Its very refreshing for me to read such considered and thoughtful replies to this often referred to subject. Living in the UK I get very sensitive to all the " conspiracy theories" often put about on this subject. Yes, the British Government did eventually say "enough is enough" and stopped bailing the factory out. I honestly think they would have preferred that it had succeeded. No government wants to see 3000 odd workers out of such good jobs, particularly in an area like Belfast. All the senior employee's I've spoken to, were in absolutely no doubt that JZD's attempt at producing his own car was very serious and intended to succeed. He surrounded himself with some of the best brains in the industry, he nearly succeeded. "Politics" doubtless did became involved. But JZD new things were very tight, but gambled that increasing production and employing yet more workers would make it impossible for the British Government to refuse more money. Unfortunately he had underestimated "The Iron Lady" , Mrs. Thatcher, she went on to make loads more decisions of a similar nature, which with the benefit of hindsight, were probably correct. The problem is that "Hindsight" is easy....later! All any-one can do is what seems best at that time. Hindsight makes it easy for us all to point fingers and say if only they had done this instead...... I am still very proud to drive and be involved with the DeLorean Motor Car. Chris Parnham DOC UK -----Original Message----- From: Brian McCool [mailto:bjmccool@xxxx] Sent: 26 September 2002 23:56 To: dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: RE: [DML] Re: Downfall of the DMC? If I had to narrow it down to one specific event that brought the company down, I would say it was the decision in November of 1981 to double production of cars from 40 a day to 80 a day. The country went into a recession and had a very bad winter about a month after this, which affected every car manufacturer negatively, especially DMC. JZD did this partly to make the company look more impressive right before a planned public offering of the company's stock that ended up being canceled. By doubling production right before a market downturn, working capital was effectively used up, and the market was flooded with Deloreans that were just sitting at the Quality Assurance Centers in the US. This started a downward spiral that the company wasn't able to recover from. A major gamble in the auto industry is to build cars without adhering to dealer orders. Chrysler got itself into trouble in the late seventies by doing this. In retrospect, if JZD would have cut production in half, DMC may have lasted much longer than it did. It's likely that DMC would have merged with or been bought by another auto company, by this point. Global mergers have drastically reduced the amount of independent auto companies. Smaller auto companies face a major problem in that it takes very large sums of cash to function in the automotive manufacturing industry, and the little guys don't have very deep pockets. This was especially true for DMC. Whereas every penny they spent had to be asked for, the big boys were functioning off of their own cash flow. -----Original Message----- From: therealdmcvegas [mailto:DMCVegas@xxxx] Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2002 2:27 AM To: dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [DML] Re: Downfall of the DMC? I will have to agree with Andy on this one. The best thing to do is to read the books available. Specificly, I would stick with "De Lorean", "Hard driving", "Dream Maker", and "Stainless Steel Illusion".. These are the best books, and to get the full effect, I would reccomend reading them in that order. Once you're done, read "De Lorean" over again, and alot of bits and pieces from all of the books will click together. Was there any one thing that took DMC down? No. It was unfortunetly a combination of a number of things that caused the demise. When you start reading up on the subject, you begin to wonder just how it could have ended. While there were a some mistakes made here and there in the form of things that either should, or should not have been done, there wasn't a single action that caused any sort of a domino effect. -Robert vin 6585 "X" --- In dmcnews@xxxx, Vin 5386 <delorean_stainless@xxxx> wrote: > Does anyone know the actuall reasons that DMC ended up > in bankrupcy? When all is said it seems to me that the > company did quite well in its short time. Was it just > that the DeLorean as an automoblibe didn't "fit the > nitch" at that time in history? sorta to much to soon? > or was it more related to competeing with the larger > companys? Would be amazing to suspend reality for one > instance and imagine where the DeLorean would be today > given it had continuted production. > > Todd > Vin5386 > > =====