"The Swiss Wiz" is the result of a nine-hour monologue by Edi Wyss. In these few hours, he recounted his entire life to Christoph Ditzler. A life that is characterized by many experiences with racing cars and racing drivers.
Fortunately, all of these have now been recorded for eternity in detailed Swiss precision on 300 fantastic pages. Unfortunately, the time that Edi was able to experience will never return. It is and will remain in the deep past and cannot be preserved for our descendants without these few valuable books. There are already thousands of racing books, but they all tell the same one-sided stories about how that person in that car became world champion after all, or not.
Much more exciting are stories from the background that show that not everything was always as great as you might think from a TV perspective.
A meticulous collector
What is extraordinary is that Edi had the great gift of collecting everything that might be of interest. Apart from the accreditations and team shirts, especially the farewell letter from McLaren, or Jo Siffert's business card, on the back of which he gave Edi the authority to accept the prize money he had won. Such anecdotes could also be mentioned in the text, but with the picture of the original business card, the number is not only more credible, but also much more interesting.
The book completely captivates the reader, not only because you know and appreciate Edi. No, his life and experiences are also exciting and interesting for all those who neither know nor have ever met the little Swiss man with his visual double Dustin Hoffman from the movie "Papillon".
Four components
The book is divided into four large chapters and the layout is successfully separated by color. Green describes his "Apprenticeship years in Swiss racing", orange the "Wandering years as a racing mechanic" in keeping with McLaren, blue the "Experiences as a racing car builder" and red the "Edi Wyss Engineering company".
It is absolutely fascinating how much Edi still knows about every single chapter, down to the smallest detail, without ever having kept a diary. The only help he had was his collected diaries.
Read through from start to finish
With this book, it really makes little sense to explain individual episodes, you really have to go through it page by page, then you get a completely different view of the golden years of motorsport, whether F1, Indy Car or CanAm, all from the perspective of a mechanic and racing car builder. "I think every car mechanic wants to build their own car at some point, and this desire was very strong in my case. After initial attempts with Huron and Tecno ended rather adventurously or remained episodes, Peter Sauber made it possible for me to build a racing sports car largely according to my own ideas during the short time I spent with him in 1974/75," says Edi.
And if you want to know even more now, buy the book and start on page 1 with Edi's first car, the crumpled Fiat Abarth Monomille S/N 1128084 ... go with him to England to McLaren in F1 and CanAm ... experience how he worked with Jo Siffert on the CanAm Porsche 917/10 ... or enjoys the 1972 Indy Car Series with the "Chief Mechanic" back at McLaren ... and finally experiences the development of the company "Edi Wyss Engineering", where cars like the Ferrari 312P S/N 0872 are given a second life!
EUR 79.90, or CHF 85.00, is no small price to pay, but rarely have you received so much information, background information and pictures that are new and really interesting!
Bibliographical details
- Title: The Swiss Wiz: Edi Wyss - A life with racing and sports cars
- Author: Edi Wyss / Christoph Ditzler
- Language: German
- Publisher: McKlein Publishing
- Format: 24.5 x 30 cm, hardcover
- Scope: 304 pages, approx. 360 illustrations/documents in color and 185 in black and white
- ISBN: 978-3-947156-22-1, Price: EUR 79.90 / CHF 85.00
- Buy/order: Online at McKlein/RallyWebShop, online at BM Classics (Switzerland), online at Serag (Switzerland) or online at amazon.de
