Re: Delorean in People Magazine (Molds/Body Dies)

[jtrealty@xxxx]

IMHO it will never pay for anyone to create hard dies to reproduce the 
body panels. They could never be payed off against the production run, 
it can only be done in a large expensive press and the amount of 
stainless steel sheet required is immense. I believe that there will 
come a time that another alternative will work. That is the creation 
of a bucking block which is constructed out of wood and can be used to 
produce a limited quantity of parts and also repair them. This is how 
the car was prototyped and is a quick and dirty way to produce small 
quantities of formed sheet metal parts. You take a good part and make 
a wooden form that fits inside it. Then you beat a piece of sheet 
metal over the form and you have a part. Of course it will take a lot 
of smoothing and polishing to get a finished part as opposed to 
pressing it out but it can be done. As body panels get harder to find 
panels that were given up for dead or too expensive to repair start to 
look good. Old beaters will give up their lives to become parts cars 
as prices on the panels go up. Hoarders who have stocked parts will 
start to unload when the prices climb. In short there will be a lot of 
parts for a long time and when the need arises they too can be 
reproduced. The result of the destruction of the dies only means that 
the Delorean will never again be mass produced ( which should 
eventually cause the value of the car to go up?)
David Teitelbaum
vin 10757