[DML] Cool Article listed in out Clip Sheet (Ford Intranet Site)

["delorean02378" <delorean02378@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here's a cool article that was listed on our (Ford Intranet) 
yesterday. Very interesting........

Kirk 02378


 
Putting a Car of the Future Back on the Road 
New York Times 03/18/05  
by STeven Kurutz  
c. 2003 New York Times Company 

 

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In the dim half-light of a Long Island garage, a handful of DeLoreans 
stand in darkened corners or suspended on hydraulic lifts, their 
trademark gull-wing doors ajar, their stainless-steel silver shells 
still ultramodern more than two decades after the DeLorean Motor 
Company went bust. Visible through a dusty window in the parking lot 
outside, perhaps 20 more DeLoreans, lined up and identical, sit 
waiting, like some surreal automotive dream.

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, the famous and doomed early-1980's 
sports car created by John Z. DeLorean and featured in the Back to 
the Future movies.

It is estimated that around 9,200 DeLoreans were built in the car's 
three years of production, 1981 through 1983, and that about 7,000 
are left. Of those, a good number have passed through the hands of 
Rob Grady, P. J. Grady's tall, thin, intensely focused owner, who has 
spent the past 20 years as one of the foremost of the world's few 
DeLorean experts. DeLorean owners from Maine to Florida send him 
their cars, and in a small garage that was once part of his family's 
General Motors dealership, Mr. Grady fixes engines, locates obscure 
parts, fabricates what he can't find and restores long-neglected 
DeLoreans so they can turn heads once more.

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 now grown and seeking out the low-sweeping coupe. At the 
same time, the car is approaching its 25th birthday, a benchmark in 
the collector market. 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 Company in Houston, which 
bought the rights to the DeLorean brand and sells restored models. 
The car is coming into its own.

It was long believed that DeLorean parts could not be found, so many 
cars were garaged, but Mr. Espey's firm bought the entire DMC parts 
inventory - everything from body panels to nuts, bolts and washers. 
Mr. 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. This month, the company opened 
a second branch near Tampa, Fla. 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 Mr. Grady became one of the original 
DeLorean dealers. For the sum of $25,000 he received the right to 
sell the line's one and only model, the DMC-12, and a poster of the 
car autographed by Mr. DeLorean, which still decorates his office, 
where Mr. Grady was joined on a recent afternoon by his wife, Debby, 
who handles the phone, and a DeLorean enthusiast named Mike Deluca.

Like many dealers, Mr. Grady signed up based on the reputation of Mr. 
DeLorean, who had been an engineering and marketing star at G.M. - in 
the early 1960's he created the Pontiac GTO, which many consider the 
first muscle car - and left at the height of his career to challenge 
the Big Three automakers. But from the start, his company was 
besieged with problems, starting with too little money to work with 
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, Mr. Grady said.

Topping it off was Mr. DeLorean's very public arrest in 1982 for 
conspiracy to distribute cocaine, still a sore spot with DeLorean 
enthusiasts. (Mr. DeLorean was eventually acquitted; the prevailing 
sentiment among owners is that he was framed.) When the company filed 
for bankruptcy protection that year, Mr. Grady continued to honor his 
customers' service warranties. Over time, 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 a cool, dispassionate one, tempered by years of daily 
involvement. It's a good car, he said simply.

Mr. 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 hydraulic 
lift, draining oil and listening to NPR. Mr. Tomasetti has been 
repairing and restoring DeLoreans at P. J. Grady's for 13 years and 
is accustomed to overenthusiastic 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 Mr. Tomasetti was working on had come in from 
Pennsylvania and was set to have its front fender replaced, among 
other repairs. Another DeLorean, its door crunched like a soda can, 
was in need of extensive body work. Outside, dozens more waited, a 
daunting workload for two men.

I'd like another mechanic, but it's hard keeping them, Mr. 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 take 
specialization to a refined level. 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, nothing else, 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 fancy 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, Mr. Grady 
proceeded to make 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 a soft blanket of dust. The 
passenger window was stuck halfway down, and the seat was given over 
to orphaned parts. Mr. Grady's pupils widened, as if he were laying 
eyes on a DeLorean for the very first time. 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 own DeLorean, Mr. 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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