[DMCForum] RE: NY Times Magazine article on John Delorean

[Kevin Abato <delorean@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry all:  Didn't realize that the site required a login.   Here is the
text from the site:
 
 
NY Times article text:
 
A car's notorious creator made it famous, but a pop-culture cameo gave it
new life. In October 1982, when the news broke that DeLorean Motor Company
was shutting down its assembly line and that its founder, John DeLorean, had
been arrested and charged with possession of more than 50 pounds of cocaine,
there were 345 DeLorean dealers in the United States. DeLorean had famously
left a high-powered job at General Motors nearly a decade before and set out
to start the first new major American car company since the founding of
Chrysler in 1920. The Times described him then as "a tall, handsome man who
played tennis, rode horses, was good at golf, sculpted, read extensively,
played a jazz saxophone and said he needed only four hours sleep a night."
The car that bore his name had a stainless-steel skin, "gull-wing" doors
that opened by rising up rather than swinging out and was priced at around
$25,000 (or around $50,000 in 2005 dollars). The company's factory, which
was in Northern Ireland, operated for less than two years, and it is
estimated that about 9,000 Delorean DMC-12's were manufactured.

Even before DeLorean was acquitted of the drug charges (sensational
videotaped evidence notwithstanding) in 1984, various observers were trying
to figure out what the ultimate verdict on the DMC-12 might be. The
consensus was not positive. The car had a number of glitches, and its engine
wasn't very powerful. "It just doesn't have enough mystique to become a
collector's car," one former DeLorean dealer was quoted as saying at the
time. An editor of a car collectors' magazine agreed: "It just hasn't
captured the public's imagination." The design, it was suggested, would soon
look dated, if it didn't already. 

In 1985, the movie "Back to the Future" was released. Kevin Abato, who was
13 at the time, saw it. He loved the movie and the silver car that carried
its characters across time. This was, of course, a DeLorean, and it didn't
look dated to him. "I fell in love with it," says Abato, who lives in
Roxbury, N.J. "It was really cool-looking, really wild." Four years ago, he
bought one. He is the car's fourth owner; it has 60,000 miles on it and cost
$14,000. He now helps run the DeLorean Mid-Atlantic club, one of several
regional clubs for those who see, after all, a DeLorean mystique. This
year's spring social, which happened to fall about a month after John
DeLorean died of a stroke at the age of 80, attracted a record turnout for
the Mid-Atlantic Club. An online scrapbook of the event shows pictures of 27
DeLoreans (doors up) at a farm in Chester, N.J. There are also pictures of
two people with DeLorean tattoos. 

The DeLorean Motor Company survives, in a manner of speaking, in the form of
a Texas company that acquired the remaining stock of original parts,
manufactures new parts and offers service and refurbishing work on the cars.
(It also sells a variety of accessories and apparel.) A handful of DeLorean
sales and service specialists are scattered about the country, including
P.J. Grady on Long Island, one of the the original DeLorean dealerships. Rob
Grady, one of the owners, says that it is only rather recently that the
"Back to the Future" movies have had an impact, as guys like Abato have
reached a point in their lives when they can obtain one of the cars. The
Internet, he adds, has made it easier to research the car and locate parts.
Grady also says that the car's aesthetic remains striking. Thus the DeLorean
has a following - "more so now than ever before," he says. 

Classic-car fans are a familiar breed, but the DeLorean following is unusual
in that the car was, really, never a classic. Abato figures that John
DeLorean's Icarus-like personal history is part of what makes the car a
nostalgic "80's icon" today. But there is no question that what breathed a
surprising amount of life into a thoroughly dead car was a pop-culture cameo
that goes on and on, as the "Back to the Future" movies seem to be in
regular rotation on any number of TV channels. Abato says that his DeLorean
attracts attention and the occasional thumbs-up on the road and that among
those most impressed are children who have just seen "Back to the Future"
for the first time and whose imaginations are promptly captured. Perhaps the
lesson here is that while the appreciation of contemporary experts is nice,
it is also fleeting. Reruns, on the other hand, are forever



  _____  

From: Kevin Abato [mailto:delorean@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Sunday, December 25, 2005 11:00 AM
To: 'DMCForum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'; 'dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
Subject: NY Times Magazine article on John Delorean


FYI: NY Times Magazine published an article on John Delorean in their final
Sunday issue of the year.   
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/magazine/25consumed.html
 
 
Kevin Abato
Vin# 16680


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

SPONSORED LINKS

Dmc	Dml	Dmc fz10
Dmc fz1s	Delorean part	Dml forte

---

YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS

•  Visit your group "DMCForum" on the web.
   
•  To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
   DMCForum-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   
•  Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.

---