In 1992, housewife Brenda Priddy spotted an unusual-looking car on the ring road near her house on the outskirts of Phoenix. She snapped a photo, and the car -- a 1994 Mustang -- ended up on the cover of a magazine. That photo launched her career as a car spy photographer. She spends four months a year in rural Nevada, hunting test cars on a remote proving ground. We'll talk with Priddy about the twists and turns in the life of a car paparazzi.
GUEST
Brenda Priddy, car spy photographer
"You can kind of spot the test cars all the time. They have black camouflage over name badges and emblems. These days they have swirly camouflage so they almost jump out at you. They look kind of psychedelic sometimes."
"It’s supposed to (hide them) but I think what it really does is say ‘hey look I’m over here.’ If they just painted them black or silver and drove them, no one would notice or at least very few people would really notice."
"If I see something on the road I will follow it for hours and hours, hundreds of miles if I have to to get good photos of it. And to avoid it, they might stop at a gas station to fill up and even though the car is heavily camouflaged, they’ll jump out of their vehicle and throw a care cover on top ... or they’ll pull inot a hotel and they’ll quickly load the cars into a transporter to hide it from me."
"The engineers – sadly, and I think I’m a nice person – sadly, I’m not one of their favorite people. They’re not pleased to see me at all."