Historical Fiction · Book I
by Oscar J. Franck Terrazas
Book I
From Mexico City to California · Across the 1960s and ’70s
©
A president who turns Mexico City’s Chapultepec Park into his private racetrack at dawn. A strikingly beautiful jazz singer trying to free herself from his obsession. A young entrepreneur who burns his ships in Mexico City, moving to California to challenge the world’s best with Mexico’s own motorcycle built after his design; from the Mint 400 to the grueling Baja 1000 races. Three lives, one unforgiving triangle.
Mexico City → Pasadena → Baja California Sur
01
The Triangle
Entrant — Alfonso de Martí Solórzano
The President
Power
By day, don Alfonso, a charismatic, populist who breaks military perimeters to embrace an old woman offering sunflowers. Before dawn, alone behind the wheel of a Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, devouring Chapultepec’s twelve challenging corners. By night, a lover whose power precludes him from being told no.
Entrant — Francesca “Chessy”
The Singer
Survival
Strikingly talented and beautiful, Franchesca (Chessy) is a jazz voice that became a leading performer after her debut in the jazz festival, thanks to Jorge Alberto’s unconditional help. She is, however, watched closely by guards sent by her powerful benefactor.
Entrant — Jorge Alberto
The Entrepreneur
Reinvention
Young and relentless, Jorge Alberto refuses defeat and keeps reinventing himself — waiting a porta gayola, on his knees, cape ready, anticipating whatever the draw sends charging out of the toril darkness. Mexico City becomes Pasadena. A motorcycle import venture becomes Mexico’s challenge against a field of the world’s best: Husqvarna, DKW, Harley-Davidson, and the rest, at landmark off-road races such as the Mint 400 and Mexico’s Baja 1000.
02
The Route
Start
Chapultepec Forest
A Ferrari’s V12 breaks the morning silence over the ancient sacred heart of the Aztecs, before the city wakes to claim it back.
Departure
Mexico City
Ships burned, in the manner of Cortés. What’s liquidated here can’t be unwound from a desert nine hundred miles north. From a Jai-Alai game to a Cuban Connection.
New Ground
Pasadena, California
Carabela Moto Imports launches under the banner of The Mexican Conqueror — the only Mexican-made machine in a field dominated by Husqvarna and Harley-Davidson, and nobody outside Mexico is worried about it yet.
Proving Ground
The Mint 400
Nevada’s mythical desert race. Parnelli Jones and Malcolm Smith are already legends here — Jorge Alberto dares to challenge the best of the world with his Carabela 1.01, 125cc, taking 1st of class, 4th on the 250cc class and 15th overall, becoming the first and only 125cc to finish on the time limit.
Final Checkpoint
San Ignacio Oasis
Close to midnight, in Baja California Sur, a failed crankshaft spoils another major win for the Mexican Conqueror, meeting a man who has already decided he will not surrender.
03
As It Happened
Motorcycle Weekly — Dec. 1970
The Mexican Conqueror
Period trade advertising for Carabela’s American push, reproduced from the archive as the novel’s own closing pages — the fiction and the paper trail sit side by side.
Cycle World — June 1971
Mint 400 Results
The magazine that covered the real race the novel is built inside of — its win results appear in Book I exactly as they ran.
Cycle Scene Action — Jan. 1972
Cover Story
The closing image of Libro I: not an invented photograph, but the era’s own front page, closing the loop on a story lived first and written second.
04
Not only Researched, but Lived.
The racing world in these pages is not just reconstructed from archives — it’s remembered. The author stood at San Ignacio in 1971, at the same checkpoint where Book I ends, present for the real rescue that inspired the novel’s darkest chapter. The Carabela-versus-Harley rivalry, the smell and sound of two-stroke racing engines, the dramatic exhaustion of the Baja at midnight: these come from having been there, not from having read about it.
Preregistered — Spanish
PRE000013957 · 08.04.2025
Preregistered — English
PRE000013939 · 06.30.2025
Marketability read
8.0 / 10
Series / adaptation potential
9.0 / 10
Status
Book II in development
The crankshaft failure was never the whole story.
05
Meet the Author
Oscar J. Franck Terrazas does not merely write historical fiction; he writes from the blueprint of a life lived at the intersection of international industry, political shifts, and high-prestige motorsport. Long before cementing his narrative voice through a series of published articles on global real estate and international economics, he mastered the rare art of personal and professional reinvention.
Following a politically charged expulsion from Mexico’s prestigious UNAM, Franck Terrazas refused defeat, stepping into the ring a porta gayola to reinvent himself as an entertainment publicist. Learning the intricate operational ropes under the mentorship of Bob Lerner — one of the most prominent legendary promoters within the country’s vibrant media landscape. His other counselor on the advertising world was his dearest friend Carlos Arouesty Robert, Mexico’s creative guru of the 1960–1970s. That same relentless drive fueled his next evolution: crossing borders to shed his skin once more as the President of Carabela Moto Imports. At the absolute helm of this venture, he spearheaded Mexico’s daring industrial challenge against the corporate titans of the off-road racing world. He lived the grit of the Pasadena workbench, brokered deals across international lines, and stood in the pit lanes of landmark races like the Mint 400 and the Baja 1000 alongside the legends who forged the era.
His writing is driven by the authentic texture of a true insider — someone who has navigated the corridors of political power, commanded major media campaigns, faced the brutal realities of mid-century manufacturing, and shared the arena with the very “speed warlocks” who defined a generation. Based in Irvine, California, Terrazas brings a rare, dual-lens perspective to the American and Mexican landscapes, transforming unassailable historical verisimilitude into a gripping, cinematic multi-volume epic.