RE: [doc] Storage/ selling and leather

[Phil Peters <PhilPeters@xxxx>]

Hi Dan / all

As Chrispy rightly pointed out, there is more than one reason for owning a classic car. If it's for investment purposes, I would consider hanging onto it for a while as prices are healthy and will continue to be (in the UK at least). That's largely thanks to the DOC's efforts to promote the marque and gain a more positive reputation for it. 

I suppose it's important to know what you want your DeLorean for, at the end of the day. Of course, there's always the halfway house of owning it as an investment/show car but still driving it! I know that when the time is right (i.e. in a few years' time), I'd like to use a DeLorean as a daily driver. Not necessarilly my current #4400, maybe another project car. But that's something to deal with in a few years.

As far as the "here and now" of DeLorean ownership goes, I was in Malvern today, visiting a specialist trimmers who deal mainly with aftermarket work for Morgans (i.e. stopping them from leaking!). We were there on other business, but just out of interest I took my DeLorean door pullstraps with me as they are ripped and worn-out and I've been thinking of replacing them for a while, but was reluctant to fork out money for 20+ year-old factory original vinyl straps that are (in my opinion) badly made. BTW, I'm speaking solely out of my experiences with the EARLY pullstraps with the metal rings. The later style of fitting (further back on the door) might be better, I don't know. In actual fact, the guy at the trimmers took one look at my pull straps and said that they were quite poorly made and that the vinyl was not really strong enough for a functional job such as pulling the gullwings down. I explained that the pullstraps were essentially a "hasty fix" for the problem of some people not being able to reach the door handle and I asked if he could perhaps re-make them for me in grey leather, which would be stronger. He said that would be no problem, so we went looking for a decent colour match. So far, there has been a fair bit of difficulty obtaining a decent match for the grey leather so I wasn't that optimistic, but nevertheless, we had a look through the impressive leather stores. To my surprise we were able to pick a couple of colour options "off the roll" that would do, though they were not a 100% match.

He could see I was reluctant to go for something that wasn't quite "spot on" and mentioned that he could achieve spot on tone matches for any leather by colouring it, so we decided to carry on with things when I take down an old leather seat skin so they can match the pullstraps up to to the leather on the seats, which should be great. The only snag with all this is that it would be a non-original part if we talking concourse. But to be honest, if DeLorean had done their troubleshooting properly and identified this problem at the development stages then I'm sure they would have probably incorporated leather pullstraps into the final production version of the car. 

More news on those as and when they're finished, which will probably be early August as I'm going on holiday tomorrow night for two weeks. 
-- 
Phil Peters
VIN #4400 LHJ 58W
DOC #84
Wolverhampton, UK


___________________________________________________ 
In the English and Scottish football leagues, which team has the longest name? 
Find out at postmaster.co.uk

http://www.postmaster.co.uk/cgi-bin/meme/quiz.pl?id=223