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Hi I am not saying this is the right way to do it, but if I was going to do it this is how I would go about it because its easy to do.
I would use the 12V from the cars battery but I would replace the battery with a proper traction battery so if it runs down it wont kill the battery.
I would wire the motor through the existing fans thermostat so it gets turned on and off as the engine gets hot, you can get 70 deg C thermostats if you need to turn it on more often before you up the voltage to 24V.
On the mechanical side I would remove the water pump and make a solid press fit coupling so that the motor drives the pump directly inline then you can mount it where ever you like in a sub frame and it will be quiet and eliminate chains and pulleys.
On the output side of the thermostat I would rig up an LED light in parallel with the motor, and put the LED in the cockpit so that I have a visual check that it comes on regularly. The logic being that the fan thermo couple will regulate the temperature for you by turning the pump motor on and off automatically so the pumps RPM will become irrelevant provided there is sufficient cooling at the 12V pump RPM if it just stays on then you may have to go to 24V. this is the simplest way I can think of, its self regulating and at least you know the pump is pumping.
If the fan thermo couple cant handle the pump motors amps just wire it into a contactor so it activates the coil in the contactor rather than having the motor amps go through the thermo couple, the contactor coils pull negligible amps and if you use a contactor the main power can be 24V if necessary but you can specify a 12V coil in the contactor so the activation circuit is still just the standard 12V
If you over heat your engine it will be very expensive to fix - new head gaskets etc - so from a "save money" prospective it may turn around and bite you, especially on those hot summer days.
Provided you monitor the water temp all the time you will be fine - You could rig up a system that would sound an alarm if the temp goes over 100 degrees by fitting a second fan thermo couple and connect it to your cars hooter - lol then at least if the electric water pump is not doing its job then you will know for sure before you break any thing, where you mount that 100 degree sensor is very important. I have driven cars that are over heating but show a low temperature on the temperature gauge this is because there is no water in the radiator any more and the manufacturers fitted the sensor too high up in the radiator. So that sensor must be as low as possible - maybe in the engines sump oil but I dont know how hot the oil gets so I cant recommend a temperature there, but its probably the safest place to monitor overall engine temperature. So you can do it, just make sure you add a monitoring circuit as well then it will be pretty safe.
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