RE: [DML] "New Owner Documentation"

["Wright, Ryan (LW)" <Ryan.Wright@xxxx>]

Mike,

I'm not a Delorean owner but soon will be; I've been a member of the Pontiac
Fiero (my first love) mailing list for over 5 years and have owned my Fiero
for 8. In those years I've run across all sorts of people and have gleaned
much information from those experiences. As a result, I can't help but reply
to your post: (I apologize for length)

>> What if a well meaning journalist wanted to write a story 
>> on the car and found the so called "Now you bought a DeLorean...now 
>> what?/Problem page(s)" web site that you want?

So what? There will just be yet another negative opinion about the Delorean.
You know what they say about opinions. :) Personally, I think the
information is valuable enough that a remote (actually, very remote) chance
of staining the car's reputation is something we should live with. The fact
of the matter is, all cars have problems. Deloreans are ~20 years old now
and cars this old need special care. If a journalist and/or the general
public does not understand this, so be it. The D has a special place in our
hearts and that's all that should matter.

Incidentally, the Fiero suffers from some of the same publicity problems:
Most people don't know a thing about them. Those that do often remark, "But
don't those things just randomly catch on fire?" (The first batch of engines
in the '84 Fiero was bad. They'd throw a rod and hot oil would collect in a
heat shield and catch fire. They were recalled, engines replaced, heat
shield redesigned, problem solved, yet many people are convinced that all
Fieros will eventually catch fire for no reason. I've had people get in my
face over it, yelling at me for driving such a "road hazard".) Fieros also
have a reputation of being hard to work on - I do most of the work myself,
since no shops want to touch it, and when they do they screw it up - and are
supposedly prone to all sorts of other problems. They're great little cars,
just like Deloreans, and from my experience there is nothing wrong with a
Fiero that isn't also wrong with any other 15+ year old car. Yet bad
reputations persist. There's really nothing you can do about it. Might as
well use the information, continue to repair/maintain the car, and have fun
with it.

>> He laughed at us, when we said the cars were reliable and fun to 
>> own.

So what? There will always be people who refuse to hear the facts and will
claim we're all idiots for owning a Delorean. You'll run into this
regardless of what you drive. Who really cares what they think? The vast
majority of the population is enamored with Deloreans, and nobody - not a
journalist, not a "how to fix your Delorean" web site, and certainly not
this guy - will ever change that.

>> Not every DeLorean out there is problem prone 
>> and unreliable.

The point of the project is not to make Deloreans look bad, it's to help us
keep them looking good. You'll find a howto/list of problems manual for
almost every unique car on the web. Don't believe me? Go search for Fieros,
Nissan Z cars, RX-7s, Corvettes, Miatas, heck even your run of the mill
Hondas have their own cult following nowdays (though I'm not quite sure
why). These lists of problems serve to keep the cars on the road and help
out owners. They don't give the cars a bad reputation. If 50 people run
across the list and think, "Woah, Deloreans sure have a lot of problems",
who cares? If anything, perhaps it will deter the casual owner (you know the
type, they want a Delorean but don't want to take care of it) from
eventually destroying another D due to lack of maintenance.

>> I've searched the archive for Joy, Love, and Happiness 
>> owning a DeLorean, and the results weren't good.

That's because most people don't come here to brag about their car. They'd
be preaching to the choir. Besides, when the car is running good, we're
(well, not me, yet) out driving it, not sitting on our bums gloating over
it. We come here for answers to our problems. That's what the list is all
about. I suppose you could start a list where the only topic allowed is the
joy, love and happiness of owning a Delorean, but I doubt you'd get many
posts. Not because there is a lack of such feelings, but because I know of
few people who want to sit around and brag all day.

As a newbie - I knew nothing about Deloreans until I joined this list a
couple of weeks ago - it's great having the information to form an objective
opinion about the D before I purchase one. I've run across plenty of web
sites full of praise for the D. I have yet to run across one that was
negative, unless you consider ("I love this car. I've put countless hours of
hard work into it because I love it so much, and here's a list of the
problems I've encountered and how I fixed them") to be negative. I don't. To
me, it shows the strength of the Delorean community, and the love that
owners have for their cars if they are willing to invest so much time and
effort into making them "perfect".

- Ryan Wright, MCP (ryan.wright@xxxx)
- Web Operations Analyst
- Lamb-Weston, Inc.

-----Original Message-----
From: senatorpack@xxxx [mailto:senatorpack@xxxx]
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 10:05 PM
To: dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [DML] "New Owner Documentation" 

DML,

There are many talented members of this group. I have had the 
pleasure to met some of the members. Most of you have a tremendous amount of

energy and devotion to the car. Anyone who is related to the DeLorean, out
of 
ownership or curiosity, is very appreciative and thankful of the resources 
and dedication that they have contributed.

<<< snip >>>

Sincerely,
Mike Pack