[doc] Taken from the Chicago Tribune..

["Dan" <danielpwillis@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

DeLorean shop steels itself against time

By Steven Kurutz
New York Times News Service
Published May 22, 2005

In the dim half-light of a Long Island garage, a handful of DeLoreans
stand in corners or suspended on hydraulic lifts, their gull-wing
doors ajar more than two decades after the DeLorean Motor Co. went
bust. Visible through a dusty window to the parking lot, perhaps 20
more DeLoreans, lined up and identical, sit waiting.

This is P.J. Grady's, a modest gray automotive garage tucked behind a
used-car lot in West Sayville, N.Y. As the sign on its roof--DeLorean
Motor Cars--indicates, the shop specializes in the repair and
restoration of DeLoreans.

It is estimated that around 9,200 DeLoreans were built in the car's
three years of production, 1981-83, and that about 7,000 are left. Of
those, a good number have passed through the hands of Rob Grady, P.J.
Grady's owner, who has spent 20 years as one of the world's few
DeLorean experts. DeLorean owners from Maine to Florida send him their
cars.

For many years, P.J. Grady's was about as profitable as an Edsel
dealership, but that has changed. The teenagers who saw "Back to the
Future" 20 years ago and were fascinated by the film's time-traveling
DeLorean are grown and seeking the low-sweeping coupe. At the same
time, the car is approaching its 25th birthday. Where once values
hovered around $17,000, a restored DeLorean now runs close to $30,000.

"In the last five or six years, the values have gone way up," said
James Espey, vice president of the DeLorean Motor Co. in Houston,
which bought the rights to the brand and sells restored models.

It was long believed that DeLorean parts could not be found, so many
cars were garaged, but Espey's firm bought the DMC parts inventory.
Espey estimates that the company has enough gull-wing doors to last
120 years at the current rate of use, and enough interior carpet to
cover a football field twice over. The company opened a second branch
near Tampa. And two shops near Los Angeles, DeLorean Motor Center and
DeLorean One, serve the West Coast as P.J. Grady's serves the East.

Of the handful of DeLorean specialists, P.J. Grady's is the oldest,
going back to 1979, when Grady became one of the original DeLorean
dealers. For $25,000 he received the right to sell the DMC-12, and a
poster of the car autographed by DeLorean, which still decorates his
office.

Like many dealers, Grady signed up based on the reputation of
DeLorean, who had been an engineering and marketing star at General
Motors--in the early 1960s he created the Pontiac GTO. But from the
start, his company was besieged with problems, starting with too
little capital and the fact that the car, priced at $25,000, made its
debut in 1981 in one of the worst economies in recent memory. "The
cars were never hot sellers," Grady said.

Topping it off was DeLorean's arrest in 1982 for conspiracy to
distribute cocaine, still a sore spot with DeLorean enthusiasts.
(DeLorean was acquitted after claiming entrapment.) When the company
filed for bankruptcy protection that year, Grady continued to honor
his customers' warranties. He found himself doing more and more repair
work on DeLoreans, until that was all he did.

Not surprisingly, he has developed an affection for the car, though it
is tempered by years of daily involvement. "It's a good car," he said.

DeLorean enthusiast Mike Deluca, hovering nearby, said: "Rob is being
modest. He's completely dedicated. I was driving by once, and it was
Easter Sunday. It was freezing. Rob was out in the parking lot testing
temperature sensors."

In a far corner of the garage, the P.J. Grady's mechanic, Pat
Tomasetti, stood in blue coveralls beneath a DeLorean on a lift,
draining oil. Tomasetti has been repairing and restoring DeLoreans at
P.J. Grady's for 13 years and is accustomed to overzealous fans of the
car. He laughed as he recalled the time a Japanese man showed up with
his family, saying he had flown to America to visit Disney World and
P.J. Grady's.

The DeLorean Tomasetti was working on had come from Pennsylvania and
was set to have its fender replaced, among other repairs. Another
DeLorean, its door crunched, needed extensive body work. Outside,
dozens more waited, a daunting workload for two men.

"I'd like another mechanic, but it's hard keeping them," Grady said.
"Most guys don't like doing restoration work. It's dirty, and there's
also the repetition."

People who spend time around garages tend to acquire a detailed
know-how of car design and mechanics, but DeLorean experts have
refined that. Because of its unpainted stainless-steel body, the
DMC-12 was available in only one color, silver. Its interior was black
leather or gray leather, and the car changed little over its brief
production run.

So while the Corvette aficionado has a half-century of paint schemes,
body types and options to ponder, the DeLorean lover must be content
with trivial changes--the radio antenna on the '81 models is in the
windshield, for example, while on the '82 it is on the left rear quarter.

Pointing to a model whose license plate read BK2DFUTR, Grady made the
indistinguishable cars distinguishable. "We just got this one out of
mothballs," he said. "It sat for four years. The owner decided to sell
it. It only has 11,000 miles."

He continued: "That one over there was in a wreck. Needs a new door."
Then he walked over to a car covered in dust. The passenger window was
stuck halfway down, and the seat was given over to orphaned parts.
"This is the 530," he said reverently. "It's a Legend prototype, Twin
Turbo. They only made three of these."

The 530 is going to be restored as his DeLorean, Grady said, just as
soon as he finds the time. "Sometimes you get a little burned out," he
mused, reflecting on the vagaries of being a DeLorean expert. "Then
something rejuvenates you."




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