The Spy of Detroit

If you buy the car magazines regularly, you’ll sometimes come across fuzzy pictures of models that are destined for introduction sometime in the future. These are scoops that magazine editors love to produce and they pay big money for such spy photos.

CHIPS YAP has met one such spy before and here’s what he learnt about the ‘secret agent’ and his work…

The first thing I noticed were his eyes. They were constantly scanning, taking in shapes around him. But at the same time, if you didn’t look directly at his face, you would also not see this covert observation – not of female forms but things harder.

The man was Jim Dunne and his behaviour was not unusual, given his legendary reputation in Detroit. Dunne, you see, is a spy… but not the James Bond sort who has a pistol tucked under in his armpit or a sharp blade that suddenly slides out from his shoe. In fact, his ‘weapons’ are hardly things that would get him hung under ISA although his actions have often upset security guards.

Dunne specializes in taking pictures of cars that their makers don’t want the world to know about yet. He prowls the streets of Detroit, Michigan, USA where he lives, keeping a look out for strange-looking cars. The Big Three – GM, Ford and Chrysler – have their home in the state and R&D facilities of other companies are also there so it’s not uncommon for engineers to drive around in disguised prototypes, thinking that the average motorist won’t notice. Often the disguises are just fake panels placed over the actual shape; although they may be misaligned or warped, many motorists may just assume the owner is not shy about driving around in a wreck.

Dunne (who has an e-mail address with ‘007′ as part if it!) looks out for such vehicles and when he does spot one, the chase is on. He tries to remain undetected for as long as possible, shooting as many pictures as possible with a compact camera in one hand and the other gripping the steering wheel. But he is often spotted and then the subject makes a run for it.

“I don’t usually go after them if I’ve already got enough pictures. I make it a point to stay within the law and not speed or drive dangerously,” he said.

On other occasions, if he gets a good tip-off, Dunne will catch a flight to some remote place – either in the icy north of Canada or the baking heat of Death Valley, Nevada – to stalk prototypes being tested in extreme conditions. There are roads that the engineers frequently use and he knows the spots to wait for them.

CAT-AND-MOUSE GAME
It’s like a cat-and-mouse game for him and he loves it. One of his most memorable times was when he got the first clear pictures of a new Chevrolet Corvette in 1983. He used surprise and human curiosity to get the pictures after finding that the car went so fast that he couldn’t get close enough to take pictures.

So he hired a helicopter and zoomed over the car which was undergoing hot-weather testing in Death Valley. But that wasn’t good enough for the pro that he is. He had the pilot set down on the desert just ahead of the cars, swirling dust all round. In the doorway, Dunne waited with his Nikon 8008 ready to ‘fire away’ at 6 frames a second. Sure enough, the drivers in the car stopped to look and as they stared, Dunne hopped out, got his shots, ran back in and flew off!

“That was just so sweet,” he recalled with a laugh.

They’d been had, as the saying goes, but you can bet after that episode, test drivers were warned never to stop under unusual circumstances other than when police force them to do so. In fact, Chrysler test-drivers are ordered to cover their vehicles if they must stop for more than 20 seconds!

NO FALSE MOUSTACHES
Of course, Dunne could also pose as a cop and pull them over but he never bothers to disguise himself. And it would be hard for him to look like, say, Jackie Stewart (who helps Ford in development work) as he has hardly any hair on his head. Furthermore, he would be very embarrassed if he got caught with a disguise on.

“It would be terrible if word got around that I was caught with a fake moustache and beard,” he said. “So I don’t have any ‘Mission Impossible’ kit to change my looks and I just look myself all the time. The security guards at many test tracks and R&D places usually have a picture of me so they can spot me easily,” he said.

Even then, he managed to get into one special event in Texas where GM was collecting consumer responses to a new model. He said that he just walked into the room with his camera under his jacket and clicked away, even though he had passed a policeman at the door!

“That was probably the most tense time I ever had,” he recalled. “I don’t know why that cop never stopped me and since I got in without any deception, I just took the pictures and no one stopped me.”

But on another similar type of event, he was spotted right away and detained. “The guards told me that they had been waiting a whole week for me to show up and had been given pictures of me. They were like ‘Wanted’ posters!” he said. He asserted that he was in a public place and didn’t even have a camera on him but what upset him most was that they gloated over having caught him.

DEDICATED TO SECRECY
There have been many funny moments in his career – like the time he tried to take some pictures of a new GM model. It had been one of his very lucky days as he was driving through a town in northern Michigan and spotted a photo session for some new cars. He knew what they were and stopped to take pictures right away.

“Two guys ran over to me and shouted that I couldn’t take pictures. But I knew I wasn’t in the wrong since they were in a public place and there’s no law against anyone taking pictures, right? So I shot away…” he said.

But what he remembers most about that time is that one of the models was very “dedicated” to the need for secrecy. She was wearing a wrap-around skirt and actually whipped it off to try to cover the front of the car! But being the gentleman that he is, Dunne didn’t take that picture!

Dunne has also been known to exploit oversights of PR people when he attends sneak press previews. If no one specifically remembers to say that no photo-taking is allowed, his little camera will be in action during the session.

“I remember when we were at a preview once and Dunne was sitting next to me. Throughout the presentation, I kept hearing “click….click…..click” from somewhere near him. When I looked at him, he was keeping a very straight face!” said a fellow journalist.

The car companies don’t usually like the public to know what their next model looks like before it is launched as it not only steals the thunder but can also have implications on sales of the existing model. So, to some extent, they hate the scoop photos that Dunne takes and publishes regularly and the fact that he doesn’t get them accidentally but actually makes a living out of such spying.

However, while some marketing people get heart attacks when they see their ‘top secret’ prototype in a magazine, there are also some who try to exploit the ‘misfortune’. The early shots generate a lot of interest and they can pick up some feedback from consumers which may or may not be useful. Our Proton designers probably benefitted from the ‘spy’ photos of the Waja that were on the Net last year as many people responded very negatively to the nose design.

STILL WELCOME
You might think that because of what he has been doing, Dunne would have been dropped from invitation lists a long, long time ago. Yet, he remains on friendly terms with the biggest bosses in the companies and also gets invited to all new model previews and other press events.

“I get along fine with people like Jack Smith [Chairman of GM when this story was originally written] and Bob Eaton [Chairman of DaimlerChrysler until this year] and sometimes they chuckle when we talk about a shot I managed to get of their next product. Secretly, I think they get a kick out of seeing one of their future models appearing on a magazine,” he said. “It’s usually the executives further down who may not welcome me much and probably it’s because they’ve had one too many queries to find out how the heck Jim Dunne could get the pictures.”

(Click on the Related Link below to continue to Part 2 of this story)