Concours summary -- from a judge point of view

["Grimsrud, Knut S" <knut.s.grimsrud@xxxx>]

At the Clevelant event (and what event it was!), I once again had the
opportunity to participate in the Millenium Concours judging sponsored by
DMC. All the judges from the St. Louis Millenium Concours participated again
this time, and the benefit of accumulated experience was clearly evident.
All judges focused on a different aspect of the car this time than at the
St. Louis event in order to further increase the knowledgebase and to add
some variety for the judges.

I thought that the carry-over of experience was extremely useful in refining
and improving the judging process. For example, I judged operating controls
this time and through the throughtful suggestions and comments Bill Swilley
provided based on the operating controls judging from St. Louis, we
developed a streamlined coreography to judge operating controls that would
be as efficient as possible. Such improvements will undoubtedly continue to
be made during the course of the next judging events and I expect each DMC
sponsored concours will be even better than the previous ones. In addition
to making improvements to the specific judging areas, changes were also made
to decrease the overall judging time for each car. Although each car still
underwent approximately 2.5 person-hours of judging (DMC has developed
judging standards for the Millenium Concours that are highly detailed), the
time each owner had to spend tending to his/her car was reduced to slightly
over 1 hour by having several aspects of the each car judged simultaneously
(for example, the trunk area and engine compartment were judged
simultaneously, etc). This hopefully made the experience better for the
concours participants.

Once again we had the pleasure of judging some of the finest examples of
DeLoreans around and once again DMC did an outstanding job of keeping
everything organized and keeping the judges well informed of their
responsibilities. All the details were already worked out for us so that all
we had to concentrate on was doing the judging -- everything from judge's
breakfast for pre-judging briefing, to judges shirts, and even refreshments
in the DMC "mother ship" was provided by DMC. Thanks to James for all his
hard work that made the judging such a nice experience.

Several of the cars that participated in the concours had also participated
in the previous concours in St. Louis. I believe that without exception, the
returning cars scored better this time than they did in St. Louis (one would
expect this since deduction areas are identified and can be corrected).
Altough all the cars were very fine examples of excellent condition
DeLoreans, the point-spread between the cars was sufficient for the rankings
to be unambiguous. With the granularity of deductions assessed, I would
estimate that the closest spread between cars was about 7-8 deductions.

I discovered a few common deduction areas in my area of operating controls
that some of you may be interested in if you are preparing to participate in
future competitions (or if you participated in the Cleveland event but have
not gotten the judging sheets back yet).

- I think every car had some deduction for door operation. Unfortunatley, I
believe that this will necessarily be the case since there is a fraction of
a point deductioed for non-original struts and there is also deduction for
doors that don't rise all the way to the top. Since there will be no
original struts that raise the door all the way to the top all the cars end
up with some sort of door operation deduction. However, there were also
several cars that had replacement struts where the doors still did not
operate quite to spec. A properly operating door should rise all the way
against the stops unassistend when opening the door.

- Nearly every car got a small fraction of a point deducted for the concole
clock not being set properly. The judging handbook points this out, but it
is easily overlooked.

- A couple cars got point deductions for A/C that was not charged well and
did therefore not cool well.

- Nearly every car got a small fraction of a point deducted for the license
plate lights. For some reason nearly all of the plastic lenses were very
dirty from the back side. This is probably due to the fact that the lenses
are horizontal and thus dirt/grime will settle on the inside of the lens.
Also, there may be tendency for dust to enter this space during driving.

Overall , the cars were outstanding examples and having gone through the
judging process once again I identified many minor things that I could
readily improve on my DeLoreans. I found the judging to be a rewarding
experience and I would encourage others to consider participating as judges
if they get the chance. And again thanks to DMC and James for making the
judging such a good experience and to Ken and all the others that put on
such an outstanding show.

Knut