At the warehouse in Ohio I saw a test panel of S/S with different colors painted on it. The story behind it was that the factory was experimenting with the idea of offering painted panels. The option would be offered as a "drive in in the morning-drive out in the afternoon" deal trading in the origional panels for panels of a different color. The factory NEVER offered painted panels for sale to the public but did at least plan on it. The factory also provided a procedure for painting the S/S panels for dealers that wanted to offer it to their customers. After the end of DMC some cars got painted because the selling dealers thought it might be easier to sell that way. Other cars got painted because of body damage and since the panels were hard to come by for a time it was faster and cheaper to just paint the whole car. Since the S/S is type 304 and is nonmagnetic you can only tell if there is body filler on the panels by either removing the paint or using a sonic tester. David Teitelbaum vin 10757 --- In dmcnews@xxxx, "treehouse2000us" <treehouse2000us@xxxx> wrote: > Hey DeLorean Guru's > > I need some help with the cronology of the DeLorean in the "1983 > Production Year", if you want to call it that. > > I have a guy who is selling a Black exterior DeLorean, and it looks > perfect, just like it came from the factory. Actualy, he claims that > > Tom Porter > The other Tom from Maine