Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The DeLorean Legacy: Kat DeLorean on Family, Innovation & the Untold Story Behind an Icon

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The DeLorean Legacy: Kat DeLorean on Family, Innovation & the Untold Story Behind an Icon · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
• 0:04
  all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
• 0:09
  designers, and everything in between.
• 0:11
  Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder
• 0:16
  what's How did they get that job?
• 0:18
  Or become that person?
• 0:19
  The road to success is paved by all of us, because everyone has a story.
• 0:27
  Starting as a book and growing into a movement, tonight's guest seeks to
• 0:32
  accomplish the telling of the untold story of the maverick of General Motors who went
• 0:37
  on not only to inspire the American muscle car revolution, but to create one of the
• 0:41
  most iconic cars of all time, the DMC 12.
• 0:45
  The DMC 12.
• 0:46
  Catherine, known to many of us as just Cat, DeLorean, yes, that DeLorean, started
• 0:52
  the DeLorean Legacy Project to help you learn all about the man himself with
• 0:56
  first hand information that expresses the joys and trials of growing up a DeLorean.
• 1:02
  Cat interviews family and friends as part of the effort.
• 1:05
  She shares stories, photos, and some of her father's more intimate moments
• 1:09
  with his family, demonstrating how much of a loving and devoted father he was.
• 1:14
  And we are honored to have her here with us on Break Fix to give us a truly
• 1:18
  behind the scenes look at DeLorean.
• 1:20
  The man, the myths, and much, much more.
• 1:24
  So welcome to Break Fix, Kat.
• 1:26
  Hello, thank you for having me.
• 1:28
  So, like all good Break Fix stories, we usually ask people about their who, what,
• 1:32
  where, when, and why superhero origin.
• 1:34
  But in your case, I think a lot of people already know about that.
• 1:37
  So why don't we talk about this DeLorean?
• 1:39
  DeLorean legacy project.
• 1:41
  Why don't you take us on a journey?
• 1:42
  Many people think that the DeLorean story started at Pontiac with your
• 1:46
  father, but your grandfather was also in the automotive industry, right?
• 1:50
  That is true.
• 1:51
  Actually, my grandfather, he worked for Ford and he was one of the first union
• 1:56
  leaders, which is pretty impressive back when it was a lot more difficult to do.
• 2:01
  So my father tells some really interesting stories in his book
• 2:05
  about what it was like growing up.
• 2:07
  The child of somebody who was a union leader in that time.
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  One of the things that really touched upon me was the story of the goons that
• 2:14
  would come and threaten the family.
• 2:17
  And they would come and toss your house and look for anything that they could
• 2:20
  find that they could hold against you.
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  And he talked about hiding under the bed and how terrifying that was.
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  And it just goes to show what people had to do to fight for
• 2:29
  these union rights back in the day.
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  So did they look like the 60s Batman goons with the bowler hats and the
• 2:35
  black t shirts that said goon or what?
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  I kind of imagined something similar to that although I was thinking more Gangs
• 2:42
  of New York ish but big cartoonish sized men in the Gangs of New York ish style.
• 2:49
  Yeah.
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  So your dad came by the automotive industry, honestly, then, you know, with
• 2:54
  your grandfather starting off at Ford, and then eventually your dad found his
• 2:57
  way to the story goes Packard, right?
• 3:00
  Correct.
• 3:01
  Yes.
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  He started at Packard and the accomplishments he had at Packard
• 3:05
  are what truly launched his career.
• 3:08
  My husband was going through doing the research for the DeLorean Legacy
• 3:11
  Project, which includes researching his contributions to the automotive industry
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  and his patents and things like that.
• 3:17
  And he was reading about his time at Packard and he stopped and looked at me
• 3:22
  and said, I think your father's was so.
• 3:25
  Responsible for how the modern automatic transmission works.
• 3:30
  And I said, yeah, he told me that story.
• 3:32
  It was because some old lady went off a causeway.
• 3:35
  And that's actually an interesting story.
• 3:37
  I didn't know that it led to the high dramatic transmission, but he did tell
• 3:42
  me the actual story of what led to that.
• 3:44
  There was a woman who's.
• 3:46
  Accelerator got stuck and she went off a causeway.
• 3:49
  He never wanted that to happen again.
• 3:51
  He went and he re engineered what he needed to, to prevent that from happening.
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  My father is responsible for the way the original modern automatic
• 4:00
  transmission, they've, the smart transmissions have been.
• 4:03
  Come pretty far and pretty amazing.
• 4:05
  So let's talk a little bit more about your family legacy.
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  Like a lot of us here in the States, many of us came over either
• 4:13
  pre or post war as immigrants.
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  And there's all sorts of stories about names changing and being
• 4:18
  changed by officials at Ellis Island and things like that.
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  And so I've heard some rumors about the DeLorean name.
• 4:24
  It wasn't actually the way we've all come to see it.
• 4:27
  It changed at some point it was spelled with an eye or it was
• 4:30
  with an E and this and that.
• 4:31
  And then there's Some special things about the space between the D.
• 4:35
  E.
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  and the rest of the Lorian.
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  So why don't we talk about that for a moment?
• 4:38
  Yes.
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  So I actually have learned even more about my family name recently when I posted
• 4:45
  what I knew already about it on Facebook.
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  So what I do know is that the name never had a space.
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  And no capital L.
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  This is for certain.
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  My father added the capital L in the space because he wanted
• 4:58
  the name to sound more exotic.
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  And the space is very significant too, right?
• 5:02
  Because it's not a full character space.
• 5:04
  It's like a half a space.
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  It's got, it's very specific.
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  He wanted it to be DeLorean, so of Lorian.
• 5:12
  I believe that is actually a space.
• 5:14
  Spanish name now, but at the time, at least before the internet, I didn't
• 5:20
  know of anything that was DeLorean.
• 5:22
  It wasn't a real word.
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  It wasn't anything at all.
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  It was my father made it up to sound French.
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  As time went on, I was contacted by family in Hungary and they told
• 5:33
  the story of what happened when our grandfather left Hungary, he.
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  He kind of left all the family behind.
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  They had a hard time tracking him down until my father became famous.
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  And then they were able to actually reunite the whole family.
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  And at the time I was told that it was spelled with an I, I don't remember the
• 5:51
  story very well about how this came to be, but I believed for a very long time.
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  That our name was changed from an I to an E.
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  My cousin recently contacted me and said, No, no, no, I did all the research
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  and I traced back our heritage and it actually has always been an E.
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  Because she remembered when I was told all this or when we found all this out.
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  It was always with an E.
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  The lineage is still very small.
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  If you look up, The number of people in the world with this name, it's incredibly
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  small and most are still in Romania.
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  But the spelling of the name with the space like that, that
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  was my father's invention.
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  And he created that name because he wanted it to be more exotic and fun.
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  It was all about the marketing.
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  So the space in the capital L is a marketing ploy.
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  If you did a 23andme or, you know, one of these antres3.
• 6:40
  coms on the DeLorean genetics, your genetics, where does it trace back to you?
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  Does it originate in Romania?
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  Is it French?
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  Is it Italian?
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  What is it?
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  It's Romanian.
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  It originates in Romania.
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  My grandfather's from Romania and my grandmother was from Hungary, but
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  she's from the part of Hungary that.
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  eventually became part of Romania after the war.
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  Interestingly enough, they're both from Romania, but technically she's Hungarian.
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  And that was important because my father actually spoke Hungarian.
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  But when I say he spoke Hungarian, he knew how to say, can I have whipped
• 7:12
  cream on my hot chocolate, please?
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  That was what he counted as speaking Hungarian.
• 7:18
  Why don't you tell us about the John DeLorean that we don't know?
• 7:22
  Let's talk about growing up Kat DeLorean, John's daughter.
• 7:26
  We've heard things about the jackknife exercises and he had a fascination
• 7:30
  with shoes and all this crazy stuff.
• 7:32
  So what are some other untold stories that you'd like to share?
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  Oh, this one's hard.
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  I talked to Jason about this before we came because I've shared a lot
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  of the stories that I can remember.
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  There's very few stories that I haven't told.
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  There's some that were jogged by reading his book, so those are still
• 7:52
  public, but I wanted to bring a new one.
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  This one's kind of funny.
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  It also, it just kind of encompasses the guy my dad was.
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  I had a birthday party in California.
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  And I was in elementary school.
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  So I was 10 years old and he threw me a birthday party at this
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  pizza place called regular John's.
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  It wasn't quite Chuck E.
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  Cheese, but it was a place where you had pizza parties and he
• 8:18
  hired, I remember a puppeteer.
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  So we at least had entertainment, but he was hoping some of the
• 8:24
  moms would stick around and help him out with an entire class.
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  Cause you had to invite the entire class, which was 25 students, 10 year olds at
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  a pizza restaurant and nobody stayed.
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  It was just my dad and 25, 10 year olds running around, screaming and
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  throwing things and pizza everywhere.
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  But to his credit, he entertained.
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  All of us only lost one.
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  No, he didn't lose any of us.
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  It was one of the best parties that my friends had been to.
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  Imagine being left all by yourself with a bunch of 10 year olds
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  and your whole life as an adult with children, you've had help.
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  And when I say help.
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  Lots of help.
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  Many people you have paid to help you deal with this situation.
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  And he never got upset or frustrated.
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  He just went with it and was laughing and you never would
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  have known how terrified he was.
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  and upset he was about the situation that he made very clear telling the story
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  much later in life because he was just somebody who rolled with the punches.
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  Fast forward to my 16th birthday which was a giant bonfire on
• 9:44
  our property in Bedminster.
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  One of the kids got pulled over on the way to the party, told
• 9:50
  the officer where the party was.
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  A few hours later, an officer shows up at my house, and I go to
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  my father, and I said, Dad, the cops are here, and he said, So?
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  I said, Well, they want to talk to you.
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  He said, Well, kid.
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  You made it to 1.
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  30, I think it's a pretty good party.
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  And he closes the door and he walks up to the field, he looks the officer
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  in the face and he says, What the hell are you doing on my property?
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  Just like that.
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  And the officer looks at him and says, Well, sir, we got a noise complaint.
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  He says, Really?
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  We're in the middle of a field and I own every piece of property within three
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  and a half miles of this very spot.
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  I told all of my tenants what was going to happen.
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  You can't hear the music from your car.
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  Who the hell complained?
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  And the officer just looked at him and he said, I didn't think so.
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  So if you can't tell me who lodged the noise complaint, you're trespassing.
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  And I'd ask you to please get off my property.
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  Now we won't talk about whether or not there was alcohol and teenagers involved
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  in this situation, but the officer did have to vacate the premises because.
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  The local Bedminster police were there monitoring the whole thing.
• 11:04
  That was kind of the guy that he was.
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  He was a little bit on this side of, eh, let's have some fun, you know.
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  And he rolled with the punches, and he just was a good dad.
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  A good dad.
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  Never let you see, uh, Him falter, I guess, and through
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  pretty good birthday parties.
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  So your dad from the outside, all of us see him as this strong striking
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  figure, very assertive, very confident.
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  Was he able to pass that on to you and instill confidence?
• 11:39
  Raising daughters, especially many, many years ago was
• 11:42
  different than it is now, right?
• 11:43
  We treat all kids as equals.
• 11:45
  We want to give them all the possible opportunities, but we
• 11:48
  still want to maybe give a little extra to the girls out there.
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  So.
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  What did your dad instill in you?
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  He never treated me differently because I was a girl, never allowed
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  me to believe that I should be treated differently because I was a girl.
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  He understood how difficult it was going to be in the world that I came from.
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  And the world we still lived in to be able to have a mind like I did
• 12:16
  and be able to define yourself in science and technology and engineering.
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  It's a big deal.
• 12:22
  Women in STEM is a big deal.
• 12:24
  There weren't a whole lot of us and there was a lot of things that I had to face.
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  that weren't so pretty.
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  One of the biggest things that he did was he never allowed me to be
• 12:34
  treated differently or feel different.
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  He didn't even compensate for it.
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  You know, when you're compensating for it and you can tell you're compensating,
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  he literally just treated me the same.
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  He fostered a true, nothing is impossible, Mentality in me, there
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  were no questions that couldn't be answered or obstacles that couldn't be
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  overcome if we just figured out a way.
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  Engineers don't see walls or problems.
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  They see puzzles that need to be solved the biggest thing he did.
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  And so this is key.
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  This is something that I actually believe that I failed in some way to provide to
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  my Children in the way that he did for me.
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  So I've reflected a lot on this exact question.
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  He provided for me opportunities to succeed and to fail and to
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  succeed from those failures.
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  He allowed me opportunities to make mistakes and to see that those mistakes
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  were not life ending, that they led to new knowledge and understanding.
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  He did this by exposing me to as many things as he can, as
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  many opportunities as he could.
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  Jason used to joke at me, you did everything.
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  Like I was making up the fact that I did everything.
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  And then he realized, I was not just saying, I played the flute, and the piano,
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  and the guitar, and the drums, and ice skated, and played basketball, and played
• 14:03
  soccer, and did all of these things, no.
• 14:06
  I did all of these things because he got me voice lessons, and ice skating
• 14:11
  lessons, and horseback riding lessons, and tennis lessons, and Took me as
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  many places as I could go and not everybody has that opportunity to
• 14:20
  pay for all these things that I had.
• 14:22
  But what we do have is the opportunity to give our children a chance to
• 14:26
  succeed and fail on their own merit.
• 14:29
  You can go get them a little keyboard and allow them to learn an
• 14:33
  instrument and to face how difficult it is to learn how to read music.
• 14:38
  To instill the confidence in our women and our men and our non binary people,
• 14:45
  we have to give them opportunities to understand what it feels like, the
• 14:49
  intrinsic motivation that comes with hard work paying off, and the understanding,
• 14:56
  the support that when they fail, you're going to be there to help guide them,
• 15:00
  that they're not going to catch on fire, that the world is not going to end.
• 15:04
  That's what he taught me.
• 15:06
  So your dad dreamed big.
• 15:08
  I mean, the DeLorean, the vehicle was a dream realized in some aspects, but
• 15:13
  for you, what were his aspirations?
• 15:15
  What were his dreams?
• 15:16
  Did he want you to go into the automotive industry or did he have other plans?
• 15:20
  He wanted me to do what made me happy, no matter what it was.
• 15:23
  He taught me that same thing I told my kids.
• 15:26
  If you want to pump gas and that's what makes you happy, I support you.
• 15:30
  I will support you till you can support yourself.
• 15:32
  If you wake up every single day, excited to go pump gas.
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  Why?
• 15:36
  Cause you're going to be successful in life and happy.
• 15:40
  You will wake up every day thinking about how to make your customers
• 15:44
  have a better gas pumping experience.
• 15:46
  So you'll invent a better gas pump or you'll own a bunch of gas stations, but
• 15:50
  it doesn't matter how much money you make, as long as you can live, you'll You're
• 15:54
  going to have a much more fulfilled life if you're happy doing what you want to do.
• 16:01
  He had a lot of things that he wanted for me.
• 16:05
  He really, really, really wanted me to be a famous actress.
• 16:11
  Really badly and he supported that I loved acting.
• 16:16
  I had a lot of fun.
• 16:17
  I wasn't so keen on the fame part of it.
• 16:20
  And so that was when I was like, yeah, you can't do one without the other.
• 16:23
  So we're just going to go ahead and not do that.
• 16:28
  But he was very, very careful to support anything I wanted to do.
• 16:32
  He wanted me to find my own way.
• 16:34
  Unfortunately, he gave me so many experiences and so many opportunities and
• 16:40
  so much background and things I literally could have done almost anything I wanted
• 16:44
  to do and then that became a problem because you can't decide what to do.
• 16:49
  And then I just kind of did what came my way, which was a
• 16:52
  pretty cool job in computers.
• 16:55
  So let's talk a little bit more about the DeLorean Legacy and the
• 16:59
  website that goes along with it.
• 17:00
  So when someone visits the DeLorean Legacy project website for the first
• 17:04
  time, what would they expect to see there?
• 17:06
  Is this a time capsule?
• 17:07
  Is this a memorial?
• 17:09
  Is this an homage?
• 17:10
  What's the experience like?
• 17:11
  It's sort of like a digital museum and an homage is a good statement.
• 17:17
  What I wanted to provide to the community is a place that people
• 17:22
  could find the positive impacts that my father has had on this world.
• 17:27
  And that starts with the high dramatic and no more old ladies going off causeways.
• 17:33
  And it goes all the way through to the DMC 12, which Has this story
• 17:40
  of inspiration, which inspired the Zalorian Legacy Project.
• 17:45
  What you should hope to find are the stories that inspired others, the
• 17:51
  accomplishments that my father has had.
• 17:54
  Throughout his life, we'll have all of his patents, stories collected from
• 17:58
  myself and family members that help show you the man we knew and the things
• 18:04
  that you won't find anywhere else.
• 18:06
  And a place where you can hear the stories of the people whose lives he
• 18:10
  touched and inspired because the owners.
• 18:14
  here.
• 18:14
  The owners are why I started this.
• 18:16
  Their stories about how when they first saw the car or heard his story right
• 18:23
  from Pontiac through the DMC, people's lives have been changed and impacted
• 18:28
  in Drastic and dramatic ways that are incredible from people becoming humans
• 18:35
  who rescue other humans to finance managers to mechanics, art directors,
• 18:40
  you name it, they're inspired by this car and their lives are changed.
• 18:45
  And how amazing is that?
• 18:48
  Decades after he's passed on, he still inspires people's
• 18:52
  lives through what he's done.
• 18:54
  So this is what that is.
• 18:56
  This is to help maintain that inspiration, to share it, to collect it, to give
• 19:02
  it back to the people who kept this legacy alive for so long and give
• 19:06
  them what they've always asked for.
• 19:08
  A place somewhere that people can find the truth, the real story, the positive
• 19:14
  impact, and what this car, his other cars, His whole story, what it means
• 19:19
  to all of the people who have been inspired by him over the years, that's
• 19:23
  a very powerful statement for sure.
• 19:26
  And visiting the website myself and looking at everything that's
• 19:30
  there, turning pages, going, I didn't know that was a thing.
• 19:33
  I didn't know that was the thing.
• 19:33
  That's pretty cool.
• 19:35
  To be honest with you, your dad comes up more often than not, even on this show.
• 19:40
  And it's almost surprising when you go back and listen to the 150 plus
• 19:44
  episodes that are out there, how many times DeLorean comes up in conversation.
• 19:50
  It doesn't matter what you're talking about.
• 19:51
  It's just absolutely amazing.
• 19:52
  So I think what you guys are doing and what you're putting together and
• 19:55
  the pieces that you're collecting, whether it's from the family side,
• 19:58
  whether it's From the fan base from the archives, it's an absolutely mammoth
• 20:03
  undertaking to collect all this stuff.
• 20:05
  But in addition to that, it's something to your point that
• 20:07
  needed to have been done years ago.
• 20:09
  You know, it's funny is that that whole, I didn't know that I can't tell you
• 20:14
  how many times that keeps happening to me during this whole project.
• 20:18
  So for instance, I don't know if you know about.
• 20:21
  Grand Prix of America and Malibu Grand Prix.
• 20:25
  So my childhood was spent at the arcade.
• 20:28
  And Malibu Grand Prix was a huge part of my childhood.
• 20:31
  We were there all the time.
• 20:33
  And I found out they stole that from him.
• 20:36
  That's crazy.
• 20:38
  My father invented, that was his thing.
• 20:41
  Wow.
• 20:42
  Oh my gosh, I found this out because there's a guy whose father owned one of
• 20:47
  the tracks and he's restoring the cars and he's reconnecting with his father's story.
• 20:52
  And he reached out to me and he said, did you know this?
• 20:55
  I went, no, I didn't know this.
• 20:57
  Oh my gosh.
• 20:58
  And it ties to my cousin and my uncle Jack.
• 21:01
  And so I contacted my cousin and she's like, Oh yes, I have all
• 21:05
  that Grand Prix of America stuff.
• 21:06
  So now we're on a whole journey of reconnecting.
• 21:09
  It's incredible.
• 21:10
  Cool.
• 21:10
  20 years after my father died, I get to relive his life in a way
• 21:14
  that you couldn't even imagine.
• 21:16
  It's incredible.
• 21:18
  Some people that aren't as deep into it would probably be shocked
• 21:21
  to realize that your dad didn't stop designing cars after the DMC 12.
• 21:26
  There were several prototypes and concepts and vehicles after that.
• 21:30
  And it's just like, Wow.
• 21:31
  Like, did you know that?
• 21:33
  And those are the kinds of things that you do find on the website
• 21:35
  and lots of internal documentation as well that I found fascinating.
• 21:39
  Interestingly enough, there was a gyroscopic kinetic engine that my
• 21:44
  father and I designed together.
• 21:46
  I had a poor man's patent on it.
• 21:48
  Might still have that somewhere.
• 21:51
  I do believe that it ended up having something to do with a whole mass
• 21:56
  purge when my daughter was born.
• 21:57
  But I do still know my patent attorney, so I am going to get in touch with
• 22:02
  him and find out if he has it.
• 22:04
  He was inventing engines and he had a car company right
• 22:08
  after his court case was over.
• 22:10
  Immediately after his court case was over, he and Fred Dulles had a
• 22:13
  new car company in Louisiana, had a whole factory to actually build cars.
• 22:18
  It was a done deal.
• 22:19
  Something happened, but he was just going and going and going constantly, always
• 22:25
  trying to bring back his car company.
• 22:28
  He believed in what he wanted to do and he didn't want to see it die.
• 22:32
  It wasn't about him.
• 22:34
  It was about doing what was right.
• 22:36
  It was a little about him because he was pissed off that they just wouldn't stop.
• 22:43
  He wrote a book called the GM Repair Manual.
• 22:48
  And it was all about how GM made the mistake of creating Saturn instead
• 22:52
  of investing in their existing line.
• 22:55
  If they had just invested 25 cents more per truck in the cloth interior of their
• 23:01
  work trucks, then the cloth would last the lifetime of the truck and they'd
• 23:04
  have better customer satisfaction.
• 23:06
  I remember I said to him, I said, why not do that?
• 23:09
  He said, 25 cents per truck times millions of trucks is a lot of money.
• 23:12
  Still didn't make sense to me because, I don't know.
• 23:14
  Add the 25 cents to the cost of the truck, but that's not the way it works.
• 23:20
  He was always trying to do something and reinvent himself and come back.
• 23:27
  And he never, never gave up.
• 23:29
  He never stopped dreaming until the very end.
• 23:32
  He was trying to create a golf course.
• 23:34
  I have all the plans.
• 23:35
  We're going to put them up soon for Lamington Estates golf course.
• 23:39
  The whole golf course was planned out.
• 23:41
  He invented soda pop and shoes and maglev trains and a tennis racket.
• 23:46
  Apparently my husband's like, did you know your dad invented a tennis racket?
• 23:49
  No, I didn't know he invented it.
• 23:51
  He invented a tennis racket.
• 23:52
  Apparently a whole new tire manufacturing process.
• 23:55
  All that stuff.
• 23:56
  Who knew, right?
• 23:57
  Who knew?
• 23:58
  You know what you said about His continued work after the fact and even some of that
• 24:03
  consulting back to GM, whether they wanted it or not, it's rather ironic in the
• 24:08
  sense that his first book, which he didn't write, but he dictated and we'll probably
• 24:13
  talk about this on a subsequent episode.
• 24:15
  I've read it on a clear day.
• 24:16
  You can see General Motors.
• 24:18
  I've said this before on a previous episode.
• 24:21
  There are nuggets of knowledge in that book that are still
• 24:25
  valid and very poignant.
• 24:28
  Even today, nearly 45 plus years later, he wrote that in the seventies.
• 24:32
  It was published in the eighties, all that, but it's just an incredible read
• 24:36
  and the insight into his mind and how he saw not only the automotive world,
• 24:40
  but the American business world.
• 24:42
  You sit there and you read it and you go, he's right.
• 24:44
  He's right.
• 24:45
  Nothing's changed in 45 years.
• 24:47
  He's still right.
• 24:50
  So I don't know that, you know, he necessarily wanted to be right.
• 24:53
  You know, a lot of us want to be right.
• 24:54
  We all have that inner need, but he's right up there, at least in my
• 24:58
  opinion, with other visionaries like IACOCA, like Bob Lutz, like other
• 25:04
  people that stood back and said, look, guys, there's another way to do this.
• 25:08
  Just listen to me for a second.
• 25:10
  And sometimes that plays out okay, and other times, you know, we suffer
• 25:14
  silently and come up with alternatives.
• 25:17
  It's very interesting because I haven't actually read all of On a Clear Day yet.
• 25:22
  That's what I'm actually reading now.
• 25:24
  I did just finish up to the Hoffman part of his book for the first time.
• 25:30
  And when I read it, I realized something incredibly profound.
• 25:33
  My career has mirrored his.
• 25:37
  Only in information security, right up to retiring at 44 to go do my own thing.
• 25:43
  It's been incredible to understand that I am my father in so many ways.
• 25:50
  And one of them was.
• 25:52
  I was a hacker at a Fortune 100 financial institution.
• 25:57
  Pretty cool job.
• 25:58
  My whole performance plan had a non management track.
• 26:00
  I had been a manager, I'd been a senior leader, and I had decided
• 26:03
  I no longer wanted to do that.
• 26:05
  And my stepfather had asked me, then, how do you succeed?
• 26:08
  I said, well, I woke up one day and I had four job offers in two days.
• 26:12
  One of them was my dream job.
• 26:14
  I wake up every day, sometimes at 7 30 and decide I'm just going to go
• 26:18
  to work because I'm excited to do it.
• 26:20
  I think I have succeeded because I enjoy what I do.
• 26:24
  And I haven't worked a day since I started my job.
• 26:28
  What happened after that was I was able to define myself in a specific
• 26:33
  way where I said, this is who I am and this is who I'm going to be, take it
• 26:38
  or leave it, because I was so sought after as an employee and what that
• 26:42
  allowed me to do was be the one people got to blame for doing the right thing.
• 26:47
  I found a way to.
• 26:50
  Impact the change that I wanted to see by offering people an essentially
• 26:56
  a sacrificial lamb to blame for not having to do the wrong thing to still
• 27:03
  behave in the way that things were always done, or to just be able to
• 27:08
  kind of get around some of these things that were always done a certain way.
• 27:12
  There's a new way to do it.
• 27:14
  Cat says so.
• 27:16
  And it made me very excited to read on a clear day for the very reasons
• 27:20
  that you were just describing it going, Oh my gosh, I can't wait.
• 27:22
  I can't wait.
• 27:23
  I can't wait because I really do want to get into his mind after
• 27:27
  working, especially in the banking industry and seeing a highly
• 27:30
  regulated corporate environment.
• 27:32
  And there are reasons why it functions that way.
• 27:35
  I believe that part of what was missing from his perspective.
• 27:39
  On business and how it functions in the way that he saw was so incorrect is
• 27:44
  the change management risk management process that exists that has to exist in
• 27:50
  order to prevent catastrophic failure.
• 27:53
  Now there are better ways to go about addressing it.
• 27:57
  A lot of his ideas.
• 27:59
  Encompassed what would have brought us to the next level of corporate reform.
• 28:03
  And a lot of things that would have led to what is now in technology, like the
• 28:07
  ITIL processes, the things that allow us to function in a more dynamic way
• 28:12
  in corporate environments, in reality, a lot of his problems with what was
• 28:16
  going on in corporate America, aside from the politicking, Jason calls it.
• 28:21
  Tiny peepee syndrome.
• 28:23
  Is it for everybody though?
• 28:28
  Like it's just you feel smaller than everybody else and then you
• 28:33
  aren't willing to give up whatever piece of your control that you have.
• 28:37
  He wanted that to stop.
• 28:39
  Where he failed in his approach is You're not going to get it to stop.
• 28:43
  You need to stop trying to get it to stop and understand how to
• 28:46
  function within it's malfeasance.
• 28:49
  It's malfunctioning.
• 28:50
  A lot of growing up John DeLorean's daughter was being able to understand it.
• 28:55
  He was able to impart on me, even though he was taken from me when
• 28:59
  I was just starting my career.
• 29:01
  So I was in my early twenties, mid twenties, late twenties, sorry.
• 29:05
  The whole birthday thing.
• 29:06
  That's a funny story.
• 29:07
  Asked me some time about how I didn't know how old I was when I married my husband.
• 29:11
  That's a good one.
• 29:12
  Um, yeah.
• 29:14
  Anyway, I was in my 20s when my dad died.
• 29:16
  You aren't really an adult and have formed your whole adult life yet.
• 29:20
  But I was able to learn from him.
• 29:22
  He still allowed me to take what he had, his knowledge, and build upon it.
• 29:27
  And I still was able to take it to the next level.
• 29:30
  And he did that because later in life, he understood that he wasn't
• 29:35
  going to beat them at the game.
• 29:37
  And he taught me to let it go.
• 29:39
  He taught me to understand what I call knowing your animal.
• 29:42
  In the corporate environment, in the business world, you're always going
• 29:45
  to come across somebody who's going to upset you for whatever reason.
• 29:48
  They're going to be lazy, unreliable, angry, mean, all whatever.
• 29:53
  The thing is, is you can't control that.
• 29:55
  You can't control that they're lazy or mean or uh, whatever.
• 29:58
  You can't control how it impacts you.
• 30:01
  As long as you know that maybe they're not lazy, they're just unreliable
• 30:05
  to you and you don't know why.
• 30:07
  Maybe they have like 18 kids at home and a sick mom and all this other
• 30:11
  stuff going on that you have no insight into and you just are angry
• 30:16
  at them because they can't dedicate enough their entire life to sitting
• 30:19
  in front of a computer like you can.
• 30:20
  I learned to let it go and to look at what they were saying as
• 30:25
  to why they can't meet my needs.
• 30:27
  How can I get you to still meet my needs and not fight you anymore?
• 30:31
  That's what I learned from my dad and his approach and how I was able to take
• 30:35
  it to the next level and where I see his fallacies in his approach were.
• 30:39
  But I believe he saw that too.
• 30:41
  And he taught me.
• 30:42
  To look at it differently than he did.
• 30:44
  Very grateful to him for that.
• 30:46
  One of the best parts about growing up as his kid.
• 30:49
  Well, our audience probably needs to take a deep breath after all this, right?
• 30:53
  So why don't we lighten the mood a little bit with some
• 30:59
  break, fix, pit stop questions.
• 31:02
  So of all the cars your dad created, which is your personal favorite?
• 31:06
  This could be going back to the Packard days, his time at Pontiac, the DMC 12,
• 31:10
  everything before, after, and during.
• 31:12
  Or is there something else that we don't know about that you really, really liked?
• 31:16
  My car.
• 31:17
  Oh, that's a Firebird WS6 from the look of it.
• 31:20
  Yes.
• 31:20
  1998 WS6.
• 31:23
  My car.
• 31:23
  I fell in love with this car when I saw it in a magazine.
• 31:27
  I saw the ad.
• 31:27
  It said to a bug, it's a 350 horsepower blender.
• 31:31
  I lived in New York city.
• 31:32
  I couldn't get one.
• 31:33
  He called an old Pontiac dealer of his to actually have one procured for me
• 31:38
  in black because that's what I wanted.
• 31:40
  I couldn't get a manual, but I did get black when I brought
• 31:43
  it home, he walked around it.
• 31:45
  And gave it a look that only now I can appreciate as a father of this car.
• 31:50
  He sat in it and the driver's seat looked at me and he said, I
• 31:53
  named this car, did you know that?
• 31:55
  He was so proud of this car.
• 31:57
  It was so beautiful to him.
• 31:59
  He said they did a really good job with it.
• 32:01
  That's my favorite.
• 32:02
  Next, 66 TriPower GTO.
• 32:05
  So you brought up something interesting because it's a thing in the enthusiast
• 32:09
  community to name one's car.
• 32:11
  It's very prevalent in the Volkswagen community that all Volkswagens have names.
• 32:16
  So I'm wondering, did your dad's first DeLorean, it bears his name,
• 32:22
  your family name, but did he have a name for the first DeLorean?
• 32:26
  Hmm, I wonder.
• 32:28
  I never asked my father what the names of his cars were, but every
• 32:31
  vehicle I have has always had a name, and I want to say that's because
• 32:37
  he taught me to name my vehicle.
• 32:39
  I will have to ask if anybody knows.
• 32:42
  I recently got back in touch with the caretaker of our
• 32:45
  farm growing up for 15 years.
• 32:46
  His son was my best friend.
• 32:48
  He took care of my father's DeLoreans.
• 32:50
  I posted the picture on Facebook so I can ask him, did dad have a name for his cars?
• 32:56
  So that brings me to another all time favorite Pit Stop question, which is,
• 33:00
  What's the sexiest car of all time?
• 33:02
  The concept Mako Shark Corvette.
• 33:05
  Oh, that's a really good answer.
• 33:06
  You're the first person to bring that car up.
• 33:09
  I actually got to see the actual concept car once.
• 33:12
  My first car was a Morgan.
• 33:14
  My next car was a Mercedes, but the first car I picked out that was mine was a Z28.
• 33:18
  And there was only one guy who was allowed to work on it at the
• 33:21
  Corvette Connection in Van Nuys.
• 33:22
  And one day, I was like, He called us up and he said he had the concept
• 33:27
  car to be worked on at the shop.
• 33:29
  And we got to go down and actually see it.
• 33:31
  And it is just as gorgeous as all of the pictures.
• 33:36
  That is why my Z06 is my favorite.
• 33:39
  That body style.
• 33:41
  Actually looks a lot like the Mako Shark and I have it in the gray.
• 33:45
  Which generation Z06?
• 33:46
  C5?
• 33:48
  C6?
• 33:48
  C7.
• 33:49
  So now I gotta ask you the opposite of that question, which is, What's
• 33:53
  the ugliest car of all time?
• 33:55
  The Dale.
• 33:56
  Oh, wow!
• 33:57
  You're two for two tonight.
• 33:59
  Well, it's not even a real car.
• 34:01
  So we can probably have a whole episode on what your dad thought
• 34:05
  about the Dale if he met Elizabeth Carmichael, like all that fun stuff.
• 34:09
  I do have another question though, because oddly enough, a Pontiac
• 34:11
  product does come to the rescue of this question every time we ask it
• 34:16
  as an answer and that's the Aztec.
• 34:18
  So I'm wondering, what did your dad think about the Aztec as a Pontiac man?
• 34:23
  I love the Aztec.
• 34:24
  Oh my God.
• 34:26
  I love the Pontiac.
• 34:28
  I wanted one so badly.
• 34:31
  I can't tell you what he really thought of it because I really liked that stupid car!
• 34:35
  It was the most ridiculous, terrible SUV, and I loved it so much because of
• 34:42
  the stupid camper that came with it.
• 34:45
  And I love camping, and that marketing campaign got me, and
• 34:49
  he Totally called me out on it.
• 34:53
  It was not a great car, and he was somewhat vocal on the fact that it was
• 35:00
  not a great car because I did not get one.
• 35:03
  Which means he very much convinced me not to get one, and I wanted one very badly.
• 35:10
  Unless there was a very good reason to not own it that was safety or
• 35:14
  reliability or something related, he would not convince me not to do
• 35:19
  something just because he didn't like it.
• 35:22
  He had to have a good enough reason.
• 35:24
  It could have been poorly engineered, but still then he'll
• 35:26
  just say it's poorly engineered.
• 35:28
  And leave it at that.
• 35:29
  He was very careful not to try and make us into the people he wanted us to be.
• 35:34
  He wanted us to be individuals.
• 35:36
  If you visit the DeLorean Legacy website, there's lots of
• 35:39
  really cool stories on there.
• 35:40
  You had a vlog for a while telling some really intimate
• 35:42
  backstory, some funny ones too.
• 35:44
  And it reminds me of the story of the banana yellow NSX.
• 35:48
  That your dad had and being pulled over and fleeing the cops by pulling in the
• 35:52
  garage and all this kind of fun stuff.
• 35:53
  And it made me wonder, your dad was in the car world.
• 35:57
  He was the godfather of the muscle car, you know, with the
• 35:59
  introduction of the GTO and all that.
• 36:01
  And even the DeLorean, the DHC 12 itself is a sports car.
• 36:05
  My question is, did your dad do any racing, or was he in the
• 36:08
  motorsports world in any way?
• 36:09
  I actually had to ask Jason this question, because I assumed my dad
• 36:14
  raced around with us on motorcycles and in his cars and all this stuff.
• 36:19
  But it was something that I actually wondered not too long
• 36:22
  ago, and he's been doing racing.
• 36:24
  A lot of the background research, well, I talk to people because if I'm doing
• 36:29
  the research, I can't talk to everybody.
• 36:32
  And yes, he did.
• 36:33
  He was very close to Smokey Unic.
• 36:36
  I'm sure he raced around with him quite a bit, but he raced with Roger Penske.
• 36:40
  He did cart racing.
• 36:42
  He started the Grand Prix of America.
• 36:44
  That whole thing was his whole deal.
• 36:45
  I don't think that he was necessarily a race car driver himself.
• 36:50
  However, I bet Roger Penske would know.
• 36:54
  He raced around in lots of different things.
• 36:57
  Whether or not he participated officially in racing, not so sure.
• 37:02
  I think the other question people would like to know, especially in the DeLorean
• 37:06
  enthusiast world, you know, they always start their emails or sign their emails.
• 37:11
  Hello from, or signing off from VIN number one, two, three, four, or whatever it is.
• 37:16
  Do you own a DMC 12 and what's the VIN?
• 37:19
  I.
• 37:20
  Don't, but I am going to build my own first DeLorean.
• 37:25
  So I was going to have a DMC 12, Don Steger was going to build me an LS DMC.
• 37:33
  Unfortunately he passed away before I made that a reality.
• 37:36
  Now there's a few different ways that I might just come about my own DeLorean.
• 37:45
  My first one, however, is.
• 37:48
  Very likely going to be a JZD.
• 37:50
  Oh, so let's expand upon that.
• 37:52
  Why don't you tell us a little bit more about it?
• 37:54
  So the model JZD came to me because of the DeLorean Legacy Project.
• 37:59
  Angel Guerra contacted me and he told me, Hey, I designed this
• 38:05
  car as a tribute to your father.
• 38:07
  It's a 40th anniversary version.
• 38:11
  of the original DMC 12.
• 38:13
  He took Giugiaro's original designs and documentation, and he applied
• 38:20
  modern day design principles to it.
• 38:22
  So he took the exact designs and said, If he were to design this
• 38:27
  car today, what would it look like?
• 38:29
  And then he had to change some things to accommodate the intakes for the
• 38:33
  electric engine and that sort of stuff.
• 38:35
  So there are some things that were changed because it was a
• 38:37
  different type of engine in the car.
• 38:39
  Overall, the car that you see that was designed, the model
• 38:43
  JZD is intended to be an exact.
• 38:47
  Modern version of what the car would have been if she had designed it today.
• 38:52
  It came to be, I was going to be writing this book.
• 38:56
  I was trying to figure out how to reconnect with all the fans
• 38:59
  and gathered their stories.
• 39:00
  Angel came to me with this car and then said, by the way, I have
• 39:03
  this website, glory and legacy.
• 39:06
  com at the time I was trying to register the Lori and legacy.
• 39:10
  com got pretty upset because it was gone.
• 39:13
  It was parked, there was nothing on it, and I was told it was
• 39:16
  probably purchased to prevent it from being used by anybody else.
• 39:20
  So as I'm being upset about this, Angel says, Oh, I have this website
• 39:24
  and I wanted to create a place where people could write letters to your dad
• 39:27
  and tell him what he meant to them.
• 39:29
  I said, Are you kidding me?
• 39:31
  Because that's kind of what I'm trying to do.
• 39:33
  Let's do this thing together!
• 39:36
  And he gave me the website, which Alan Portillo had designed the original one,
• 39:40
  and the renderings that were on the car.
• 39:42
  And as we started to just connect with people and go through all of this,
• 39:48
  everybody said, Let's build the car.
• 39:50
  I said, well, you know, I'm working on this engineering program and
• 39:53
  maybe we can build the car to promote this engineering program.
• 39:57
  What if we built the car?
• 39:59
  Maybe we do a show where we record us building the car
• 40:02
  for the engineering program.
• 40:03
  And all of a sudden, people started to come from all over.
• 40:08
  I have people in the automotive industry that, I love your dad, I have
• 40:13
  a manufacturing plant, let's go ahead and let's make it, I know how to make
• 40:18
  body dyes, let's do it, I worked for your father and went on Tony V, he had
• 40:23
  a manufacturing at Chrysler, he wants to work with us, we're gonna contact
• 40:27
  the original prototype house and work to build it there, and then I have
• 40:32
  Bill Collins, We Sending me people to work on the engines and the rest of
• 40:36
  it is being built with the help and the energy and the ideas of the fans,
• 40:41
  because all of this is because of all of you and is happening with all of you.
• 40:48
  And I sort of am letting that be the driver of it.
• 40:51
  The car is being built to fund the engineering program.
• 40:55
  What is core to what needs to be done is that it must be something
• 40:59
  that helps to Change the world in a positive way and keep the momentum
• 41:03
  of the DeLorean Legacy Project to provide these opportunities to people.
• 41:09
  The engineering program is going to allow high school students to be a part of the
• 41:12
  car manufacturing and engineering process.
• 41:15
  It's going to make kids excited about making cars, and it's going
• 41:18
  to bring some of my father's ideals and principles to life.
• 41:20
  To the automotive industry and help fund the research that allows
• 41:25
  everybody to make cars that are more reliable, fuel efficient, safer and
• 41:29
  more durable and the things that were important to him and because I want
• 41:33
  it to be a nonprofit car company.
• 41:35
  It's kind of happening in a way I never anticipated.
• 41:39
  Everybody, everybody wants to be a part of it.
• 41:42
  The JZD is this iconic representation of the inspiration
• 41:48
  that my father is to the world.
• 41:50
  And I'm going to use it to make my dream happen, which is to change
• 41:54
  the world one person at a time through mentorship and opportunity.
• 41:57
  What you just described with the STEM program in the high schoolers,
• 42:00
  that's part of the John Z.
• 42:01
  DeLorean Automotive Engineering Program.
• 42:04
  And that backs into the John Z.
• 42:06
  DeLorean Foundation as well, the nonprofit organization that you were mentioning.
• 42:10
  What other components are inside of that and who are some of the
• 42:15
  beneficiaries of the nonprofit?
• 42:17
  We have a cool little mission statement.
• 42:19
  The DeLorean Legacy Foundation understands that everyone has a dream, but not
• 42:23
  everyone has the tools to achieve it.
• 42:26
  The goal of the foundation is to bridge the barriers to equal opportunity and
• 42:30
  access to fulfilling careers across multiple employment sectors through
• 42:33
  innovative and thoughtful approaches to education and community support.
• 42:38
  The idea is we're starting with a teen center and this
• 42:42
  automotive engineering program.
• 42:43
  It's going to encompass all of STEM.
• 42:46
  It's starting with automotive engineering because that's what's available to us.
• 42:50
  That was what was inspired by my daughter's boyfriend who had to choose
• 42:53
  between auto shop and engineering in the two vocational schools.
• 42:57
  We hope to build this out.
• 42:59
  We want to bring opportunity to communities that will allow people
• 43:04
  to have those dream careers.
• 43:07
  Be successful because they're passionate about what they're doing.
• 43:11
  Not every school district and not every system has the ability and the
• 43:16
  freedom to design these programs or the ability to partner with corporations.
• 43:20
  We would love to partner with corporations.
• 43:23
  Major automotive brands who want to allow us to help fund their
• 43:27
  research and development through these high school programs.
• 43:30
  I've worked with these STEM kids when I was at my financial institution in
• 43:36
  these award programs that we sponsored.
• 43:39
  These students, they were 16 years old.
• 43:41
  One was winning the National Intel science competition.
• 43:44
  Another was synthesizing a new protein at Cornell university.
• 43:47
  And another was graduating high school, owned her own app company and was making
• 43:53
  prosthesis for other people at 16.
• 43:56
  These kids can help design better cars and cut the cost of research and development
• 44:01
  for the major manufacturers, as well as lead to rewarding careers in these fields.
• 44:07
  We want to help provide these opportunities, preserve land that can
• 44:12
  be used to study, to create scientific nature preserve study, climate science,
• 44:18
  whatever we need to do to innovate in this world that we're in now, that
• 44:23
  we can leverage this wonderful name.
• 44:26
  That my father gave me this incredible community, all of this inspiration to help
• 44:31
  people right now at a time when couldn't we all just use just a little bit more
• 44:36
  of it like us, your East Coast base.
• 44:38
  So where is the foundation going to be headquartered out of?
• 44:41
  I want to say Greenville, New Hampshire, because that's where our mill is.
• 44:45
  But I stopped because I currently live in Antrim, New Hampshire,
• 44:50
  and that was not a mistake.
• 44:52
  Antrim, I learned, when buying this house, a Googling the sign on the barn
• 44:57
  is where the car was built in Ireland.
• 45:00
  The Irish Times says the first 10 cars rolled off the line in County Antrim.
• 45:04
  So I'm kind of thinking, maybe It should be here.
• 45:10
  However, for now, it's in Greenville.
• 45:13
  Anyway you slice it, it's in New Hampshire.
• 45:17
  Which is pretty cool because not only do you not see a lot of car companies
• 45:21
  east of Detroit, you definitely don't see them in New England.
• 45:23
  So that's pretty neat as well.
• 45:25
  Well, that's the foundation.
• 45:26
  There is a whole DeLorean back in Detroit.
• 45:29
  Aspect to this that we haven't even got to that's a whole thing.
• 45:33
  Jason's working on.
• 45:34
  There's a whole pitch for DeLorean's back in the Motor City, which is so cool.
• 45:40
  I hear the old Packard factory is still empty So you never know right?
• 45:44
  So Tony V was an apprentice at the prototype house.
• 45:48
  And the program we want to build will help high school students actually enter
• 45:52
  into these apprenticeship programs.
• 45:53
  We want to have a sponsorship for them.
• 45:56
  So the first year of entering into the apprenticeship program, we want to offer
• 46:00
  them a sponsorship for cost of living.
• 46:02
  So they have all of their basic needs met as well as provide
• 46:06
  them the support that they need.
• 46:07
  I call it a 1 800 adult so that they have somebody that they can reach
• 46:12
  out to, to ask for All of the silly questions about figuring out life.
• 46:17
  We want to give people the best opportunity for success in life overall.
• 46:22
  So, I mean, all of this is absolutely, it's unreal.
• 46:25
  It's super cool.
• 46:26
  I mean, I can't believe another car is coming to light, you know,
• 46:30
  everything you're putting together.
• 46:31
  We get really excited about STEM programs here, especially more women
• 46:35
  in the automotive industry or in science and engineering, especially.
• 46:38
  especially in the past.
• 46:40
  We've talked with other people that are doing lunar racing as part of STEM
• 46:43
  and bringing kids into that another facet of this world of engineering.
• 46:47
  Like we've talked about before it's even more than STEM.
• 46:49
  It's what somebody else referred to as steam.
• 46:52
  There's a silent a in there and that's the artistic side.
• 46:55
  And I want to take that.
• 46:56
  is back to the beginning of this part of the segment where we were
• 46:59
  talking about the concept car.
• 47:01
  Are you building that exact car or a car based on that car?
• 47:06
  No, we're actually going to be building angels.
• 47:09
  So angel is going to engineer the car.
• 47:12
  For whatever we build the car for, what I mean by that is, as I mentioned
• 47:17
  before, the car is a modern design based on Jijaro's original designs, and it
• 47:22
  was modified for the electric engine.
• 47:24
  We might not be doing an electric engine.
• 47:26
  We're actually exploring different options as far as different combustion,
• 47:29
  hydrogen, and electric options.
• 47:31
  So the car may be re engineered as.
• 47:34
  Far as adjusting the intakes and what needs to be adjusted for
• 47:38
  aerodynamics based on the type of drive train that we have in the car.
• 47:42
  However, the car was designed by Angel as a tribute to my father.
• 47:48
  Changing it would not be correct.
• 47:51
  That's his car.
• 47:52
  This project, this is all driven by the fans.
• 47:55
  It's for the fans.
• 47:55
  I'm just here to be Spartacus.
• 47:59
  That being said, as a fan myself, of all the designs I've seen,
• 48:04
  Angel's design is true to form.
• 48:06
  Exactly what you're saying.
• 48:07
  When I saw that first hit, and there's other variants out there that
• 48:11
  exist, and some that are more recent than others, it's When I see that
• 48:15
  car, I go, that's the new DeLorean.
• 48:17
  And there's just something about it.
• 48:19
  It does scream Giugiaro as well.
• 48:21
  And I do want to explore the relationship between your dad and Giugiaro in a
• 48:26
  subsequent episode, because there's a lot of mystery around that as well.
• 48:29
  How did that happen?
• 48:30
  Your dad's a car designer, you know, those kinds of things, but
• 48:33
  we'll put a pin in that for now.
• 48:34
  But it brings us to your point about doing this for the fans, doing this for
• 48:39
  the enthusiasts, bringing back the name, bringing back a car that pays homage to
• 48:44
  use the word from earlier to your father.
• 48:46
  It really has to do with the future of the DeLorean name.
• 48:49
  What's part of the DeLorean lifestyle?
• 48:52
  What's the message there?
• 48:53
  And what are some of the awesome items that every DeLorean fan should
• 48:58
  probably have in your opinion?
• 49:01
  So to me, the DeLorean lifestyle is To be who you are and be loud
• 49:08
  and proud about who you are.
• 49:09
  My dad was the maverick at GM.
• 49:12
  He wore jeans and converse in his big corporate office because
• 49:17
  he wanted to be comfortable because that's how he worked best.
• 49:20
  He was unapologetic for who he was.
• 49:23
  Being a DeLorean means as long as you're doing the right thing,
• 49:27
  don't apologize for who you are.
• 49:29
  Be who you are.
• 49:30
  Be proud.
• 49:31
  Be kind.
• 49:32
  Thoughtful and considerate of others.
• 49:36
  My father didn't judge other people.
• 49:39
  He didn't look at anybody as flawed.
• 49:42
  He looked at everybody as simply needing just a little bit more help
• 49:46
  with different help or more support.
• 49:48
  Some people might need more tools.
• 49:50
  They might need more money.
• 49:51
  They might need more time, but they can still do it to write them off
• 49:55
  because they can't do it as fast or as cheaply without support is unfair.
• 50:01
  You should allow people to follow their passions because they can innovate.
• 50:05
  It's about believing that the people that you employ for the
• 50:09
  job that you employ them for are the ones that are the experts.
• 50:13
  In that field, trust in your team, trust in the people that you hire.
• 50:19
  It's about inspiring others and always taking the time to
• 50:25
  say hello and have compassion.
• 50:28
  And just listen.
• 50:29
  People say my dad encompasses this rock star life.
• 50:34
  That dude never left his couch.
• 50:37
  He was a shut in.
• 50:39
  But if you knocked on his door, like Ken Baker did once and said, Mr.
• 50:44
  DeLorean, I got your pizza.
• 50:46
  He'll invite you in, eat it with him because he likes the company.
• 50:50
  It's about random acts of kindness, just because you can't.
• 50:54
  That's what it's about.
• 50:55
  Many of us love to sport all sorts of logoed kit.
• 50:59
  Even myself on this episode, I've got my DMC t shirt on.
• 51:02
  I'm wearing my DeLorean watch by Charlie Foxtrot, which
• 51:07
  I've raved about in the past.
• 51:08
  It's a gorgeous watch, by the way, reminiscent of the louvers
• 51:11
  on the back of the DMC 12.
• 51:12
  And behind you, I believe, rumored, that picture is actually from
• 51:17
  your dad's office of the DMC 12.
• 51:20
  So what should every DeLorean owner or DeLorean fan put on
• 51:25
  their Christmas list this year?
• 51:26
  They should put what they want.
• 51:28
  Okay.
• 51:28
  So that's not a fair question.
• 51:31
  That's not the way that I work.
• 51:33
  I work the way my father does.
• 51:35
  And I'm going to tell you that you should support the person that you most want to.
• 51:42
  For me, I love Nick Patello and his wares.
• 51:45
  They were great to me.
• 51:46
  He gave me my wonderful sweatshirt that I'm not wearing.
• 51:48
  That says DeLorean daughter.
• 51:50
  But I don't want to tell people what they should or should not have.
• 51:55
  I love how everybody gets really picky about the options in their
• 51:59
  car like they had a choice.
• 52:01
  I mean, everybody has their own thing that they love.
• 52:06
  What you should put on your Christmas list.
• 52:08
  This year is one thing that reminds you the most of the time you first
• 52:14
  saw the car and why it inspired you.
• 52:17
  That's what you should put on your Christmas list this year.
• 52:20
  And for each person, it's going to be different.
• 52:22
  And then send that to you at DeLorean legacy.
• 52:24
  org so you can get it up on the website, right?
• 52:27
  Yes.
• 52:28
  Yes.
• 52:28
  And then send a picture and your story for a lot of people.
• 52:32
  Seeing the car the first time was due to the Back to the Future franchise.
• 52:37
  So in our final Pit Stop question for this episode, what were your thoughts
• 52:41
  about seeing the DeLorean DMC 12 up on the big screen for the first time?
• 52:46
  When that movie came out, everything was still very not good.
• 52:52
  We never really talked about the car.
• 52:54
  We never really talked about what happened with the car.
• 52:56
  We didn't bring it up.
• 52:58
  Just kind of like a.
• 52:59
  thing we didn't talk about.
• 53:02
  Oh, it came up later in life.
• 53:04
  As I got older and I turned into a teenager, we talked
• 53:08
  about it more in different ways.
• 53:10
  Mostly what we talked about was how he felt about his workers in Ireland
• 53:15
  and how he felt about Ireland.
• 53:16
  He offered that up.
• 53:17
  a lot.
• 53:18
  It just never came up.
• 53:20
  So there wasn't really an opportunity for a relationship
• 53:24
  with the car and merchandise.
• 53:26
  And not even that it's part of the legacy it gave.
• 53:31
  Yeah.
• 53:31
  It turned a lot of things around for the DMC 12.
• 53:35
  And so I wonder, has anybody from Hollywood reached out to you as part
• 53:38
  of this project or anything like that?
• 53:40
  Are you working with them on anything?
• 53:42
  No, we have plans to get in touch with some of the people that I've spoken to
• 53:45
  and worked with over the years through the jewelry community, like Bob Gale.
• 53:49
  I love the Back to the Future franchise itself.
• 53:52
  Not so much the movies as the franchise itself, which is weird, realize that?
• 53:56
  Because I'm one of the few people who's not a super fan.
• 54:00
  I don't dislike them, I'm just not as much of I suppose I'm judging my
• 54:04
  fandom of the movies, my like of the movies, by the people I'm surrounded
• 54:07
  with in this community, which is probably Making me feel like I'm not
• 54:11
  a fan when really I do like the movie.
• 54:14
  It's a big deal because it did what it did for the cars for me, how I feel about
• 54:20
  back to the future and the DeLorean.
• 54:22
  And first of all, I would like to publicly say, please stop fighting over
• 54:28
  the time machine versus no time machine.
• 54:30
  My father wanted people to enjoy their cars.
• 54:32
  That's their car.
• 54:34
  I know that there might not be a whole lot of originals
• 54:36
  left and yes, that's very sad.
• 54:38
  I love cars, but he wants people to love their cars and if that's what they want
• 54:42
  to do to love their cars, please let them love their cars, but at the very
• 54:45
  least stop fighting with each other.
• 54:46
  We love each other.
• 54:47
  Thank you.
• 54:48
  But this movie helped bring this inspiration to so many more people.
• 54:53
  So to me, I love the fact that it gets to inspire so many more lives this way.
• 55:00
  That's what it means to me.
• 55:02
  On top of that, It's not a crappy movie.
• 55:05
  It's a great movie.
• 55:06
  It's a great story.
• 55:08
  My husband, when he met my father, asked him how he invented the flux capacitor.
• 55:12
  My father tells him he fell off the toilet, goes right into the story.
• 55:16
  It's iconic in and of itself.
• 55:18
  What a great way to remember the car, to make it iconic.
• 55:22
  It's just a perfect marriage of the two, but the fact that they wanted
• 55:27
  to put a Mustang in the movie.
• 55:29
  And it was Bob Gale who said it, right?
• 55:32
  Doc Brown doesn't drive an effing Mustang.
• 55:35
  They made that into a t shirt that day.
• 55:37
  It was said, I have it, I wear it, I love it, because Doc
• 55:42
  Brown, I won't drive a Mustang.
• 55:44
  I love Ford people, but I will never date a man who drives a Mustang.
• 55:48
  Sorry!
• 55:49
  I am an f body girl.
• 55:52
  I was gonna say you're a GM gal through and through.
• 55:55
  I drive f bodies, so I hate Mustangs.
• 55:59
  My proxy is just the way it works.
• 56:03
  Sorry.
• 56:05
  What I love about what Back to the Future has done for the DeLorean, and my husband
• 56:09
  and I talk about this a lot, because of Back to the Future being the type of
• 56:13
  movie that it is and the type of fan that it attracts, You have a whole different
• 56:17
  type of car owner in the DeLorean.
• 56:20
  They're geeks, and yes, this is another one of those things that for some
• 56:23
  reason has become a division point.
• 56:25
  Please, stop.
• 56:27
  There are car people and there's the geeks, and that's what's
• 56:29
  beautiful about the DeLorean owners, is they're a unique group.
• 56:32
  Brand of people who are brought to the car community because of this movie.
• 56:36
  Stop looking at it as some dividing factor.
• 56:39
  These are people who are brought into understanding things about combustion
• 56:43
  engines they would have never known because they weren't computers or robots.
• 56:49
  But because of this movie.
• 56:51
  All of these IT people now love cars, not that IT people don't love cars, no,
• 56:56
  a lot of my friends, they love cars.
• 56:59
  So let me make sure I'm clear on that.
• 57:02
  A lot of people who own the DeLoreans, they're a different kind of a car owner.
• 57:06
  And that's what makes them special.
• 57:07
  And that's what makes getting their stories special.
• 57:10
  And that's what makes going to these car shows so much fun.
• 57:13
  Fun.
• 57:14
  They're amazing.
• 57:15
  Sorry.
• 57:16
  I get very excited.
• 57:18
  You mentioned Ireland, your dad talking about that and everything
• 57:21
  as a result of the movie coming out, kind of in lieu of talking
• 57:24
  about the Back to the Future movie.
• 57:26
  Was it a British car?
• 57:27
  Is it considered an American car?
• 57:29
  Does it have a background?
• 57:31
  Like, you know, Volkswagen's are German and Alfa Romeo's are Italian.
• 57:34
  So what is the DeLorean?
• 57:36
  My father would be proud to tell you it's the first Irish car,
• 57:41
  but it is an American sports car.
• 57:43
  Because it's American car company and it was an American competitor
• 57:49
  to the Corvette, but he will tell you it is an Irish car because the
• 57:54
  Irish built it and they earned it.
• 57:57
  It's their car.
• 57:59
  Sort of like the Bricklin, built in Canada.
• 58:02
  I'll leave it there.
• 58:03
  And I know him and Malcolm were buddies too.
• 58:05
  So that's a whole nother thing.
• 58:06
  Let's just shift gears one more time here.
• 58:08
  So what's next for you, Kat DeLorean?
• 58:10
  What's the future hold outside of all these things you've already talked about?
• 58:14
  What's, what else is going on?
• 58:15
  I retired after 20 years of a wonderful career in technology to
• 58:21
  focus on mentorship and teaching others and helping others.
• 58:26
  I was looking for a way to give back.
• 58:29
  I had a lot of different opportunities to do so.
• 58:32
  And you all came to me with a way to make my dream come true with my dad.
• 58:40
  So what's next for me is.
• 58:43
  This I am going to focus on changing the world one person at a time and
• 58:49
  living my dream, which is to create this engineering program, which will
• 58:54
  embody all of the foundation and the engineering program are going to
• 58:58
  encompass and champion all of the efforts that my father actually had set out.
• 59:04
  Started and wanted in his life, which I found out after I had already
• 59:08
  started to pick them up myself.
• 59:10
  I learned from all the people that I've been connecting with that the things
• 59:14
  that I've been working on are actually things he started when he was alive.
• 59:18
  So what's next for me is continuing my father's legacy and living my dream.
• 59:25
  Kat, any shoutouts, promotions, or anything else you'd like to share
• 59:29
  that we didn't cover thus far?
• 59:30
  Yes, I would like everybody to check out my friend Jay Ryan's show
• 59:36
  as well, Cars and Comedy, please.
• 59:39
  And Ben, a sponsor of all of my efforts.
• 59:42
  And somebody whose family, to me, owns Alternative Medicine
• 59:47
  Brewing in Vernon, New York.
• 59:48
  His name is Jordan Hahn, and he makes the most fantastic brews.
• 59:54
  You have to go try them.
• 59:56
  And then, of course, come check out our website.
• 59:59
  And if anybody wants to be part of the efforts, please do reach out.
• 1:00:03
  We are looking for people who want to offer it.
• 1:00:06
  Connections to local people in your area that we can work with to help create
• 1:00:12
  some of our programs, people who want to sponsor or start the programs in
• 1:00:16
  their area, and anybody who wants to just go out and perform random acts of
• 1:00:21
  kindness in the name of the project.
• 1:00:23
  The DeLorean Legacy Project is dedicated to extolling the
• 1:00:26
  positive impact of John Z.
• 1:00:29
  DeLorean and his creations on this world, and those that continue to this day
• 1:00:33
  through his fans and owners of his carves.
• 1:00:36
  The DeLorean Legacy Project's mission is to change the world.
• 1:00:39
  One person at a time to learn more, be sure to check out www.
• 1:00:43
  deloreanlegacy.
• 1:00:45
  org or follow Kat on social at Kat Delorean on Instagram, at Katherine.
• 1:00:50
  Delorean on Facebook or at Delorean Legacy on Twitter.
• 1:00:55
  That said, Kat, I can't thank you enough for coming on
• 1:00:57
  this first of hopefully many.
• 1:00:59
  DeLorean episodes here on break fix.
• 1:01:02
  And I have to say, this is a very humbling experience to be talking
• 1:01:06
  with you and learning all these things about your dad and about your family.
• 1:01:09
  And I do appreciate you opening the doors and letting us take a peek
• 1:01:13
  inside to see what that's all about.
• 1:01:15
  I love that.
• 1:01:15
  So for a long time, I had this really weird relationship with
• 1:01:21
  my place in this community.
• 1:01:22
  I didn't understand it.
• 1:01:24
  Everybody wanted my autograph.
• 1:01:25
  Everybody wanted to talk to me.
• 1:01:26
  They wanted to shake my hand, take pictures.
• 1:01:28
  And I was like, My parents had sex and I came out.
• 1:01:30
  Like, what did I do?
• 1:01:31
  Why is this a thing that I am like so Somebody came up to me at the Corvette
• 1:01:37
  Museum after the Kentucky show.
• 1:01:39
  She said, thank you for coming to these shows.
• 1:01:42
  You humanize your father.
• 1:01:44
  You turn him into a real person.
• 1:01:46
  You give us stories that show us he was a real human.
• 1:01:50
  That's when I understood my place in representing him.
• 1:01:53
  And that's how I was able to really embrace my place in this community.
• 1:01:58
  And what I can offer to all of you, these stories about who he was as a
• 1:02:02
  person and the insight into him as a man.
• 1:02:11
  If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
• 1:02:14
  be sure to check us out on www.
• 1:02:16
  gtmotorsports.
• 1:02:17
  org.
• 1:02:18
  You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouringMotorsports.
• 1:02:22
  Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can
• 1:02:26
  call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
• 1:02:33
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• 1:02:34
  We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:02:36
  Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
• 1:02:38
  We really hope you enjoyed this episode of BreakFix, and we wanted to remind you that
• 1:02:42
  GTM remains a no annual fees organization.
• 1:02:46
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• 1:02:49
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