[DMCForum] interesting JZD article:

["John Dore" <dmcjohn@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?
item_id=170852&oliID255&bemID=0IvRXsC38YYPoi9Gq/13MQaa6621

or if that link doesn't work, here it is!!! :

Title:John De Lorean's Nine Greatest Cars of All Time
(We asked for ten, but Mr. De Lorean said that there haven't been 
that many).

Oct 01 '98


LANDMARK CARS. You've got one. We all do, parked somewhere in that 
boneyard of the brain, right? The first car, which you just have to 
cherish, even though it was a used four-door, metallic-blue (except 
for the rear driver's-side quarter panel, which never got out of 
primer) 1973 Ford Maverick. Or maybe it was the '66 MG that you, 
despite the obvious stick-shift impediment, lost your virginity in. 
Or even the shag-carpeted, upholstery-tufted Chew with the IF THIS 
VAN IS ROCKIN', DON'T COME KNOCKIN' bumper sticker that your older 
brother willed to you in the fall of 1981 when he went off to 
college. 

Landmark cars indeed, but not the kind of landmark cars we mean. We 
mean Landmark Cars. Cars representative of not the seminal moments in 
your life but the seminal moments in the lives of cars themselves. 
Cars that set the pace for those that came afterward. Cars whose 
revolutionary strands of DNA we find ten, twenty, even fifty years 
after they originally appeared, in the very cars we lease today. 

To be so presumptuous as to identify these giants of the auto 
century, Esquire turned to the authorities for their definitive 
lists. Author Michael Lamm suggested, among others, the 1932-33 
Graham Blue Streak, the car that kicked off streamlining. Nascar 
legend Richard Petty liked the 1907 Thomas Flyer. Customcar builder 
Boyd Coddington chose the '53 Corvette, America's first mass-market 
sportster. Hot-rod godfather Ed "Big Daddy" Roth picked the 
Volkswagen Beetle as his "all-time fave." And from Freeman Thomas, 
the codesigner of VW's New Beetle,we got the Willys Jeep, the 
original SUV. 

For a scholarly assessment of automobile achievement, we called on 
the opinion of Ken Gross, the executive director of the Petersen 
Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Gross offered a coolheaded 
collection, including the 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air, whose high-revving, 
lightweight V-8 engine made a race car out of a prosaic family sedan, 
the clever but hapless Chrysler Airflow, an inspiration to designers 
but a sales failure, and even the Datsun 240Z. 

But the man whose Landmark Car list struck us as the most correct, 
because it was the most visceral (which, despite gas mileage and side-
impact air bags, is the real reason we love cars), is the man 
responsible for.what Esquire editors consider one of our Landmark 
Cars. Not surprisingly, John De Lorean's 1964 GTO was on his own 
list, too. 

Alex Issigonis created the remarkable transverseengine front-wheel-
drive Austin Mini and with it, the efficient packaging concept that 
is the basis for most of the world's cars today. The surprise is that 
it took so long for the industry to copy the Mini. Although it's only 
as long as a suitcase, it has a tremendous backlog of goodwill on the 
market. It was as fun as a car could be. I used to race Steve McQueen 
in one--he was a magnificent driver--and I think the Mini was his 
favorite, too. 

My Pontiac GTO, while not in the same league as these landmark cars, 
started the muscle-car era. I built the first GTO for my personal 
use, but every time I lent it to someone, they refused to give it 
back. That convinced me that there was a market for a very high-
performance, lowpriced car. There was: The GTO shattered Pontiac'S 
stodgy image, and our annual sales escalated from 400,000 cars to 
900,000. 

I believe great cars are generally the product of the intellect and 
dedication of a single man, and none more so than the Model ?. Henry 
Ford's genius created not only the car for the masses but the 
automotive industry as we know it today. Ford recognized that for the 
auto to be a success, it had to be readily available. So, while 
others were busy raising their prices, Ford lowered his. Using the 
production line to reduce construction costs and to simplify 
manufacturing, the price of the Model T went from $850 to $290. Ford 
cut the price of his product because he wanted people to use it. 
That's pretty amazing. 

I drive an Acura NSX. It's as much fun as any car I've ever owned 
(and a lot more reliable). Mechanically, it's a fantastic piece of 
equipment. Mine has 24,000 miles on it and has never had even a minor 
problem. Some cars I know would have been in service eighteen times 
by now. 

Colin Chapman, perhaps the greatest designer ever, had an amazing 
ability to keep complicated things simple. He was an incredible 
engineer, and his Lotus 25 is the parent of all modern grand-prix 
cars. Most of Chapman's design competitors, like Renault and many of 
the Italians, were sponsored by foreign governments. But here was a 
little guy with a garage in north London who won seven Formula One 
Constructors Trophies in the sixties and seventies, against 
government-supported companies with infinite resources. Chapman did 
it through sneer engineenng: He was very, very bright and had as 
great a competitive instinct as anyone who ever lived. 

Enzo Ferrari built many great cars, but the Ferrari GTO is my 
favorite. Over the years, I've probably owned 150 cars, and the GTO 
is the best one I've ever had. You could do everything in it and use 
it every day of the week. The GTO was a car that could win at the 
track and be driven to the office the next day. It even won at Le 
Mans two or three times-not with me driving, of course: I can't chew 
gum and walk. But it's a car that really goes. 

Rudolf Uhlenhaut's Mercedes 300SL Gullwing coupe is an incredible car 
that can still run with-or even outrun--the best of today. The 
300SL's direct injection--more expensive than carburetion but offenng 
tremendous control--is at long last making it into today's cars. I 
used to own one in the fifties, and I remember driving from Detroit 
to Buffalo on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which was the only good road 
back then, doing 170 miles per hour. The only thing that scared you 
was that the steering was so quick, you could end up turned backward. 

If I were driving cross-country tomorrow, I'd want a Mercedes S600. 
If you forget about price and talk about dedication to quality, 
Mercedes is in a class by itself. With its living-room comfort and 
soundproof double glazing, there isn't another car in the world that 
can compete with its performance. When price is no object, it's the 
sedan to have. 

Andre Citroen's Citroen SM is perhaps the most sophisticated car ever 
built. It had everything you could conceive of: a hydropneumatic 
suspension, hydraulic steering and brakes, and a Maserati engine. It 
was his vision of the ultimate car--high performance incredible 
comfort very quiet--and t came very close C troth a so designed the 
simplest car ever built: the 2CV. He was trying to build a rocking 
chair with an umbrella on it that you could drive The 2CV never 
caught on n the U S -it was too primitive. Its engine couldn't pull 
your grandmother off a porch swing. But Citroen was a great engineer, 
and for him each car was a challenge.

---

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