Wheelbase II – The Tunisian Operation

by Michael Kliebenstein

This is a work of fiction, by a real-life car dealer/collector, involving shady deals, organized crime and, obviously, classic cars.

“‘I think it’s time for us to leave’ said Mike, with a sigh. ‘I don’t think we’re safe here.’

‘I think you’ve a good point. The air’s getting a tad unhealthy. Too much lead in it for my liking.’”

If you’ve heard of Robert Coucher, and envy the parallel universe he inhabits, you might enjoy this book.

Explanation needed? Coucher writes a monthly opinion column for the upmarket UK classic car magazine Octane. He intersperses reminiscence about youthful automotive japes in South Africa (usual suspects Alfas, Lancias, Porsches) with reflections on the classic car scene. That’s the world of salons privé, with a high Panama hat and red trouser count, but oily fingernails . . . well, maybe not so much. Expect reference to fine cognacs and Vintage Bentley-driving chums. And, when not railing about his bêtes noires (EVs, London’s socialist mayor, congestion charges, and net zero) he often enthuses about how well-suited his Jaguar XK150 is for life as a central London automotive flâneur. Wheelbase II is the follow-up to Kliebenstein’s first book Wheelbase – Dark Dealings in the Classic Car World and if Coucher’s world is your world too, then read on.

As a teenager, I read lots of thrillers like this one. The cover art whets the reader’s appetite—here’s a Ferrari F40! And a Bentley Continental—classic, not modern, obvs. And only (gasp) a Porsche 917 too. Hot girls and a square-jawed hunk, check! Add a silhouetted villain and some flames for extra sturm und drang and thrills are guaranteed, right?

Well, yeah, sort of. This is the equivalent of “the difficult second album.” Our doughty heroes Rick and Mike have been scammed in their sale of a brace of Ferraris and are plunged into a murky world of Mafia-esque bad guys, shady Korean baddies, and another showdown with their previous nemesis, the fiendish English aristo, Harriston. The action takes place in locations ranging from London suburbia via the Tunisian desert to . . . err . . . Stamford, the genteel Georgian town in the English Midlands. The plot has so many twists and turns that after 200 pages I simply gave up trying to keep up with the fine detail. I just wanted it to stop.

There’s a lack of narrative exposition but a surfeit of often implausible dialog. Page after page of conversation, spoken with that clipped, tough guy swagger beloved of writers of the genre but never heard in real life. The prose is peppered with brand names, presumably to add verisimilitude, in the same fashion as Ian Fleming employed in his James Bond novels. Our guy packs “a dark green leather Louis Vuitton briefcase . . . a street-worn Aspinall leather diary,” and even his candy is precisely spec’d as “a packet of Rheila Salmiak pastilles.” Nope, me neither [Kliebenstein is German and this turns out to be a German brand of “extra strong and aromatic” liquorice]. Look, I’m not the target audience, which is why I struggle to warm to descriptions such as an old German tank’s “23.1litre Maybach HL 230 P 30 V12”. Other props include the aforementioned Porsche 917 which crashes at its shakedown test at Silverstone, sundry aeroplanes (including wartime Messerschmitt and Focke Wulf), a Ferrari 275GTS and (you guessed?) the ex-Achille Varzi Auto Union Type C, abandoned in the North African desert. Nobody drives a Prius or a Civic in this book—they’re for us civilians, not for a mensch like Mike or Rick.

There’s a reason why the classic car and motorsport communities are served by hundreds of new books every year: there is an insatiable appetite for biographies, marque and even single chassis histories, reviews, and analysis. But this community is served by little fiction—why make things up when real life offers such a wealth of scandal and intrigue? Crispin Besley’s wonderful Driven to Crime (2023) almost buckled under the weight of thievery, scammers, drug smugglers, fraudsters, murderers, and con artists and was proof that truth really can be stranger than fiction. One can’t help feeling that Michael Kliebenstein, perhaps buoyed by a positive reception of his (much better) first book, simply took its core ingredients, shook them up, and then turned the plot up to 11.

More isn’t better, certainly not in this case. But maybe the author still has a decent book in him, and my advice is to turn the plot down to 4, the characterization up to 8, and get busy with the blue pencil on most of the dialog.