Wheels (novel)
Wheels (1971) is a novel by Arthur Hailey, concerning the automobile industry and the day-to-day pressures involved in its operation.
The plot lines follow many of the topical issues of the day, including race relations, corporate politics, and business ethics. The auto company of the novel is a little-disguised Ford Motor Company and some of the characters are recognizable to company insiders.
One notable scene is a direct lift from Leo Tolstoy's great novel Anna Karenina. In the Tolstoy novel, the female protagonist's affair became public knowledge due to her emotional reaction to an accident at a horse race in which her lover was a rider. In the Hailey novel, the accident takes place during an Indy car style race, but its significance in the plot is the same.
On television
The novel was made into a TV miniseries in 1978 directed by Jerry London and starring Rock Hudson (as Adam Trenton), Lee Remick (as Erica Trenton), Blair Brown (as Barbara Lipton), Ralph Bellamy (as Lowell Baxter), Anthony Franciosa (as Smokey Stevenson), John Beck (as Peter Flodenhale), Scott Brady (as Matt Zaleski), Tim O'Connor (as Hub Hewitson), Gerald S. O'Loughlin (as Rusty Horton), Jessica Walter (as Ursula), Lisa Eilbacher (as Jody Horton), James Carroll Jordan (as Kirk Trenton), Howard McGillin (as Greg Trenton), Marj Dusay (as Caroline Horton), Fred Williamson (as Leonard Wingate), and Harold Sylvester (as Rollie Knight). The car presented in Hailey's novel, the Orion, was called the Hawk in the miniseries.