Does anyone know if the DeLorean had a significant amount of Asbestos used in the car, such as the heat shields, brakes, foam blocks in the fiberglass underbody and exhaust manifold gaskets? There are new developments about asbestos that was primarily used in production automobiles from Europe and the USA back in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. If the DeLorean does have asbestos, what parts should be updated, and how should we proceed removing it? I received an asbestos email from another car digest. The email goes into the car manufacturing industry as a whole, and some DeLorean suppliers that were sued over asbestos. I have copied it below for you to read. <<There's an old saying in Detroit: "When the nation's economy catches cold, the auto industry comes down with pneumonia." But suppose the nation's auto industry, which is responsible for 6.6 million jobs nationwide and an annual payroll of $243 billion, came down with pneumonia first. What do you think would happen to the rest of the nation's economy? Americans may soon find out. The nation's Big Three automakers are now under assault by a small army of lawyers who are pursuing a class-action suit over the past use of asbestos in cars. If they are successful, GM, Ford, and Chrysler will face billions of dollars in extra costs over the next decade--costs which will drive sticker prices up and sales figures down, and almost certainly result in tens of thousands of layoffs from high-paying jobs. The asbestos lawyers, who include many of the nation's wealthiest attorneys, have already feasted on the remains of the nearly 50 major corporations they've driven into bankruptcy. Now, like lions on the prowl, they're moving on--looking for new prey. While the initial wave of asbestos litigation in the 1970s concentrated on major asbestos manufacturers, the asbestos attorneys of 2002 are targeting companies who played no role in manufacturing or selling asbestos. And they're doing so by using thousands of plaintiffs who bear no symptoms of having a disease related to asbestos. The auto industry is a prime example of an industry being sued chiefly because it has deep pockets, even though it is highly cyclical and faces intense competition from overseas rivals. There's no doubt that the automakers and their parts suppliers used asbestos, a naturally occurring fiber whose heat-resistant qualities made it an excellent choice for brake pads and shoes, in addition to its familiar use as an all-purpose flame retardant. But they did so only after receiving assurances from asbestos manufacturers (and, in some cases, the government) that the material was safe for a particular application. The use of asbestos in manufacturing began to wane in the late 1970s when it was discovered that prolonged exposure to it could cause serious respiratory diseases, such as asbestosis. The plaintiffs' lawyers turned toward the Big Three automakers and other "innocent bystander" industries only after asbestos manufacturers, such as Johns Manville and W. R. Grace, sought sanctuary in bankruptcy court. "Anybody with asbestos products has a reason to be concerned," said Jim Zamoyski, a senior vice president with Federal-Mogul, a Southfield, Michigan, auto parts supplier that was sued into bankruptcy after acquiring companies that made asbestos brake linings. "Over the years, the first tier got wiped out. The second tier got wiped out. We're actually the third tier, and we got wiped out." Curiously, there were few asbestos-brake cases filed against automakers by mechanics and other workers until the personal-injury lawyers began drumming up customers after Federal-Mogul filed for bankruptcy last October. The lawyers' recruiting efforts produced swift results. In the last quarter of 2001, asbestos lawsuits against the Big Three automakers soared to more than 3,500 a month--about 20 times the rate for the first 9 months of the year. The growing threat was accentuated in February when a Manhattan jury returned a landmark $53 million verdict against GM, Ford, Chrysler, and several of their brake suppliers on behalf of a Maine man who was first exposed to asbestos as a brake specialist in 1968. It was the largest amount ever awarded to a single plaintiff in an asbestos suit. All told, more than 20,000 lawsuits are pending against the Big Three, and thousands more are lined up for such leading brake manufacturers as Honeywell International, Delphi Corp., Dana Corp., and Bosch. Financial analysts estimate that the cost of defending such lawsuits could easily top $2 billion, providing extra incentive to defendants to settle out of court. "If these lawsuits go forward, you're looking at the era of the $30,000 subcompact car," said an industry insider in Detroit. "Those potentially huge judgments will end up on the side-window stickers of new cars everywhere. In the very near future, consumers will pick up the tab--including the 30-40 percent contingency fees that go to the lawyers." Congress has attempted to limit asbestos liability on ten different occasions in the past two decades, but each time the personal-injury lawyers and their allies managed to scuttle the legislation. Congressional Democrats alone received $77 million from personal-injury lawyers in the 2000 election cycle. With legislative remedies unlikely, it's time for the judiciary itself to step forward and institute needed reforms. One who could set the example is Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Weiner, who oversees asbestos claims in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Weiner has attempted to confine asbestos trials only to compensatory damages--the amount required to make plaintiffs whole--while keeping punitive-damage claims on hold. "The idea is to make sure enough money is left at the end of the day to pay the claims of those actually injured by asbestos, rather than healthy people lumped into the class-actions by money-hungry lawyers. The sick and the dying, [and] their widows and survivors, should have their claims addressed first," he said. The nation's car buyers--and taxpayers--are likely to respond with a robust "amen.">>