Re: PRV6 was PRV8!

["therealdmcvegas" <DMCVegas@xxxx>]

--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "David Teitelbaum" <jtrealty@xxxx> 
wrote:
> Last night I was at a cruise night with the Delorean. A person stood
> staring at the motor. I asked him what he was looking at in
> particular. He said he used to work for Volvo. He did a lot of work 
on
> the PRV with the French. He said origionally the PRV was designed to
> be a V8. The French thought that the timing was wrong (the energy
> crisis) so they cut off two of the cylinders and made it into a V6. 
He
> said this is why it is a crossfire. He claimed to have seen the
> tooling for the V8. He seemed very knowledgable so I have no reason 
to
> doubt him. Just imagine what the Delorean would be like if we could
> squeeze a V8 into it! BTW he also commented that it was always
> difficult working with the French. This confirms the impressions 
that
> we got when we had Fred Dellis of Legend Industries give a talk on 
his
> work on the PRV with the turbos and the French. He told us that JZD
> had decided to change the engine eventually to get away from the PRV
> mainly because of the difficulty in dealing with the French.
> David Teitelbaum
> vin 10757

Yup. They literally just sliced 2 cylinders, and left the thing as an 
odd-fire, 90º V-6. I too have heard that the engery crisis at the 
time greatly influenced their decision. I've also always heard the 
motor compared to the Chevy 350 block. Don't know if this comparison 
is related directly to the fact that the motor was so popular in 
Europe, or if perhaps it was meant to compete somehow...

And yes, JZD wanted to dump the PRV as soon as he got a chance. I've 
got a copy of D.A. Pennebroker's (sic) documentary. One of the scenes 
includes a board meeting of DMC & DMCL people. JZD states then and 
there that as soon as the Volvo contract was up, DMC was going to 
abandon the PRV ASAP! Listening in, Volvo was double-dipping when 
charging for the DMC-12 tooling (which they already had *technicly* 
due to the Alpine A310). After charging Lotus for the tooling fees, 
they then went on to charge DMCL a second time for the exact same 
fees again! Which DMCL had already paid out to Lotus, when they took 
on the job from DMC.

Rightly so, JZD stated that DMC was doing a favor to Volvo by using 
the PRV. And as the conversation went on, yes, he made the comment 
that as soon as the contract is up, he wanted Volvo dropped. He 
dropps a few names, such as Alfa-Romero, and others as alternatives, 
and advises the board to start looking around.

Now don't get me wrong, I like the PRV. It's a die hard, reliable 
engine that has quite a long lifespan. However, the Rover V-8 would 
have been quite a nice alternative! Don't know Why it was never 
chosen though...

-Robert
vin 6585 "X"