Mike, I'm not a Delorean owner but soon will be; I've been a member of the Pontiac Fiero (my first love) mailing list for over 5 years and have owned my Fiero for 8. In those years I've run across all sorts of people and have gleaned much information from those experiences. As a result, I can't help but reply to your post: (I apologize for length) >> What if a well meaning journalist wanted to write a story >> on the car and found the so called "Now you bought a DeLorean...now >> what?/Problem page(s)" web site that you want? So what? There will just be yet another negative opinion about the Delorean. You know what they say about opinions. :) Personally, I think the information is valuable enough that a remote (actually, very remote) chance of staining the car's reputation is something we should live with. The fact of the matter is, all cars have problems. Deloreans are ~20 years old now and cars this old need special care. If a journalist and/or the general public does not understand this, so be it. The D has a special place in our hearts and that's all that should matter. Incidentally, the Fiero suffers from some of the same publicity problems: Most people don't know a thing about them. Those that do often remark, "But don't those things just randomly catch on fire?" (The first batch of engines in the '84 Fiero was bad. They'd throw a rod and hot oil would collect in a heat shield and catch fire. They were recalled, engines replaced, heat shield redesigned, problem solved, yet many people are convinced that all Fieros will eventually catch fire for no reason. I've had people get in my face over it, yelling at me for driving such a "road hazard".) Fieros also have a reputation of being hard to work on - I do most of the work myself, since no shops want to touch it, and when they do they screw it up - and are supposedly prone to all sorts of other problems. They're great little cars, just like Deloreans, and from my experience there is nothing wrong with a Fiero that isn't also wrong with any other 15+ year old car. Yet bad reputations persist. There's really nothing you can do about it. Might as well use the information, continue to repair/maintain the car, and have fun with it. >> He laughed at us, when we said the cars were reliable and fun to >> own. So what? There will always be people who refuse to hear the facts and will claim we're all idiots for owning a Delorean. You'll run into this regardless of what you drive. Who really cares what they think? The vast majority of the population is enamored with Deloreans, and nobody - not a journalist, not a "how to fix your Delorean" web site, and certainly not this guy - will ever change that. >> Not every DeLorean out there is problem prone >> and unreliable. The point of the project is not to make Deloreans look bad, it's to help us keep them looking good. You'll find a howto/list of problems manual for almost every unique car on the web. Don't believe me? Go search for Fieros, Nissan Z cars, RX-7s, Corvettes, Miatas, heck even your run of the mill Hondas have their own cult following nowdays (though I'm not quite sure why). These lists of problems serve to keep the cars on the road and help out owners. They don't give the cars a bad reputation. If 50 people run across the list and think, "Woah, Deloreans sure have a lot of problems", who cares? If anything, perhaps it will deter the casual owner (you know the type, they want a Delorean but don't want to take care of it) from eventually destroying another D due to lack of maintenance. >> I've searched the archive for Joy, Love, and Happiness >> owning a DeLorean, and the results weren't good. That's because most people don't come here to brag about their car. They'd be preaching to the choir. Besides, when the car is running good, we're (well, not me, yet) out driving it, not sitting on our bums gloating over it. We come here for answers to our problems. That's what the list is all about. I suppose you could start a list where the only topic allowed is the joy, love and happiness of owning a Delorean, but I doubt you'd get many posts. Not because there is a lack of such feelings, but because I know of few people who want to sit around and brag all day. As a newbie - I knew nothing about Deloreans until I joined this list a couple of weeks ago - it's great having the information to form an objective opinion about the D before I purchase one. I've run across plenty of web sites full of praise for the D. I have yet to run across one that was negative, unless you consider ("I love this car. I've put countless hours of hard work into it because I love it so much, and here's a list of the problems I've encountered and how I fixed them") to be negative. I don't. To me, it shows the strength of the Delorean community, and the love that owners have for their cars if they are willing to invest so much time and effort into making them "perfect". - Ryan Wright, MCP (ryan.wright@xxxx) - Web Operations Analyst - Lamb-Weston, Inc. -----Original Message----- From: senatorpack@xxxx [mailto:senatorpack@xxxx] Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 10:05 PM To: dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [DML] "New Owner Documentation" DML, There are many talented members of this group. I have had the pleasure to met some of the members. Most of you have a tremendous amount of energy and devotion to the car. Anyone who is related to the DeLorean, out of ownership or curiosity, is very appreciative and thankful of the resources and dedication that they have contributed. <<< snip >>> Sincerely, Mike Pack