicated for the average person.

And this is where I think I would disagree with you. And you’re the author of the book. Let me put it To you from my perspective, right? You

John W. Warner IV: haven’t gotten to the end yet.

Crew Chief Eric: True. That’s true. That’s true. I mean,

John W. Warner IV: portion field physics.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh man, episode of ancient aliens, but we’ll keep that at bay. I’ve always been a voracious reader.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting. One of my heroes at Johns Hopkins university before he passed away. And that’s Michael Crichton. And so as I’ve been reading your books, it reminds me of his writing style, which is [00:49:00] also extremely technical, but brought down to a level that can be absorbed by anybody that sits behind those pages.

So if you’ve read sphere or Jurassic park or timeline or any of those, there’s tons of science in there. They’re not portrayed as science fiction. That wasn’t his thing. thing, but there’s so much tech in there presented in such a way that it’s absorbable. And I appreciate that about this book as well.

It’s enjoyable for anybody that sits down and reads it. But there was also something that came out. And as I realized how long it took you to write this book, and you mentioned on your podcast several times, you were kind of laid up watching TV and you know, you bought the laptop and all this kind of thing.

And I wondered. As I peeled back the onion on Bea and Lutz and some of the other characters, I wanted to ask you, how much Downton Abbey were you watching while writing this book? Certainly

John W. Warner IV: some, but,

Crew Chief Eric: um, I knew it. I knew it. I

John W. Warner IV: personally had to relearn the English language to write in the British vernacular of the 1930s.

And before [00:50:00] that, Churchill’s Edwardian. But really, it was Churchill’s books, I think I read most of them. I watched every English program, not just Downton Abbey, which I think is silly. But that’s another story. I

Crew Chief Eric: bring that up on purpose, but please continue your thought.

John W. Warner IV: I watched everything and I took notes.

And I still take notes to this day, the phrases. She’s round the twist, means she’s nuts. These little things that the British have, just like Americans have, we have vernacular slang and everything like that. Colloquialisms. I’m sure it was in the 1930s, as much as I could, so it was doubly difficult, or deuce difficult, as they would say in World War I, you know.

It was mind bending. I had nothing to do in my life. I couldn’t move around. I was semi hazed. It was pain pills some of the time, you know, when Back pain was too much and I was laid up a lot and I would do my exercises but really couldn’t do much. I was at a place in my life where I had the time and interest to dig into and the deeper I went into all this the book became bigger and deeper and as you finish it you’ll understand why.

But you know the Germans really [00:51:00] were into a lot of that technology. That’s a whole other side that gets into my UFO side of things. Ancient Aliens is very watered down. But it’s not bad for the average person with no knowledge, but I don’t agree with everything in it. The UFO field is people will rip your face off in arguments.

The Germans really were into their Wunderwaffe technology. And this book gets into that. And that’s a real thing, whether people want to believe that or not. They were way ahead in their atomic bomb program than we were taught. I know that. I’ve talked to, you know, generals and admirals who told me, Oh yeah, we kept that secret during the war.

But you didn’t hear that from me. These are the kind of stuff I’ve had access to. And the characters in the book, they’re very human. And I really dig out Portia’s human side. I have to fill in the Every once in a while, the technical book will say, you know, he really did tie lights to his lifescapes. What was that night?

You know, 1880 something or, you know, 1890. That’s a true story. He got in trouble, but that’s all it said. He did this. He was mischievous. He got in trouble and his father beat him. That’s the only thing the book would [00:52:00] say. And so I had to extrapolate from there, from everything, but it was a good intellectual exercise.

Crew Chief Eric: Now I will say there’s one part, especially when you’re talking about how you absorb the language of the characters that you’re writing for, especially notable characters of history. And I remember. very vividly the scene where Winston Churchill, who happens to be the grand uncle of your character, Beatrice.

He’s in the room with, uh, fellow other folks from the MI6, like, you know, the precursor to MI6. He’s trying to convince her, persuade her, and there’s some very back and forth dialogue, and then suddenly, he goes into Churchill mode. He gives this, uh, monologue. It transported me there. I mean, that’s the word I want to use.

Like I’ve heard other speeches of Churchill and I’ve read other books and I was like, wow, this is really on point. And so I got to tip my hat to you on that because it’s very well done. And there are scenes like this where Throughout the book that just stand out that are either extremely comical, very [00:53:00] imaginative, super descriptive, or just really, really on point.

When you introduce Chamberlain and he’s signing off her paperwork for her to go into formal training and all this stuff. It’s just so hilarious how you just bring out this kind of nasty, snarky side of his personality. And I just, I really enjoyed it. I actually chuckled as I’m kind of reading through those pages.

John W. Warner IV: There’s a lot of satire in the book. The humor moves it along. I’m I mean, it’s dark when it needs to be serious, dark it is. Once I, I got into Churchill’s head, I can write anything in his voice. You’ll really like the speech in lion, tiger, bear. When it comes out next month, he’s addressing all the generals in Cairo.

And he’s like, God, and she has this back and forth with him in front of these generals, including Montgomery, you know, it’s a desert war 42 Churchill was amazing because I read all those books and somehow over the years, I just was able to write in his voice at will. And it’s. A lot of fun.

Crew Chief Eric: You’ve mentioned before being a very skilled mimic, especially with voices and personifying people in your own way.

[00:54:00] So, I mean, I, we, we saw some of that at the beginning of this episode and my wife calls them the voices bloody

John W. Warner IV: fucking hell.

Crew Chief Eric: They’re not nearly as scary as the ones that are inside your head. That’s all the

John W. Warner IV: conversation between Briggs, her father. and Churchill and her and I think Lord Sherwell was in there and he was saying this.

The kinds of things they’re discussing were actually true. But I pulled a million different things and I created this scene. Briggs is kind of this gruff old soldier, tough on Bea a lot. But he loves her and he dotes upon her, but he’s very fearful of her going to spy on the Germans because he knows what she’s up against.

And they’re talking about the German engineering, where does it come from? And he’s like, I know, I didn’t remember it now. And he goes off into this monologue about German airships of the 19th century and their engineering schools and the occult and other things. And it’s all based on truth. You know, they did have philosopher scientists in Prussia and the early German states.

And he knew it all [00:55:00] because he’s a military historian. He teaches at Sandhurst. I was able to do that because he had the knowledge of that. He was amazed that he could help his daughter with this weird operation that they want to do. You know, they think it’s a walk in the park. Of course, it is nothing of the sort.

She grows up a lot. She’s very headstrong. immature and racist and classist and she’s snob and she’s very intelligent and she’s a good pilot and she’s a good driver and so she understands engineering. She has her dainty side with her friends and they’re hard drinking and they cuss and that’s based on women that I know.

Some of it’s based on my own sisters and their friends. You know, I know some people in British high society I was able to draw upon. It’s just my background.

Crew Chief Eric: And I don’t mean to offend by making this, you know, Downton Abbey reference, but for me as a reader, I’ve always somehow tried to imagine what the person would look like.

Sometimes an author does a good job of describing, Oh, she had long flowing blonde hair, metallic blue eyes, whatever. And you’re like, okay, well, Fine. But in my head, you know, everybody either looks like a [00:56:00] cartoon character or a Muppet or somebody from Star Trek. So, you know, it’s one of those kind of deals.

Kidding aside, the scene that did it for me was actually when Beatrice was bantering back and forth, really battling back and forth between her German tutor is Frau Gerwig, I think is her name. It suddenly hit me. That’s Lady Mary Crowley from Downton Abbey. Whether you painted that picture or not, I saw that just rigid, like she buckled down, dug in her heels and she fought back.

It didn’t matter what her teacher was going to say. It was pound for pound. She was just going after it. And it’s like in that stubbornness, I also pulled through the thread that I didn’t realize until later, which was the feminism part of it. There’s a side to this book that I want my daughters to read when they’re old enough to read it and very true.

John W. Warner IV: All the, all the women’s setting records in the thirties. They really did a great job. And of course, World War II, they became pilots and ferry pilots and nurses. And so it does have that. And the second book continues in that thread being Alice. [00:57:00] I actually was terrible at languages. And in high school, I would go back and forth.

My French teacher was this little fiery French guy. We both had this crazy sense of humor and I would say, call him a withering snail in French. And I would draw things on the blackboard. It was all based on my high school experience. That’s so funny. Downton Abbey is a good visual. But Downton Abbey is very sanitized.

It is. It’s a very good show about the British upper class. It is. But they cussed a lot more, and they had a lot more dirty, drug taking, boozing episodes than Downton Abbey. It’s very sanitized. I always enjoy the downstairs scenes. When Bea does go downstairs and visits with staff. And of course, when I was growing up, I hung out with the housekeepers all the time.

I really enjoyed blue collar people. I still do, mechanics. You know, everybody. And those are the most interesting people because the rich people always put on airs and armor and they never say what they mean and it’s absolutely frustrating. And so B is like, fuck this. You know, that’s part of me and B.

It’s like, [00:58:00] fuck this. I’m going to get to know the real interesting people like that pilot, Amy Johnson, who is not a rich, fancy person. And so they became good friends. And Amy is a real person. She’s a hero. Most people don’t know who she is, even in English.

Crew Chief Eric: I had to look her up myself because she’s in the foreword.

You have a picture over there. At first, you know, as I’m reading the book, I’m like, is B Amy Johnson? Is that the parallel here? Is that what we’ve done? And then I realized, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because you specifically call out that they’re friends. And so I’m like, oh, now there’s this parallel. I have this whole image of another person, right?

It cleared it up for me as we went along. That also led me to dig into some of the episodes of your podcast, where you, I don’t remember the lady that you interviewed, who was responsible for interviewing all of the wasps they call themselves and the wafts, which were the women air. Yeah. Ferry squadron or whatever, correct.

My acronym was an amazing story. And I’m very passionate about World War II history myself, but that’s a side of World War II history. Actually, I didn’t even know about it. And I was like, wow, this is amazing.

John W. Warner IV: You know, women get downplayed in movies and the [00:59:00] press and history. It’s changing, you know, of course, but you know, my experience with the women racing drivers and having grown up in a house full of women, Liz Taylor and everybody, and, you know, she was a wild, wild woman.

child for sure. So there’s some Liz Taylor and B as well. It’s a shame. This world is very conservative and patriarchal and quasi fascist and, you know, it is. It just is. And the United States is. And women were given second class status and still do carry that. Glass ceilings are real. It’s better now, but it is so hard.

Uh, a CEO told me one time, I said, What, what is it like climbing to the top being CEO? And she’s like, well, that glass ceiling was tough, but I basically had to put a suit on and become a man to do it. To be one of the boys. And that may be very sad, but it’s just the truth of our reality. And of course, B gets into the ancient druid women, the divine feminine, in that chapter 109, and she learns that the reason the Vatican and everyone went after druids and witches, witch is another word for woman druid, and these were not evil people doing black magic, they were doing [01:00:00] white magic, being very conscious and everything like that, and that’s why they were gone after.

She learns this in chapter 109. She learns the whole shebang in McMaster’s view. It’s the gift of the lamp, which is based on the hermetic, uh, and other things.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s kind of funny how your mind runs away sometimes. So I know I, and not again, I’m going to, I’m going to make another Downton Abbey reference here because As I painted this picture of Michelle Dockery playing Bede in my head, that was like my visual cue there.

I’m like, okay, you know, the, the, the bobbed off black hair and that scowl and everything, then there’s Luz and I love the story you tell. And when you introduce his character and he’s the humble mechanic, you know, or he’s rather the fabricator and he’s driving this. Big old ox cart of a Mercedes truck down a hillside.

And he sees Ferdinand Porsche broken down and there’s this whole back and forth with him. It’s funny, this like almost runaway truck scene where he’s hauling ass down these switchbacks and Porsche’s like doing the mommy arm. And you know, this is the way I’m painting the picture, but he’s [01:01:00] like, he’s okay with it because he’s also almost like a talent scout.

He’s like in the back of his head. He’s going, this kid can drive. Where the hell did he come from? Why don’t we know about him? And obviously that sets him in a totally different trajectory. It changes his life entirely. He was Hitler Juin, right? He was Hitler Youth. He was NSKK motorcycle, basically police officer patrol.

This character’s so multifaceted. But then I drew this sudden parallel. I went, oh my God, it’s Tom Branson, the mechanic. He was IRA, he was patriotic, Ireland, all this kind of thing. And I’m like. Sort of similar, but not distant cousin. Right. And then I started to realize the interaction that my made up Lady Mary character was having with him in their first interaction is how she interacted with Matthew Crawley the first time.

And then it became more like Henry Talbot. And I’m like, here I am fantasizing. And I’m like, no, stop, stop. The train has left the station. Right. So Those are some of the things that maybe to draw people in, hoping you guys see the fantasy, see [01:02:00] the type of thing that John, the picture he’s painted here, but set in World War II Germany instead.

John W. Warner IV: Portia was a talent scout. He saw Baron Rosemeyer and said, this guy’s got the balls. I think as you and all your fans know, gearheads and racers and car nuts, we’re birds of a feather. And so there’s two strangers and you know, and the truck was actually fairly new. It was, it belonged to the NSKK. It was a Mercedes diesel and Porsche did design the Mercedes diesel.

He’s like, hey, I designed this thing, you know, for Mercedes. Like, Oh, I know professor. You know, he was very enamored with him. He’s hauling ass to impress him Porsche’s getting nervous because he’s like i’m with some idiot who can’t drive and he’s hauling ass and then the gearhead thing Switches on like a differential boom and Porsche’s like go faster.

Luce is like, oh my god And so if any racing driver as you know, we can get into anything a van a truck or anything and drive it at 10 tenths of the limit. You can get in anything because you know [01:03:00] instantly, you know how everything handles and okay now in two seconds you can take any rental car and take it to its limits because you know where the limits are and Lutz is naturally like that because he does all these runs and I grew up on dirt bikes that dynamic movement becomes instant second nature and so.

That’s what Lutz and Baron Rosemeyer share. And that’s what makes them good drivers. Hell, Baron Rosemeyer didn’t even, never drone a car before. So he had none of the bad habits. Lutz was the same way. I wrote, that’s why they became best friends. And all those pranks and everything, that’s all based on true stories.

Crew Chief Eric: And that scene too, with Portia and Lutz going down the hill and like you to your point, you’re in a truck and you’re hauling ass. And I kind of had this thing in my head. Like, I kept thinking Portia’s going, I designed this thing, but I never designed it to operate like this. And it suddenly kind of melted his brain.

He’s like, to your point, if we could do this with a truck. What can we do with the race car? But then I also had this flash forward, like Sabine Schmidt in a Ford transit at the Nürburgring type of moment where it was [01:04:00] like, that’s who Lutz is internally. Like he’s Sabine Schmidt. Like he’s that type of driver, you know, where he’s just naturally gifted and naturally talented.

And, or as we say, he’s full send his risk mitigation button. It doesn’t exist, you know? And I thought that was just awesome. And it was a great way to introduce that character. And then as they all begin to interact. Later in the book together. It’s just, it’s a good story and I don’t want to spoil it. So I’m hoping more and more people will, you know, pick up a copy of little Anton and begin to read it.

You know, you’ve mentioned a couple of times, let’s call it book number four, the sequel to the sequels, the sequel to the brick and the stick. What is lion tiger bear about if you want to give us a little bit of foreshadowing.

John W. Warner IV: Loots is in it, but in a very strange way, ruin that for you does play a small part in the book.

But B and, and Alice are back. And it’s the Desert War in 1942. Bea gets shot down near Siwa Oasis. And the Germans, the Italians, the African Corps had occupied it. So she does a whole adventure [01:05:00] there. And then she and Bernie and Alice and this new character Guafa, who is a black African Mali, very capable man, he used to steal airplanes and trucks.

So he’s kind of a gearhead with Bea. There’s a scene with them. Bea’s got An engine on fire in an Italian fighter. She’s in a C 47 cargo plane. Troops firing out the windows, you know. It’s based on a true story. They would smash the windows open and start firing at the plane. If you yaw the plane back and forth on a pilot.

She’s doing all this funky aerobatics. And so this guy comes up and helps her fly the damn thing. Got one engine on fire, another one. And they were able to restart one of the engines. It’s a radial engine, Pratt Whitney. Even with three or four cylinders gone, it’ll still run. Uh, B and her team, they go to Cairo.

It, the book is much more into the occult Atlantis lore and German anti gravity experiments, and they go on this adventure operation in the Zagros mountains of Iraq. So it takes place mostly in the desert regions. The Germans were in Iraq in 1941, not a lot, but there was a Luftwaffe [01:06:00] unit. And Portia comes back as a character.

I’m not talking about it.

Crew Chief Eric: I can’t wait to read it. He’s in

John W. Warner IV: there. Don’t worry about it. He’s in there. So his journey is not complete. When you get towards the end and Bea has been captured by the Germans, she goes through some horrible, torture and other things. And she comes out with PTSD. And I’ve learned all about it from talking with these young veterans and the older guys to Vietnam.

So it comes from firsthand accounts or battle fatigue. She goes through combat and it does change her as they did to many young people grew up in a hurry in World War II. And my dad was 17 when he got in the Navy. These young people They grew up really fast. And so a lot of those things, I, I talked to veterans about it.

And actually I’ve gotten good comments from veterans about the book.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s almost poetic justice in a way, because in the first volume, when she is going through her SIS training and they take her up into the Highlands of Scotland and her trainer. Is hilarious. I had this whole army of darkness [01:07:00] moment where I thought she was going to turn to him and say that whole scene where the I’m the king of Scotland and the king of this man.

Yeah, you’re the king of Jack and shit. And Jack just left town. I expected her to like, come off totally like that, but they broke her down. That was his mission and to rebuild her. But she said at one point, I’m never going to need this. Much like some students say about the things that they learned in school.

I’m never going to need this kind of math. I’m never going to need this kind of grammar or English. And I think bringing the story to that point is poetic justice. She learns her lesson, maybe not necessarily in the most delightful way. It brings it all together. And I very much appreciate that.

John W. Warner IV: It’s based on true accounts.

My grandfather, Paul Mellon, was in the OSS. He was an army major in World War II, and one of his jobs was training French women in England to jump out of C 47 Goodyear behind the lines, and they were trained by the SOE, the Special Operations Executive, and that training, which that happened later in the war, but that training was extensive, hand to hand [01:08:00] combat.

This is 1937. There’s no SOE, the SIS. very small. They don’t have any funds. So what is her boss McMaster going to do? Well, he sends them to the best soldiers he knows of, and that’s the Seaport Highlanders in Scotland. And they’re like, what the hell are we doing with this woman? And you know, it was for king and country.

And so they did it, but they did it the only way they knew how, and they don’t like the fact that she’s a spy. They call her a goddamn sneak thief and worse. And that’s how they would do it. And of course, she realizes she was so angry at McMaster for that training. And then he says, do you know what those guys had to go through?

She’s like, yes,

Crew Chief Eric: they were humiliated.

John W. Warner IV: They were humiliated in front of their fellow soldiers and catcalled and yelled at in the mess hall. And so she sends them a case of whiskey. She grows up. You know, these are some of the things that I went through in my life. And everyone goes through some things. All of a sudden you grow the hell up.

And then she needed a lot of growing up. I like those chapters. I fought with my editor. He said I should condense it into one. That may be true. But because later in the series, you [01:09:00] know, there’s going to be several more books. Where does Bea get her training and instincts from? Well, Seaport Highlanders and also the Nazis training.

So she has double training. And a lot of women made very good soldiers. It’s a myth. They went behind the lines for SOE and French resistance and they were incredibly brave. And capable. I had a woman write me, why are you so violent with all this? I said, this is based on

Crew Chief Eric: truth. Dr. Ferdinand Portia senior, he passed away in 1951.

If I remember my Portia history correctly. So this means that the torch will be passed at some point in your series of books, specifically to be, because she’s going to outlive him. Obviously she outlives Amy Johnson. She outlives a lot of other people in the story. So is the future of the series If we were to imagine and theorize, is it all about B?

What, what does the future beyond Lion, Tiger, and Bear look like? Kind of as you’re just ruminating on these ideas.

John W. Warner IV: B is still the main character, but she has this team of people. Uh, the four of them, Bernie, Alice, Guafa, uh, [01:10:00] the African guy from Mali. And they are in World War II. I dig out a lot of little known history.

That’s my thing. MI6 did indeed have an occult division. And occult is just a word meaning hidden knowledge. Doesn’t mean. black magic and cats, which is mysticism. Yeah. Ancient wisdom and philosophy. And, but they’ve got to go do a job against the German SS on an air bay. And everyone will recognize in the first Indiana Joan movie, they show the Germans digging for the lost art.

Well, that’s based on truth. Yeah. That’s the Ananerbe SS. Although Spielberg watered it down, he didn’t call it that, but that’s who they were. They didn’t have the SS uniforms. He didn’t want to go there, but that’s the Ananerbe SS. And they deal with those guys intimately in this book. A lot of fun, this new story.

And Portia is a great character because he’s now he’s confronted with unimaginable engineering and also, you know, these metaphysical and wild adventures. And it’s funny, he’s going back with this real life physicist named Walter Gerlach. And they’re loggerheads over everything. [01:11:00] He’s like, you’re just a simple mechanic.

I’m a quantum physicist. It’s like, screw you. And, you know, it was a lot of fun. So when does

Crew Chief Eric: Lion Tiger Bear come out?

John W. Warner IV: In about a month, it should be on Amazon in about a month. The faster read is, my wife read it in a day and a half. Where can folks find the

Crew Chief Eric: books if they’re interested in picking them up?

John W. Warner IV: Amazon, or you can go to my website. LittleAnton. com. I have all that information and links. And there’s sample chapters to read from the new book, too.

Crew Chief Eric: And there’s something special about the purchase of the book, which actually is very near and dear to us here at GTM. And what’s that, John?

John W. Warner IV: Well, I donate all my profits to Wounded Warrior Charities.

My wife and I have the honor of working with wounded veterans twice a year at our farm. They come for a black powder deer hunt and a picnic and everything. We’re going into our sixth year now. It’s our way of giving back to these young men and women, and I give out copies of my book. It’s just a very rewarding thing.

There’s very few farms in Virginia that people are afraid. Just me and this one other guy in [01:12:00] Rappahannock County, that we do this. I think it’s a shame, and I have a small foundation that I give away. everything. All my work, research, everything I do, you know, I do it for free, obviously. And

Crew Chief Eric: we thank you for it.

And again, we try to do a lot of different philanthropic projects here at GTM. And we’ve worked with folks like Peter Klein at Vet Motorsports, who worked at Helmets Off to Heroes, Wounded Warriors, et cetera. The DoD is very near and dear to our hearts because jokingly, a lot of folks refer to us as the DoD.

As the car club of the DOD sometimes. And so for us, it’s really important that we’re doing these kinds of things for the veterans that are in our group for our enlisted, there’s car enthusiasts and whatnot. So this is really cool. And it’s, it’s an interesting intersection between military history, car history and everything that is in this series.

And I urge people to pick up the books and check them out. John, had it not been for our initial chance encounter during 2018, 2019 classic car season, and you kind of handed me a book going, Hey, check this out. I wrote this. And I’m like, okay. And the conversations that we had, [01:13:00] I wouldn’t have really taken the deep dive into this universe that you’ve created this, this let’s call it alternate or revisionist history of this part of World War II centered around characters like Dr.

Portia, like B, like Lutz, et cetera. It has been. An epic ride to use your word. It’s a very enjoyable read. I highly recommend it for a lot of people. And so what I want to tell the audience is to learn more about our guest tonight, John W Warner the fourth, you can find him on Goodreads. You can also visit little Anton.

com for more information and get behind the scenes information on the series, on the book, John’s been on history channel. He’s got YouTube videos, there’s podcasts. Which is also known as Beyond Little Anton. There’s not a ton of episodes. I listened to them all. They’re really, really great. And it’s fun to listen to John kind of go deep in with his guests.

Hopefully there’ll be more of those episodes later on. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. And you can also find John on all the social media majors at Little Anton book. That being said, John, it’s been an [01:14:00] absolute pleasure. It’s been an education and I can’t thank you enough for coming on and doing this crossover episode from Beyond Little Anton with us here at Grand Touring Motorsports on Brake Fix.

That was a lot of fun. My pleasure.

That’s right, listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for a follow on Pitstop Minisoad. So check that out on www. patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports and get access to all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode and more.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www.

gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports. org. We’d [01:15:00] love to hear from you.

Crew Chief Eric: Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization.

And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag. For as little as 2. 50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig newtons, gummy bears, and monster.

Consider signing up for Patreon today at www. patreon. com forward slash GT Motorsports. And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you, none of this would be [01:16:00] possible.

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] We always have a blast chatting with our guests about all sorts of different topics, but sometimes we go off the rails and dig deeper into their automotive and motorsports pasts. As a bonus, let’s go behind the scenes with this pit stop mini sode for some extra content that didn’t quite fit in the main episode.

Sit back and enjoy. Enjoy, and remember to like, subscribe, and support Brake Fix on Patreon.

Crew Chief Eric: They say that of cars too, never drive your heroes. I’ve made that mistake several times. I do not recommend it. That I

John W. Warner IV: don’t understand. What do you mean?

Crew Chief Eric: So for instance, celebrity cars, I’ve driven the Smoky and the Bandit Trans Am.

I’ve driven an R5 Turbo. I’ve driven all sorts of things that you would see in a movie, you know, all sorts of cars. And you’re like, that isn’t nearly as impressive as it looked like when it was on the big screen.

John W. Warner IV: No, especially if it’s a studio stunt car, you know, they’re all rigged for doing spins.

Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Exactly.

John W. Warner IV: By the way, I, I have to voice all my racing friends and I just couldn’t stand [00:01:00] the Ford versus Ferrari movie. It’s true story and, and the acting was good. That wasn’t the problem, but they were all driving 60 miles an hour on track and talking to one another in a GT40. And I’m like, you can’t do that.

The windows are shut. It’s loud as hell. I’d driven an original GT40 around summit point in a vintage race. And you can’t hear yourself scream. The movie is just, it was pathetic. The racing scenes. But other than that, it was a great movie for the story. And yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: I agree with you there. And it had a little touch, a little dash of Fast and the Furious 2, where it’s like, how many times is he going to shift?

And how long is a lap at, you know, how long is the Mulsanne at Le Mans? It’s like 20 minutes for him to get from one end to the other at 200 miles an hour. And then he suddenly downshifts and goes faster. I’m like, come on.

John W. Warner IV: They never get it right in movies. They just, they’re so lazy and stupid and all.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, the alternative to that would be Steve McQueen’s Le Mans, where it’s almost too realistic and it’s three hours of torture. Yeah, that was docudrama.

John W. Warner IV: Exactly. And he could drive. You know, whereas a [00:02:00] lot of these actors, they can’t fucking drive. You can’t teach anyone that. kind of stuff. Stunt driving is a little different from racing.

Movies never get it right. As you know, you got to be there at the race or you got to be behind the wheel. It’s like watching paint dry. Exactly.

Crew Chief Eric: Nobody wants to watch golf. Everybody wants to play

John W. Warner IV: golf. Well, that only takes one ball. Racing takes two.

Crew Chief Eric: I like that. That’s, I’m going to use that. That’s great.

What’s the difference between historical fiction and revisionist

John W. Warner IV: fiction exists. I believe that it’s all has a basis. In fact, some of it’s pure fantasy, but not as much as people think. That’s my personal thing. I’m merging the UFO disclosure movement topics and history and the history of the world and Atlantis, blah, blah, blah, into the new book of World War II.

And people will think, wow, this is a great fantasy thing, It’s more truth in it than people would ever suspect. I’m not telling people what to believe, but my foreword, I’ll send you my foreword. I say, look, you can watch video footage of Foo Fighters. Everyone thinks that’s a 1990s band. [00:03:00] That was the name for UFOs in World War II.

Crew Chief Eric: A lot of people don’t realize that.

John W. Warner IV: Yeah, nor does my cousin ever mention that shit. A lying liar. But what they’re hiding is not funny. Whatever the truth is, and I think it’s a lot of it really is true, because they’ve been hiding this tooth and nail. Father. told me not to go down that road. You can watch my Daniel List interviews.

I call spade a spade. My father lied to me, but he did it to protect.

Crew Chief Eric: So your recent thing on history, is that with respect to the book or is that with respect to the US? I’ll send you

John W. Warner IV: the link.

Crew Chief Eric: Okay, cool. As we kind of wrap up here, I have a couple other questions I want to ask just for, just for fun, because you, you mentioned earlier Ford versus Ferrari and some of these other historical pieces and there’s been a recent influx of.

biopics or biopics, depending on how, you know, how you want to use the inflection there. You weren’t a big fan of four versus four, but what did you think of rush?

John W. Warner IV: Rush was good. I thought I did a little bit of Formula Atlantic and Formula Ford early on youth. That is the most pure form of racing. There [00:04:00] is open wheel.

I was always afraid I was going to lose my leg. I wanted a car with a roll cage. I think I promised my parents that. I think a guy, somebody at Indy smashed into a wall and you can build those tubs out of carbon fiber all day long. No way. And so I got out of that, but it was the most pure, Formula Atlantic was just unbelievably precise.

So I liked Rush. I thought Rush was very good. I thought the original Grand Prix movie from 1964 was good.

Crew Chief Eric: Robert Wagner, right?

John W. Warner IV: Yeah, and I thought that was very good. It showed, you know, those guys died like rats in a drain pipe, you know, the cruel sport. I thought, you know, that was a good movie. That was the only two I think I liked.

Crew Chief Eric: In reality, and I know this sounds like, I’m meeting a celebrity or whatever, but I’m in awe of your history and this in the book. And like I said, reading this has been an inspiration and it’s kind of, you know, been a kick in the balls to say, if you got an idea, just fricking do it. So I really appreciate it.

John W. Warner IV: Yeah, I mean, it came out of a time in my life where I just didn’t have many [00:05:00] options to work or do anything anymore. And I had been so used to the action and adrenaline. I think what you’re doing is really interesting. I love to hear stories. And,

More.

John W. Warner IV: Anton’s a deeper story. It’s more poignant than just racing history.

Crew Chief Eric: Absolutely. Absolutely. Now you’ve done a fantastic job.

John W. Warner IV: War starts, but the racing and the World War II and the propaganda and all that stuff. That’s all real. Horseshoe did go on to build military parts and things that Wolfberg factory with slave labor and It’s sort of sexy history.

A lot of people turned off by Hitler and the Nazis, but there are more people that are very interested in that because it was just such, I mean, we’re, I’m learning new things about World War II every month that aren’t told in the history books. And then I have to dig out a Polish historian. I mean, [00:06:00] it’s that kind of thing.

And I dovetail that stuff. So when Bee and the crew goes on into other books, they have that Porsche legacy. The new book, Portia has an electric Kugelwagen. It’s a prototype and he’s got it with a solar cell for the Africa core, which makes perfect sense. And of course, if anyone was going to do an electric car, it would be Porsche.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, he’s, he was obsessed with it from an early age. Like the water Porsche was all electric.

John W. Warner IV: I’m sure during the war, they tried that, but battery technology, I make it seem he’s privy to classified batteries and stuff to make it work, but it’s a prototype. And so there is a Porsche in the new book. Funny enough, there is a car it’s inside something else, this German anti gravity airship.

It’s the emergency landing vehicle. Nice. It’s shuttlecraft. It’s brilliant. It is. You land in the desert. What are you going to do? And of course this thing is supplying a mining base in the desert. Porsche is in there with his engineering, but his tank, yeah, you’re gonna love that. [00:07:00]

Crew Chief Eric: That’s gonna be awesome.

A hybrid

John W. Warner IV: electric tiger tank, that’s true. Oh, that’s

Crew Chief Eric: brilliant.

John W. Warner IV: Yeah, it didn’t work quite well, and I wrote it, it broke down. When it worked, it was brilliant. It would have been the better tank, but Hitler rushed everything into production. What an idiot. Porsche went up to Hitler and said, The Soviets have this beautiful tank, the T 34, that they’re rolling out by the thousands.

Let’s copy it. And he said, No way. We’re doing a heavy tank with an 88mm gun. Porsche couldn’t believe it. He said, I’ll copy the Russian tank. It’s diesel. It won’t blow up like our tanks are blowing up. No, no. That’s true. Porsche recommended the Soviet tank. I mentioned it in the book. I had a cut out three chapters where Porsche actually went to Russia.

They wanted him to be the automobile czar. I do remember seeing

Crew Chief Eric: that somewhere. Not in the book, but I remember reading that in the history.

John W. Warner IV: Yeah, they couldn’t leave. Once they were there, they’d be paid well, but it’s like, One of his engineers went up to him and said, What’s the point of being paid all this money if we can’t leave Soviet Russia?

You know they won’t let us come back to Germany. And they said, Fuck that. I can’t believe it. He was offering them like the

Crew Chief Eric: [00:08:00] equivalent of millions of dollars.

John W. Warner IV: He was like, Nope.

Crew Chief Eric: I know too much about French and British cars, not as much about Porsche history as I should. But you know, hey, whatever. One of my favorite

John W. Warner IV: cars, I had a 1986 Lotus Turbo Esprit.

Oh, nice. With a tan interior, and I had been racing for three years, and I thought it was the best car. The engine didn’t have a lot of torque, but the car was very lightweight. It was 2, 800 pounds, whereas the compatible Ferrari 328 was 500 pounds more. That was Chapman’s thing, add lightness, then power.

Yeah, lightness. And so, I think the lotus flower, you know, that goes back to ancient Egypt. It was sacred. It might have something to do with lightweight. The mystical nature of the lotus flower. Probably something like that if Colin knew his Egyptian history, but it was very important to the Egyptians They actually drank a tea of opium lotus flower and belladonna and the priest would astral travel in the pyramid Yeah pyramid before anyway, you know, it might have had something to do with that But I liked Chapman’s [00:09:00] idea of lightness and of course, he would just die today You have to have so much safety gear that car was really something.

I had it for a long time four years. God, he should drive around Manhattan. Crazy man. It was actually the suspension was supple. What a great car. It’s underrated. They weren’t built very well, but they were great to drive. They handle.

Crew Chief Eric: I’ve had the pleasure of driving several different kinds of loaded low tie.

They all put a smile on my face. And then I cringe afterward when I look at how they’re made.

John W. Warner IV: They were like kid cars, but you know, he didn’t care about that. He was like after performance. Correct. Absolute. So you sacrificed luxury. I mean, and the car had beautiful leather, but the, you know, the switch gear and the, the shitty transmission was from a EO or something, or ult god that let it down.

But, uh, other than that, it was brilliant and the engine was good and strong. You had to red the hell out of it, but it was a great engine. I think they got 300 horsepower out of that four cylinder after a while. That’s a lot from 2.2 liters. Exactly. Back in the day today, it’s no big deal. You can get a one liter car to have a thousand

Crew Chief Eric: [00:10:00] repair, but it was difficult back in the late eighties.

You know, what’s funny though, that I kind of strangely imagined in the book that not the Porsche had buddies. He was kind of like a lone wolf in a lot of cases. Right. I mean, you do a very good job.

John W. Warner IV: Adolf Rosenberger was his friend, but he was also a financier. And so, but

Crew Chief Eric: they were always at like arm’s length, but I got,

John W. Warner IV: he was a friend.

Crew Chief Eric: Yes. But I also thought because of Porsche’s use of diesel, that. In my head, I imagined him sitting down in the book and discussing ideas with Rudolf Diesel. Just like, one of those kinds of things. Like, they would have been buddies.

John W. Warner IV: I don’t know when Rudolf died. He was French. He probably did, he saw the merit in it for trucks.

Not cars at the time, but with trucks. But Bugatti was a fellow genius, and they really were friends in real life. One can only imagine the conversations.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, right.

John W. Warner IV: I write it that they’re kind of like two bros and they’re like making fun of each other in sort of an [00:11:00] offhand way. He calls Bugatti’s cars ox carts and Bugatti’s called his trucks or whatever, you know, and, but I can see that happening between two geniuses.

Yeah, exactly. And they actually, Bugatti worked with him in Germany a long time back. They met in Germany. I can’t remember if they were working for Mercedes or I think it was for somebody else and they met. They were both engineers. They were young men. Can’t remember when they met or where it was, but they discussed, back when I met you at such and such place, you were a grease hog, I mean, you were an asshole, you know, and they go back and forth with this.

I liked the banter between Bugatti and Porsche.

And now I ate in there. Where B goes to Bugatti. My editor said to take it out, and I said, Fuck you. I’m not taking this out. So B and this real, you know who Wolf Barnetto is?

Mm hmm. The

John W. Warner IV: [00:12:00] Bentley Boys. Okay, well he’s in the book. He and B are friends. They become friends. Oh yeah, fuck yeah. She drives a supercharged Bentley.

Yeah. And that’s a little bit onto Ian Fleming a little bit, but I have her drive a special with a speed six, not a four cylinder. It’s a real hot rod. And she becomes friends with Wolf. Well, they go to Bugatti to convince him of this project that she’s working on. I need to go to the Grossglockner. This is all fiction, but Porsche took his auto units to the Grossglockner hillclimb.

As the Germans did every year for testing. She and Wolf Barnano, Barnano knew Bugatti. And her mother knew Bugatti. They’re all chummy. Her mother drove a Bugatti. She’s at school. So she goes up to Bugatti when you read it. I love this chapter. And she’s like, I need a Grand Prix car for the Grossglockner hill climb.

It’s got to have 600 horsepower and I need it in a month. And Bugatti’s like, what? Uh, sorry, you know, all our things are spoken for and we don’t build Grand Prix cars anymore. We’re outclassed by the Germans. And she goes up to a picture on his shelf of him and Porsche at a racetrack. [00:13:00] And she turns it to him and said, But just imagine Herr Bugatti or whatever.

What do they call him? Monsieur. No, they call Bugatti, I don’t know, a name like Ferrari had. Oh yeah, Commendatore. Yeah, something like that. And she goes, imagine wiping that smug look off Porsche’s face. When a French car and a French woman, she’s gonna pose as a French woman, blows his doors off at the Grossdager Helpline.

And Bugatti dovetails to the next chapter and Bugatti whips the tarp off of this chassis, this Grand Prix car that he built. Actually, it’s a real car. I got the chassis number that he built with a five liter engine. He turns to his engineer and says, You see that big supercharger over there? Let’s bolt it on here with the bigger carburetor.

Up the compression and then redo the cans and make the valves bigger. I need 600 horsepower. And the guy’s like, yeah, we can do

Crew Chief Eric: it. Is that a nod to like the 57G tank?

John W. Warner IV: Something like that. I have the chassis and he built one five liter Grand Prix car for someone and they [00:14:00] either didn’t use it or they did it in one race and they didn’t use it anymore.

They just couldn’t compete with the Germans. But B goes up to him and says, Of course, Wilf Barnetto bribes him. Says, if you don’t do this, you know, I’m going to tell the press that, you know, that story. He’s putting the heat on him, and so they’re both putting the heat on, screws to Bugatti. He’s like, what the fuck are you people doing in my office?

Breathing my air. And they convinced him to do it. And I think in real life, He would have done maybe not a grand prix car to take on Nurburgring but a hill climb car overpowered They were all over cranked superchargers and the germans were running 600 horse and she says I need 600 or better And so they mixed exotic fuels in those days hill climbs were what 10 minutes?

They went up full power so they could get away with non standard fuels and No way. You

Crew Chief Eric: mentioned that when Shtook talks about when the, the, the idiot guy Phil in the petrol spilled it on his neck and how he was burning it. Yeah. It would

John W. Warner IV: burn the first two layers of skin off because there’s nitrobenzene in it and there’s, uh, [00:15:00] alcohol and there’s all these toxic chemicals.

That’s a true story. You can actually see some of the footage if you look up the auto union races on YouTube. Somebody gets splashed and turns around really furious. They would burn the drivers. Of course,

Crew Chief Eric: when they wrecked, they went up like a

John W. Warner IV: fireball.

Crew Chief Eric: So the reason I brought up the 57G tank, I’ve seen it in person.

It’s up at the Simeone Foundation in Philadelphia. And that car has an interesting backstory, 100 percent related to World War II. It was the Bugatti race car at the time, it has an airfoil teardrop shape, you know, it was a study in aerodynamics, but it was also a race car, not necessarily a Grand Prix car, though you probably could consider it back then.

But because of all the turmoil and everything that was going on in Vichy France to protect that design, Ettore told all those guys to basically find a spot hidden and bury it underground. They almost forgot where it was. And then unearthed it after the war. So that existing car is in Philadelphia. What

John W. Warner IV: is this?

Crew Chief Eric: So I don’t know planes as well as I know [00:16:00] cars, so you’re gonna have to tell me what that is.

John W. Warner IV: This is Bugatti’s design for an air racing plane. No way. Using two of his straight eight Grand Prix engines with counter rotating propellers. torque effect. But it’s a very unusual and beautiful design, like a swallow.

That’s awesome. So, imagine if the Germans copied this. And whose engine would power it? Well, it’d be Porsche’s engine over anybody else’s. That’s little Anton. Ah. It’s a Heinkel. High altitude interceptor. It’s the fastest plane in the world in April of 1940.

Crew Chief Eric: So Little Anton is the codename for the plane?

John W. Warner IV: It’s his big brother. He nicknames the plane after his dead big brother.

Crew Chief Eric: Who was named after his father, Antonius Portia, right? Don’t

John W. Warner IV: tell anybody that, but I’m giving you, I’m spoiling it for you.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s fine. I

John W. Warner IV: couldn’t resist because Bugatti has, the story is, The Germans did have their eye on this plane.

Oh boy, did they. Because air racing was basically [00:17:00] fighter design. Right. And so Bugatti and his men in the factory, they hit it in a French farmhouse. It survived the war.

Crew Chief Eric: See, Bugatti’s good at hiding stuff, apparently.

John W. Warner IV: He did not want his technology going into German hands. The French Air Force was interested in it.

War broke out. It was just in a shed and prototype stage. They had no time to test it. No Germans rolled into France quick. And so there is a lot of truth to this German idea of stealing Bugatti’s plane, but they make it bigger and it houses one hell of a big cannon. And it’s got some other tricks up its sleeve, but Porsche is tasked to design the biggest, most powerful engine in the world out of a classified alloy.

Even though it’s a 16 cylinder with twin superchargers and twin intercoolers, and it makes 3000 horsepower. This is 1940. So that’s a lot. It’s twice as much the biggest. It’s lightweight because Bugatti, of course, lightweight Porsche lightweight. They both [00:18:00] agreed on that principle. And so he says that he’s in the hangar with being loose.

I mean, it’s a great chapter. The plane has massive power. It’s an advanced design, but it is lightweight. And there’s something on board that makes it even lighter. But I won’t ruin that part for you. So I’m just

Crew Chief Eric: wondering, in historical truth, is there a lot

John W. Warner IV: of truth behind it? The story, everyone thinks, oh, he made it up, and, you know, the guy’s racing plane was small, and it wouldn’t have worked.

Oh no, the Germans, they put, you know, they build it with their strength and their, and their stuff, but they build it light and fast.

Crew Chief Eric: What I’m getting at is, based on historical truth, I’m wondering if that’s where the fascination that Porsche has always had with precious metals like magnesium come from.

Right.

John W. Warner IV: The fictional alloy, blau aluminum, blue aluminum, that I put in the book has also a basis. In fact, the Germans were ahead of everyone as far as the racing aluminum and alloys and

Crew Chief Eric: stuff. They

John W. Warner IV: were working on aircraft frame alloys that were stronger and lighter. So [00:19:00] that’s basis in truth as well. I’m going to get so many people on this.

Porsche designed the Mercedes Benz V12. 601 aircraft engine. ME 109, the bombers, they all used it. He designed it before he left Mercedes. It was on a design board that’s in the book. He did design a big 16 cylinder engine for Mercedes. Fluge Motor Works. And there’s a scene, it’s in Mercedes. In fact, the aircraft back.

He did design a 16 cylinder. And it had twin superchargers. It never left the bent, and you have to have the book on the Mercedes aircraft engines of World War II to know it.

Wow.

John W. Warner IV: Everyone’s gonna write me and say, oh, they wouldn’t have done that. Oh, no, they did. Now, it was for a bomber, not a fighter.

Fighters used to hot rod. You stick a big engine in a small airflame. It’s the same thing as a car. Porsche cut his teeth on aircraft engines and cars. He was a dual genius in that area. He knew about aerodynamics enough. But, you know, in the book you’ll see there’s a U Boat section. The U Boat story has also a basis in fact, believe it or [00:20:00] not.

When you get to that, everyone’s gonna think, they think Little Anton is this U Boat. No, it’s a misleading thing. I’m ruining the whole book for you.

Crew Chief Eric: No, no, no, no, I don’t, I don’t mind. I don’t mind.

John W. Warner IV: There’s so much in it, it doesn’t matter. Portia did work on some of the diesels for the Schnell boats, you know, the PT boats.

He had a hand in all that stuff. I think, uh, man, M A N, Machina Anschluss, Machina Fabrica.

Crew Chief Eric: Which is owned by Volkswagen, so. Yeah,

John W. Warner IV: and he did have little pieces of that. And he was called in, you know, we’ve got a problem with this. And so his experimental engines on this U boat, I thought it was very clever. I put the after coolers.

In the hull and they’re chilled by seawater and that’s why he’s got three big diesels in there. And, and this u boat can go 30 knots on the surface and people will say, ah, and then there’s some other technology that seems like science fiction. But I’m telling you, between you and me, uh, it’s not the Germans were working on free energy, tooth and nail.

Porsche didn’t have anything to do with it. But in my new book, Walter Gerlach has [00:21:00] everything to do with it and they sort of merge, you know, Porsche is not a physicist, Gerlach’s not a mechanic, but they need each other.

Crew Chief Eric: Yeah, yeah.

John W. Warner IV: It’s an anti gravity airship run. I find that very interesting. The gearheads will go crazy for it, but it gets into torsion fields and electromagnetism, but it’s all based on real technology.

I’m not kidding. That’s awesome. So when you read about that in the viewboat section, I debated whether or not I wanted to do it in this book, but I did it anyway. First of all, I wanted to distract the reader down a dead end alley. The little red herring, yeah, yeah. It is absolutely something they would have tested in a U boat, and they probably did at the very end of the war.

The Type 21 U boat was this beautiful, modern prototype of what we call the Albacore tuna looking submarines that we’d still use today. It wasn’t perfectly round, but it was very modern. And there’s no evidence, but the historians I talked to, we’re all in agreement. They probably tried to shoehorn that thing in there.

Because you don’t need diesels. Run on electric motors all the time. [00:22:00] And unlimited range. And you can make your own oxygen and fresh water, like they do today in the USS John Warner, Virginia Classic, Texas. Must

Crew Chief Eric: be nice to have a ship named after you, right? It

John W. Warner IV: was only a matter of time! I said to dad, I said, It’s only a matter of time before they have a weapons system with Warner on it.

He’s like, yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcast brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at gtmotorsports.

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Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Break Fix Podcast
• 00:27 Meet John W. Warner IV
• 01:53 John’s Early Passion for Cars
• 03:16 Racing School and Early Career
• 04:56 Racing with Legends
• 14:43 Challenges and Injuries
• 16:15 Transition to Writing
• 16:27 Favorite Cars and Modern Preferences
• 21:37 Porsche History and Legacy
• 36:19 Filling the Gaps in Dr. Porsche’s Life
• 37:23 The Silver Arrows and Historical Context
• 37:47 The Human Side of Dr. Porsche
• 38:41 Challenges of Writing the Book
• 39:43 Introducing the Characters and Their Stories
• 40:18 The Complexities of the Book’s Structure
• 43:14 Technical Aspects and Inspirations
• 44:46 Character Development and Historical Accuracy
• 49:41 The Role of Women in the Story
• 01:04:27 Future Projects and Philanthropy
• 01:13:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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