Legendary Auto Spy Photographer Dunne Dies

Jim Dunne, who virtually invented the art of automotive spy photography, died Monday at age 88 in suburban Detroit.

Dunne, a former auto writer for Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, supplied enthusiast magazines for decades with snaps of future models, often taken as they circled company test tracks. He once boasted that photos he took of a next-generation Chevrolet Corvette paid for the college education of his children.

Dunne began his spy career taking photos of General Motors test cars as they zipped around GM’s Milford proving ground an hour west of Detroit. He took the shots from a promontory adjoining the track that GM vehicle testers soon dubbed “Dunne’s Hill.” Dunne used another spot, located just inside the proving ground, dubbed Dunne’s Grove.

Dunne was crafty, brazen and charming. He captured hundreds of cars in prototype condition by simply walked into restricted areas as though he belonged there. Nattily attired and sometimes toting a clipboard, he was shockingly successful at talking his way into—and out of—supposedly highly secure facilities.

In 1994, Dunne famously spent $24,000 to buy 4.4 acres of land that jutted into Chrysler’s summer proving ground in Arizona. The land made for a perfect vantage point to photograph cars as they looped around his property.

When Chrysler-hired workmen arrived shortly thereafter to install a larger fence around the track, he bullied them off his land by launching into a convincing rant about environmental damage they were causing. Seven years later, he sold the property for $130,000.

Dunne chronicled his colorful career as a spy photographer, including tips for future spies, in his witty 2011 autobiography, Car Spy.