DETROIT — Jim Dunne has the job half the little boys on Earth would kill for: hiding from authority, waiting for the coolest new cars to come by and snapping their pictures.

They call the job spy photographer: tracking down automakers' secret new models and photographing them months and years before they go on sale. A handful of men and women around the world do it for a living.

Native Detroiter Dunne has been a master spy for decades. Detroit Free Press photographer Kathleen Galligan and I spent a day with him as he snared photos of the 2008 Mazda 6 and other upcoming models at engineering centers.

If you're a car buff, you look forward to his work: photographs of cars that won't go on sale for months or years.

Automakers rack up countless test miles as they develop new cars and trucks. They disguise the vehicles so competitors won't know what's coming and customers won't postpone a purchase because they know how much better the new model looks.

Automakers have no secret more precious than the styling and performance of their new cars. It doesn't matter. Dunne still gets photographs of the new models, cruising engineering centers all over southeast Michigan in his SUV and staking out service stations and motels in extreme-weather test sites from Death Valley in California to Kapuskasing in northern Ontario.

Dunne is one of the best-known spy photographers, along with Arizona-based Brenda Priddy and Germany's Hans G. Lehmann.

Dunne's been writing about cars and photographing them for more than 40 years. He's become as much of an icon as the cars he photographs. Ten years ago, Car Magazine in England ranked him 122 among the 300 most important figures in the global auto industry.

Dunne rated higher than DCX's Dieter Zetsche and racing legend Carroll Shelby.

Dunne has revealed so many automakers' secrets that General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz jokes about arming his engineers with baseball bats when they test new cars.

"Their instructions are to stop" but not to hurt Dunne, and "smash his camera to smithereens," Lutz said with a laugh before adding more seriously that the elaborate camouflage kits disguising the cars "are absolutely designed to foil Jim Dunne."

Dunne has spent his career writing for magazines. He got frustrated reporting news weeks after newspapers did, so he decided to make news of his own.

"I'd be months, even years ahead of everybody else," he said, scanning the road for his next target. His first spy shot was a restyled Chevrolet Corvair about 40 years ago.

"I borrowed my sister-in-law's camera," he said. "I sent the picture to my magazine, and the editor told me, 'Jim, that photo was electrifying. Send as many more as you can get.'

"How much more validation do you need?" Dunne said. "I was raising seven children, and the money put food on the table."

He uses a few key design elements and the relationships he's built up over decades to strip away the disguises and identify upcoming cars.

GM vehicles top his wish list now. He's shot the best photos anyone has seen of the supposedly secret super-performance Chevrolet Corvette SS.

"The hottest car in spy photography is the Corvette," Dunne said. "Everybody loves the Corvette."