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Fast Lane to Nowhere - The John DeLorean Story · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, everybody.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of Dirt Knap City, the podcast about interesting dead people.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Alex.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with my friend Kelly.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hey Kelly, what's going on?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, uh, I was just uh gonna tell you, you know, you're from Michigan, and I went there a couple days ago and uh really enjoyed it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: I I have to say it's a great place to be in August.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is a great place to be in August, and today's uh subject has a Michigan theme kind of theme to it, too.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're if you're uh Michigan file, uh you're in uh for a treat today.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: I did want to give you an update though.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um remember when you did the Neil Armstrong episode?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And my guest was Orville Redenbacher.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, from Ohio.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think the clue you had given was that he was in the Purdue Marching Band.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And is or was Orville Redenbacher in the Do you know that it turns out that that Orville Redenbacher was in the Purdue Marching Band, as was Neil Armstrong.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you go to the Wikipedia page for the Purdue Marching Band, you'll see notable alumni, and you'll see both of those guys as notable alumni.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, no, I think uh Neil Armstrong was uh quite a bit younger than Orville Redenbacher.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah because I mean Orville Orville Redenbacher, when was he born?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was I think he was uh born in like 1880 or something like that.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay, okay, because Neil Armstrong was born in in 1930, I think.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they were they were quite a few years apart.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um all right.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, well, good to know that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Orville Redenbacher is one of those guys where um possible subject, and then I look it up, and it turns out not that interesting.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: He died in '95, and uh born in nineteen oh seven.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh and he was considered a food scientist.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's about all you need to know about Orville Redenbacher.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So that's two minutes in, that would have been a two-minute episode.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Ettore Boy R D was uh was a uh here's here's here's what's funny is people also search for Attore Boy R D and Lil Wayne from from Orville Redbacher.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that is?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I don't know.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe because they're high and they need some popcorn.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: That would actually be a good game where you come up with somebody and then somebody has to guess who the people also searched for.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed Lil Wayne and Orville Redbacher.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean Boy RD makes sense, but yeah, maybe there's a popcorn song that we're not aware of.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um from Michigan, a Michigan uh connection here.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this guy, it was uh it's a 20th century uh I would say icon of sorts, uh born in 1925 in Detroit.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: In Detroit?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Died in 2005 in New Jersey.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh 1925, 2005.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Was it a car guy?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: Car guy.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um let me think.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: So can I give you I'll give you a hint.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let me have a hint.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: This might give you.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he has a product named after him that everyone has heard of, but you probably don't know anyone who owns one, and you've probably never seen one in person.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: But you've heard but I've heard of it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, pretty much everybody's heard of one.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: And and is the product like when you say a product, it's like the proper name of it, or it's like the generic name for it?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: The name of it.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's it's the brand.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it has to do with cars.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: Or so I think.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I'm I'm I'm for some reason I keep going to all these is it Shelby.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Shelby Cobra?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, but you're kind of on the right track with uh car name.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Cadillac?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody's seen a Cadillac.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Cadillac, I think, was a Native American uh uh warrior.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: No, I don't think it was a tribe, I think it was a person.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh everybody's heard of it, but nobody's actually seen one.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Was it was it an actual an actual car?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that very few people had, but everybody knew who they were.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Was it Hetzel?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: No, and was very got real popular in the mid-80s.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh Chrysler Cordova?
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: From a movie.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Rich Corinthian Letter.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: That came out in 1985.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, DeLorean.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: John Dean.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, okay, okay.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the the movie.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so you were referring to Back to the Future Back to the Future.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: The DeLorean.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: And also the DeLorean was a um wasn't there a thing with cocaine and DeLoreans?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: So this we're gonna talk about all that stuff.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so this is a perfect example of somebody you've heard of, yeah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you may be like, you know, one thing about them, like I knew that Marco Polo brought spaghetti to uh to Italy.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, turned out that was debunked by you uh a couple weeks ago.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but yeah, DeLorean, all you know about him is really the crazy car from Back to the Future and something having to do with cocaine, and that's about it, right?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's about all the people.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: The doors were gulling doors, they opened upward.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now you blew my mind uh a little while back by telling me you had never seen Home Alone.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Please tell me you have seen Back to the Future.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I have seen Back to the Future, yes.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: Back to the Future is a good movie.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all three of them are well, two of them are good.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: The third one's not great, but it's great, a great uh suite of movies.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Back to the Future.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: You agree with that, right?
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: I do agree, yes.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and the DeLorean played a big part of it.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and um so did uh who's the actor that played the um like a little bit of a tie-in here, the actor that played the professor that that comes, you know, the scientist.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Christopher Lloyd, yeah.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: Christopher Lloyd, who relates to was on taxi with our boy Andy Kaufman.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, there you go.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's all related.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's all related.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about JDL.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and this guy was actually before the before the the Back to the Future and before the cocaine thing, he was actually a very respected and actually very well known uh businessman and engineer that uh if you think you know, I'll take you back to the the 60s, 50s, 60s, and 70s in in America uh where uh cars were a big deal, you know, American cars were a big deal.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hadn't quite had the the Japanese cars uh come over and make a dent.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And a few people had cars, uh, you know, German-made cars, uh Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, uh a little bit, but primarily in the US, you saw American cars on the roads.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was GM, Ford.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna talk about all that stuff.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think you're kind of interested in the um the that car world, right?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm I'm I'm moderately interested.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: I also am wondering, because I think you're answering my question right now.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I always thought DeLorean was uh was a Italian car.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 8:04
  unknown: No.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Was an American car?
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was American, it was it was made by John DeLorean.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess his name just sounds Italian.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, he was actually his parents were immigrants.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think his uh I think um one of his parents were from Romania and the other were from Hungary.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think they were uh they came over, he was first generation, but not Italian.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think he stylized his name to have the capital D and the capital L, but I don't think that's how his name was originally supposed to be.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: But it was originally a lowercase D and a and a capital L.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: So he uh he went to uh a school called Castech for high school, and that's a uh kind of a famous school in Detroit.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a technical school, but where a lot of the engineers for these auto companies went to high school.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was a public school, and you could go there and and learn a lot about uh automotive engineering.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what Detroit's all about, right?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Automotive engineering.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the people that live there either have parents or will go uh that work in the auto industry or will go themselves into the auto industry.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um his uh he went to then he went to Lawrence Tech, which is a uh university, uh a college in the Detroit area where a lot of the auto engineers went.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was interrupted by World War II.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: He came back, graduated from there um in industrial engineering.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was like 23 by the time he had graduated from college because of the war.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: So he came out of school and he sold life insurance.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he was good at it, he was really good at it, but he found it kind of boring.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, his degree was in engineering, but he liked the insurance game because it improved his communication skills.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh which like our boy Dale Dale Carnegie.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think there's a lot to be said about if you find yourself lacking in communication skills, go and try to sell something for a few months.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you're not good at it, you'll develop some of those communication skills.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're if you're out there, if you're a young person and you're trying to figure out what to do, go try to sell something.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sales is a tough game, but you know, you you'll realize right away if you like it or don't.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you don't, you'll probably get something out of it.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you'll and you'll appreciate how hard it is to sell things too.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: And and if if you're looking for something to sell, uh, everybody loves a uh Patreon membership for uh Dirtnap City.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's a that's a great thing, kind of sells itself.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Would you recommend people go door to door and sell Patreon memberships to do that?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: No, I think as long as you're safe about it.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want anybody getting shot or you know, chased off by a dog or anything.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: But if you go up and you know, first of all, when you knock on the door, take a few steps back away from the door.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's very courteous, and then uh say, sorry to bother you, ma'am, but um you heard a dirt nap city and just see where it goes from there.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you reach out to us, we'll give you a starting lanyard, a lane, yeah, which includes what, a lanyard, a little name badge.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, a badge with your name on it.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: A badge and and and then uh some literature.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna we're gonna need to get that published.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, Pueblo, Colorado.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a good call, that's a good callback, Pueblo Colorado.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, if you are interested in our starter kit, let us know.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And for every what 50,000 memberships, we'll send you a hundred bucks.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and and give you a ride in the DeLorean.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll let you know that um at the end of this, I'll talk about where you can get DeLoreans today.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not too far from where I'm sitting right now.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So uh so he from after he did the insurance thing, he went to the Chrysler Institute of Engineering.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: One of his buddies told him to to check that place out.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of an in-house uh engineering school that Chrysler had, and he got his master's degree in automotive engineering and then a job with the Chrysler Corporation.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: And then while he was doing that, he went to night school to get his MBA.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So he was really getting a lot of the stuff that was very educated fella.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he ended up uh being very ambitious, educated.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, in Detroit in the 50s, it was all right there for you.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if if you were interested in cars and you had an engineering degree and a business background, I think the sky was the limit.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: But he was only a Chrysler for about a year.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this is the late 50s.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: He was offered a job by a company called Packard.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of a Packard automobile?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have if you picture, like if you could picture like FDR driving a car, right?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Big old classic American car.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Luxury cars.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: They were the really first, it was the American luxury car.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you can't do it, before there was a Lincoln think about like the Great Gatsby days and those kind of cars that those guys were driving.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Cars that probably would, you know, the equivalent of like 80,000, 90,000 today.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, dollars.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: These cars were like, you know, two or three thousand dollars back then, which was a lot of money.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: The super wealthy people.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and Packard offered them a job to improve the they were working on automatic transmission and trying to make it better.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: They had it, but it wasn't that great.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: So Packard was around from 1899 to 1858.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I just told you he got there in 1857.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: 1958.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, 1958.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: He got there in 1957, so he was at the tail end.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: But Packard was a very prestigious brand.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: They came up with the first kind of modern steering wheel as we know it today.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: They were the first cars that had air conditioning.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these cars had air conditioning like in the 40s and 50s.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that was a really essential in the south.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: They were the first cars to have 12-cylinder engines that were kind of patterned after some of the uh airplane engines, also essential in the south.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you know what?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: They could not compete with the big three, it was just too, they were too small time, and they didn't, especially after World War II, when people wanted affordable cars and were mass-producing big quant, you know, prior to World War II, I think cars were uh less ubiquitous, right?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: They were just kind of for a certain class of people.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: But after World War II, you know, you saw the rise of the middle class and the suburbs, and people needed cars to get out to the suburbs, and people didn't have the kind of money to buy these expensive Packards.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the big three, you know, when so when I say the big three, you know who I'm talking about, right?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Chrysler, GM, and Ford.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right, Chrysler, GM, and Ford, GM being General Motors.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Packard's slogan was ask the man who owns one.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Oh which is kind of sexist by today's uh standards, but it is it's a pretty cool tagline.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is, it is.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: You could change, change it to ask someone who owns one.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: It it yeah, and it also is kind of like saying, if you have to ask, you can't afford one.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you know, you know.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's basically saying if if you don't know anyone who owns one, don't you probably can't own one, but if you you know, ask the man who owns one.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_02: So so you talk about uh you know another a new startup or a a smaller uh car company trying to compete with the big three.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Did they have a crazy CEO that was always um posting things online or putting up on the bulletin boards and and attracting attention all the time?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: That that might dampen your sales a little bit.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: Packard did not, no.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think Packard was like the gold standard of cars prior to World War II.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think afterwards they just could not they they weren't as good at mass production, maybe, or I don't think they were trying to be, I don't think they were trying to be ever the everyman car.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that when you're talking about the millions of cars that the big three were making, they just put them out of business, basically.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because because then the big three each tried to come up with their luxury cars, you know, and and compete, and they would probably could offer the air conditioning and all that modern stuff and still be a little bit cheaper, but still be luxurious, economies of scale, yeah.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: So um they they actually merged with Studebaker in 1953.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Packard did.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard of a Studebaker, oh yeah, yeah.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And um at that point, uh our boy uh wanted out, uh it wasn't what he thought it was gonna be.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was offered a job at General Motors, and they said, You come and you can go to any one of our five divisions at GM if you want, you just pick one.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so do you know what the five divisions of GM were at the time?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there are GMC, Chevy, Cadillac, um, Buick, and Oldsmobile?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: You're very close.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I I there um there was no GMC back back in the okay.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, G GM, I mean because because they're you know, right now you can get a um uh Chevy Tahoe or a um I thought it was a GMC.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think that's what they call the truck the truck division now, GMC.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: So at the top you had Cadillac.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Cadillac, right.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then the next Buick in terms of like going down, the next class was Buick, right?
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, then Pontiac.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Pontiac.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then Oldsmobile.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oldsmobile, then Chevy Chevrolet, right.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So um back when we were in college, you used to drive me home from college, and we used to pass uh we used to make the drive from Austin to Houston.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you had a big old car from the 60s back then.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: It was a Buick.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: It was a Buick.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: What year was that Buick?
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: 67, Buick Electra.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: 67 Buick Electra, and it was was it green?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: Was it it was a kind of kind of a maroon color here?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maroon, yeah, maroon.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think my grandmother had the same car, but it was green.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, very similar.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: That car was big.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was a very large car, had a very large motor, and you know what was great for me about that was I, you know, I'm not I'm not someone who claims to know a lot about fixing cars, but it was pretty easy to change your own oil, to change the oil filter.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think I swapped out the alternator one time, put in my own spark plugs, and you know, it it was big enough that you could get to stuff.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the big challenge now with cars is because A, they're computerized, so everything you know has to be hooked up to a computer to see what's going on, but then B, um, it's just hard to get to stuff because the motors are so efficient and tightly packed.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: I love that car.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did too.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: Good time.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: 1967 Electra.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: What year did you get rid of that car?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I got rid of that car when I graduated college in '91.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I got it in '87.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: I had it till ninety one.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_02: And then it was like, did you get good money for it?
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like, did was that uh did collect it?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think I got two thousand dollars for it in in '91.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then how many miles did that thing have on it?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Not not that many.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um when I got it, it only had like 20 something.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: It was my my grandparents had a friend uh or a couple that it was their their car, um, and it was their spare car.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: And the husband had died.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: It was kind of his it was kind of his pride and joy when he got it in the 60s, and then he died, and so it just sat, and his wife never drove it, but she never sold it either.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then in 87, they no, 85, they uh they sold it to my grandparents for a very cheap price, and my grandparents gave it to me.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's funny because back then, driving a 1967 car in 1987 seemed like you were driving something out of the Smithsonian.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: But now, if you drive a car from 2004, I don't think it would feel as dated as that car felt.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like that car felt like a 20-year-old car, and old it didn't.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, maybe because we were only, you know, we weren't even 20 ourselves, yeah.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it just felt like it was something from another time.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think a 2004 car today would feel that old.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it would, it would, it would not have uh Bluetooth and uh CarPlay and you know some of that stuff.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's about it.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't look like a relic.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so actually we have a 2008 Odyssey that my in-laws gave us.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's in great shape, you know, still there's really no reason to get rid of it, but it it doesn't have a backup camera, it doesn't have any of the Bluetooth or anything like that.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: And here's the here's the worst thing, Alex.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you haven't driven a car recently where you have to actually put a key in, that is so weird now.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Because because all the key fobs, you know, you just hop in, you walk up, the car unlocks, you get in, you start it.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, to fiddle around in your pocket and look for a key is is such a it's just such a weird concept.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: And I did it for years and and now I hate it.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then and then to have to use your mirrors when you back up or Turn your head, you know, no back of the camera.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have to does it have a manual uh window rolled out?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: No, even even my even my 67 Buick had electric windows.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you remember that, but it had elect it had electric everything.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: It had a bench seat that would slide up, down, forward, backwards, had electric windows, had um uh I wish it had been a convertible.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then I don't know if you remember, um, my dad helped me put in uh like an alpine stereo or something.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, it had a good stereo.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: We used to listen to violent films.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's right, that's right.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly what I was thinking.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: And every time we uh, dear listeners, every time we would go through the town of Lagrange, Kelly pop in um the song Lagrange into the matter what we were doing, we had to stop talking and listen to Lagrange.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: And there was no Lagrange bypass back then.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, you went right through town, you went right past the chicken house.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Good times.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get back to our boy, uh JDL.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: He goes to Pontiac in uh in uh 1959 as the assistant to the chief engineer.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, pretty good job.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty young age and a big good job.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, by 1961, he's the chief engineer, and as chief engineer at Pontiac, he developed the first American muscle car.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, you know what we consider a muscle.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: What is a muscle car considered?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a transam?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Was it the Transam?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: No, not yet.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Pontiac.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, Firebird.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Nope.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Not the Firebird.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that came later, also.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I remember the Pontiac Fierro.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember that?
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: That was like a little tiny sports car.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: But that wasn't a muscle car.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: My mom's a muscle car would be like a big V8 engine and probably a manual transmission uh in in most cases.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, two-door with a lot of horse marks.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um is that the classic definition?
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I I think just a two-door with a lot of with a lot of uh horsepower would be.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my Buick had that.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh well, compact too.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably more compact than that.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was the GTO.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Cognac GTO.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it was named the GTO after the Ferrari GTO, which was like the the the big uh sports car in in Europe.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um GTO stood for in in Italy.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: The GTO was Gran Turismo Omologato.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes, Domo Arrigato, Mr.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Omologato.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's a different word, that's a Japanese word.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, but uh G so GTO didn't really mean anything, it was just a uh knockoff of the Ferrari GTO, the name.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the GTO became a huge seller, and then Pontiac became known for as a performance vehicle, and DeLorean, John DeLorean was credited with all the success.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: He became kind of a uh a figure that people knew, you know, yeah, rock star.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Mag magazine articles written about it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Johnny Ive at Apple.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was credited with the success of the engineering, the marketing, the rollout, the the just the whole vibe was kind of took on his personality, and a lot of pieces were written about this guy, and you people started to know who John DeLorean was.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually promoted to be the head of Pontiac by the time he was 40 years old.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: He was running the whole division, Pontiac Division.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: In response to the Mustang, which the Mustang came out in the mid-60s, and that was a huge success.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: Ford came out with the Mustang, so they came out with the Firebird, like you said, uh as it to compete with the Mustang.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's not was it considered a muscle car, that was considered what they call a pony car.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: The the firebird or the Mustang?
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Both of them.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: That kind of car is called a pony car.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Was it more compact, like a little smaller?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, compact, sporty, affordable, also.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: These weren't expensive cars.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: These were cars that the average person could get if they wanted to drive a low.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: But cars were getting smaller, they were getting get uh getting faster, and they were getting more compact, right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, then you came out with the grand prix, and that was the luxury car that Pontiac had, the Pontiac Grand Prix.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we had a grand, you know, we had a lot of these cars.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: We had we had a Firebird in the 80s, we had a uh we had a Grand Prix, I think in the 70s.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the the Pony the Grand Prix was sporty but affordable.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the Grand Prix?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: I I I yeah, I I remember, I mean, they all kind of blend together.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now, obviously, the Mustang and the Firebird had a pretty distinctive look.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: Fire and also Firebirds and Camaros looked kind of similar to me.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, Camaro was a different um division that came out of the Chevy division, and there was a lot because they were in the same overall General Motors company, there was a lot of negotiating and a lot of infighting.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, he would want to develop a car that looked like this, and they'd say, No, you can't do that because that competes too much with the Corvette or the Camaro.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so they would have to kind of uh uh negotiate so they could have distinct vehicles that that were part of that division and part of that particular class.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: That was a time when there were so many, you know, I long for these these days.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: The you know, I've just been in a I just bought in a car about a month or two ago, and um I've been looking for a while, and you know, I just am not excited about any cars that I see on the road.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: They all kind of are bland to me.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: They are they the names aren't exciting.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody, every name of a car is uh like a letter and a number.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you could have got a cyber truck.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, I could have.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're right.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I could have.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Which, you know, when we talk about DeLoreans, the actual DeLorean car, there's I think there's a lot in common with that.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, you go around today, and every car is just a letter or a number, yeah, has no real personality, they're all kind of the same color on the roads, and there they don't, you know, back then there were so many different kinds of cars, and it seemed like there were so many niches.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you want to spend this much, then you go to this division, and that this one had a direct analog.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: There was a Ford version and a GM version and a Chrysler version of the same car.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: They all competed and they were all kind of the same mileage, the same size engine, just little trade-offs here and there.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe they would compete on things like color or like uh one had a spoiler and the other one didn't, you know.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but I miss those days because I don't think if you look on the roads these days, I think cars are maybe more efficient, maybe they're more aerodynamic, but they're sure not as fun as they used to be.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: I agree, I agree in most cases, you know, your typical Honda or Toyota or even even Chevy, like a lot of them look very similar, but there's also uh like the Rivian, right?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's a pretty cool looking vehicle and has some pretty cool stuff going on.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: And like I said, the Cybertruck, you know, whether you like it or hate it, it's it's totally different.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And you're talking about cars that aren't super accessible to most people.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I guess a Rivian or a or a Cybertruck are both you know 100k pretty easily.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I'm talking about the days where you could go and you could buy a Pacer or uh a Vega, you know, and and we had a Chevy Nova Pinto, yeah, or a El Dorado for crying out loud.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Those weren't expensive cars, but damn it, they had personality, you know?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, remember uh was it Trevor Linhart used to have uh a uh uh was it uh rascal?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Was it a rascal?
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: What was the car that had the the uh two seats in the back?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh no, that was uh that was a um Subaru Brat.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Brat.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah brat.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: Remember Trevor Linhart?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh was that Laura Linhart's brother?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you're listening, uh hey Trevor, hey Laura.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: They had two seats with like handles in the back.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: They faced backwards.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, they're the Subaru Brat.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Well now, now actually, um actually I do think that um either Kia or one of those newer companies that makes makes uh vehicles has a sort of Baja looking um you know, like mini truck that that looks like a that looks like a car but but has the bed of a truck.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I think the crossover cars have ruined all cars.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and and also I just recently rode in a friend of mine, he has an Audi, um, an all-road.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: Have you seen those?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: They're like station wagons, but they're really sporty.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: I always thought I wanted one of those, and then I just he that was up in Detroit, actually.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: I rode in it, and it is slow, low to the ground.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I have to say, as an old man, I like having uh a car that's higher up off the ground for me.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now, now we had a Pinto.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was just gonna name this.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the only Pontiac my family ever owned was a station wagon, and I don't remember what their station wagon was called, but it was a big brown station wagon.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember um I remember like you could put the back window down, you know, it kind of would like it would go down and and and um we had a yellow duck sticker on it and so you could moon the car behind you, yeah.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then or just throw something out of it.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then do you remember a couple of other Pontiacs?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um the Fiero.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: I remember seeing that for the first time and thinking that was such you had one, yeah.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: My mom had one.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: Was it fun to drive?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I don't think I drove it, I wasn't old enough yet, but uh it had the the headlights that popped up.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was like a little tiny, little tiny Italian sports car kind of thing.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then here's what I think ruined Pontiac.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Does Pon is Pontiac even a thing anymore?
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think it is.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think it is.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: You remember the Aztec?
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, I remember the Pontiac Aztec.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think actually in Breaking Bad, I think they're drove.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's what Walter White drove was an Aztec, yeah.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's they tried to pick the loserest car possible.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly, and I think in the first season of Survivor, that's what they won in addition to the million dollars.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: They won a Pontiac Aztec.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they were trying to make that give that street cred, but it was really ugly.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was, yeah, it was, yeah.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: But but again, like the Cybertruck, they did something different, like they they made something that looked completely different than any other.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was gonna say if the Aztec was on the road today, it would really stand out.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: It might even, you know, be attractive compared to everything that's out there now.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's just so bland now.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, anyways.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so DeLorean, he's on this run.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's got the Grand Prix, he's got the Firebird, he's got the he's he's putting Pontiac on the map, and he got to be a really popular guy, traveled the world, but he was also like back in the in this late 60s, you know, business guys all kind of looked the same.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: They kind of wore the the dark suit and the tie, and yeah, he he dressed casually, which you know everyone does now, but right now at that time you didn't do that.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was kind of known as the rebel business businessman, you know.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: He he rocked sideburns.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, he wasn't conservative looking at all.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: He had sideburns and he wore like shirts that were unbuttoned with a chain, you know.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_02: Dirt hair hippie, dirty hippie style.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, not at all.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Very like European.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, more than Italian uh very, very like money, but um, he was friends with like Johnny Carson and hung out with people like he was an engineer, but he really was a popular guy.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was having affairs with like Raquel Welch, you know.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so he was getting known, and then at that point he was promoted to head up um Chevrolet, which was another division, it was their flagship division of General Motors, it was where they sold the most cars from.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was the price-wise, it was kind of the most affordable division, but it was by far where the the bulk of their market share was, and now he was making like 200,000 a year, which today would be like uh a million and a half dollars, yeah.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Which you know, and just goes to show you how CEO salaries have gone out of control because that's about what CEOs would make back then, and that was a lot, and you know, um today CEOs are making you know a hundred times that sometimes, yeah, yeah.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but so Chevrolet was kind of uh not doing great.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: This was uh in the late 60s.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: They were plagued by a car called the Corvair.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, Corvair that one, yeah.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now that car was known, it was it was real popular.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it was car of the year in 1960, but by 1965, it had all kinds of problems, you know, like things like the the they had an engine cooling fan belt that would sometimes just fly off, you know.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: I hate when that happens.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: The engine would overheat all the time and it would get bad mileage.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then what really killed it was there was a guy named Ralph Nader that wrote a book called Unsafe at Any Speed.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: He was uh he was sort of the first or or one of the first um consumer advocates.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: So he wrote this book called Unsafe at Any Speed, and it focused primarily on the the core of air, which he said was like the least safe car ever built.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um now that was later debunked, a lot of that stuff was debunked.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: DeLorean didn't have anything to do with that, he was coming in at as a result of that already existed, and yeah, that was coming in to fix it.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he came in at the end of all that.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um they had a car called the Chevy Nova.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, that which um they were trying to unroll uh roll out that had to have a bunch of redesigns.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of recalls, millions and millions of cars.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: And and their their launch in uh Latin America didn't go well because Nova means won't go.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's an urban legend, much like your Marco Polo spaghetti uh not true.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not true.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Nova doesn't mean won't go.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: It does mean that, but uh it's Spanish speaking people know the difference between in fact they call the celestial thing, they call it then a Nova, also.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're um they're hadn't the and in fact the sh the Nova actually sold a lot in Mexico.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_02: So if if if in like um let's say Uzbekistan they came out with a car called the Won't Go, would you buy the won't go?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know the difference between won't go and won't go.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I uh it it's a myth.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's a myth.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: It sold very well like in Latin America, the Nova.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually a very popular car.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's still popular.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it is true that in a lot of cross-cultural type of training, they teach that as a as a as a classic example of a faux pas, a marketing faux pas.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not true that it was a faux pas, but it gets people thinking, I suppose, that that's not what you should be.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Be careful with what words you put together, even though it was fine, they had no detrimental effects at all.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: So um that was the late 60s.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: They were having problems by 1971.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: John DeLorean had Chevy matching the entire Ford Motor Company in sales, just that one division.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: He rescued it uh with cars like uh the Nova and the Vega.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those were really, you know, we make fun of those cars, and but they were very affordable.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone had them.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, I mean, if you're dominating the market share, you know, you're gonna you're doing something right.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, these were very affordable cars that probably were good enough back then.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is right before the Japanese cars came out and kind of rocked the world of the big three.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: But in the 70s, you can kind of get away with with as long as they weren't dangerous, you could kind of get away with crappy cars, you know?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they didn't have to be um you know the the fit and finish.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, sometimes you see people now taking like a credit card and putting it between the seams of a of a car, and you know, this this tolerance is way too loose and this needs to be tighter, and no uh too many decibels in the in the cabin, all that stuff.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: No, a lot of them were probably rough drafts, but they were fine.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as long as they got you from point A to point B and they didn't blow up, they were fine.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we that's what we rode back back then.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of my philosophy in life.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, we barely had seatbelts back then, you know what I mean.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: We just we were just doing you have you had your mom, you had your mom that would stick her arm out when when she put on the brakes.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Your 67 Electra had seat belts, but only lap belts.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, only lap belts.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think they did they um retract?
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they retracted.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_02: They were, yeah, they were just one size fits all.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: They were kind the kind you have like on a a ride, like a roller coaster.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: You just you put it on and then you kind of cinched it up, and then yeah, and I don't think there was even one in the middle seat in the front or the back.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: So if you because that car would hold seven, eight people pretty easily, you know, but uh but only four seat belts.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you and I together, just the two of us in that car, there was room for yeah, seven or eight, nine or ten other people.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_02: Remember you laying in the back taking a nap on the way home till till we stopped in La Grange, and then uh then it was all bets off.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so by 1972, uh DeLorean was the vice president of all cars and truck production for all of General Motors.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: He worked his way up.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was by 72.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was uh not even 50 years old yet.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Wow and he was he was running all that stuff in 1970, and and everyone thought this guy's gonna be running the company in a couple years, you know.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was just on, but in 1973, he left General Motors.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: The rumor was that he got fired, but nobody really knows what exactly happened.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: His quote from back then was he said, I want to do things in the social area, I have to do them, and unfortunately, the nature of our business just didn't permit me to do this as much as I wanted.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_00: Don't know what that means.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: The social area.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he wanted to start Facebook.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: But the next year he started his own company, the DeLorean Motor Company.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: So uh he came up with a concept car called the DeLorean Safety Vehicle or the DSV.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was a two-seat, two-seater with a stainless steel body and gull wing doors.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the design.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Never really got out of that design, the classic design that you picture when you picture DeLorean vehicles.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: He called it the safety vehicle, uh DeLorean safety vehicle, DSV.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: See, I I I thought safety sounds like the opposite of fast, right?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: And and so I thought that it would have been called like you know the DeLorean lightning bolt or the DeLorean um you know cold plunge or something.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think they called it the DSV.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they but still the word safety safety was its middle name.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe because it looked unsafe and people had to, you know, they had to put that in there.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, it was a fiberglass car, but then the outer, it was the fi uh stainless steel shell.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: You could picture this, right?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: I remember what they look like.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the gull wing doors that would open not side to side, but they'd open straight up.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_00: You'd push a button and they'd come up.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: You probably have to get out of the way though, or it would hit you, right?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen one in person?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't remember if I have, so I I'm gonna say no.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think I have, like, maybe like at a state fair or something.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, not not like out driving around, though.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I've ever seen one driving around.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: And every time I I think I've seen a couple times, and every time I see it, the doors are already up.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like it's like in that um look at me position.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now he made these, he didn't make them in America, he made them in Ireland.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: He had a plant in uh Northern Ireland, actually, in Belfast is uh he had a manufacturing plant, but it took like seven or eight years to actually get this car produced.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Started his company in 1973 and didn't sell any until 1981.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of production delays, yeah.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh problems with the plant, problems with the workers, problems with, you know, it just it was just one delay after another.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: In 1980, when they were getting ready to uh to roll this thing out, American Express came up with this uh this um they were a gimmick, I guess, marketing gimmick, where they were gonna sell a 24 karat gold version of the DeLorean.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: They were gonna only make a hundred of them, and they were gonna sell.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: For$85,000 in 1980.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that'd be about$340,000 today.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Solid gold.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they were only going to make$100, and they were going to be worth a bunch.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: Collector's items.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was going to coincide with, I think that's when American Express developed the gold card.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: The gold card, of course.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it was to tie in with that.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: They were only going to make a hundred.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they only sold four.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, so these were these weren't like giveaways.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: These were ones they were going to try and sell.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: Special edition.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: They were going to only they're only going to make a hundred and gonna be super rare, and they only f it only sold four.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was just a it was a DeLorean with gold plating.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: 24 karat gold plated.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder how much gold is on that.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like how how thin that gold, you know, like if you scrape it off.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: They sold four.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: They only sold four.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Which makes me think they only made four.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like I doubt they made a hundred and then there's ninety-six of them still sitting there.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: Still in the in the showroom waiting to be.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_00: I bet you they made them to order.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe at least they made the the outside to order.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: The frame or the body, I mean.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um the production delays, you know, they they ended up not selling any until 1981.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_00: They made 7,000.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: And they only by 1982 they had only sold half of them.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh regular DeLoreans.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was a disaster.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the company was$175 million in debt.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: That was that's 1980s money, you know, which should be, you know, you know, that's that's probably 600 million in debt today.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Time magazine in 2017 listed as one of the 50 worst cars of all time.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't even really that fast.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: They used to say that it would go zero to sixty in eight seconds.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all the you know, the magazines that tested it, it was more like 10 seconds, okay.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh which isn't super fast.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that competes real well with some of the fast cars from back then.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a it was a safety car though, unmitigated disaster, and it took almost a decade to to do this after he just had success after success after success at um at GM.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_02: This was supposed to be his big finish, and it turned out to be uh a mess.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: So in the this is the early 80s, 1981 is when all this was happening.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, in October of 1982, he was arrested.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was videotaped in a sting operation for agreeing to bankroll a cocaine smuggling operation.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: What had happened was he was in an uh hotel in Los Angeles, the FBI he was meeting with who he didn't know was the FBI, and they had 60 pounds of cocaine.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: The deal was that he was gonna sell he was gonna finance a deal to sell 220 pounds of cocaine, which was like the street value was like 24 million, which would be like 80 million today.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Which is about half of what you know they lost.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean, this is real money.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is big time money.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know what happened.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on, hold on, my phone is ringing.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh let me just uh send it to voicemail.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: So how this was all set up was it was a former neighbor neighbor of his who was um was busted for cocaine dealing, and he was making a deal with the government and uh to for a reduced sentence.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: So what he did, this guy Jim Hoffman was his former neighbor, and he knew that DeLorean needed money like quick because he his business was was in such trouble.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he called him and he said, Hey buddy, I know a way you can make quick money.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're in some hard times, I know you can make a way you can make some quick money.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: I got a bunch of cocaine, and if you just give me um, you know, I'll give you this kind of return on this.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know you're not a lawyer, but that's entrapment.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can't just you can't just uh approach somebody with a nefarious deal, knowing trying to prey on their vulnerabilities, knowing that they're in financial trouble, and then arrest them for trying to break the law when you try to set up this shady deal.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: And they proved that successfully.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: This guy had no criminal history.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: The guy who was in trap was trapping him had all kinds of criminal history.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, he had really good lawyers, and um, but the trial took it was very public, it took a couple of years, yeah.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: He was finally acquitted, but you know, after his acquittal, uh reporter asked him if he'd planned on resuming his career in the auto industry, and he said, Would you buy a used car from me?
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, wow.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, that's it's like, yeah, my my reputation is is screwed.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's over.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, even you, you know, a few minutes ago, that the only thing you knew about the guy was something with cocaine, right?
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then in in 1985, he was indicted for tax evasion.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he was acquitted on that too, you know?
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: So he um he never actually was convicted of any crimes, um, but he was always kind of in this in this position of being a lot very much in debt, needing a lot of money, and then and then um having reputation tarnished.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: He um now the DeLorean name, the D the DeLorean Motor Company name was actually bought by a company out of Umble, Texas, right here in uh North Houston.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, that provides parts and repairs for DeLorean, and they bought the name.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: So now they own the the name of the DeLorean Motor Company, and they can but they they offer for those 7,000 DeLoreans that are still out there.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm sure that if you have one, you probably take pretty good care of it just because there's not very many out there.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: Back to the Future came out in 1985, which is pretty much at his low point, which was really cool.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't he didn't have anything to do with pitching that.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they came up with the idea, they thought it was a cool, futuristic uh looking car.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and he was really grateful that they did that, kind of putting his name back out there in a positive way.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let's face it, if it wasn't for that movie, we might have forgotten all about that car.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: It might have hit a dead end in one of our dead end episodes.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: But that that movie kind of gave it uh a nostalgic look like we all think fondly of the delirium.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of a kooky thing, but like I said at the beginning, everyone knows it.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: No one really knows anybody that had one, but it's kind of a relic of the of the time.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: He in 1999 he finally declared bankruptcy.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: He had a 400-acre estate in Bedminster, New Jersey, and uh sold it in 2000.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you've the name Bedminster rings any bells for you, but he sold it to a guy who turned it into a golf course, and that guy's name was Donald J.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Trump.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: Bought his bought his uh bought his property and turned it into a golf course.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that Bedminster, which is one of the golf courses that Trump's always going to, um, that used to be DeLorean's house.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, okay.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: And DeLorean's tombstone in New Jersey has on his tombstone, it has a picture of a DeLorean with the gull wing doors open, like an angel.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that cool?
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, classy, yeah.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's a there's a um what do you call that kind of music?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like house music, I guess, uh uh band called Neon Neon.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that has a concept record called Stainless Style.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Stainless Style.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a concept record about the life of John DeLorean.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: Whoa.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: And about the wives and lives.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: I guess he was married four times, and like I said, that doesn't include the numerous affairs with like you know, women like Raquel Welch, and there's I think there's a song on the album called Raquel Welch.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's another song called Michael Douglas that's about him sitting by a pool from his point of view, sitting by the pool with Michael Douglas, talking about what kind of plastic surgery he wants.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_02: And this will probably be probably be turned into a musical sometime soon.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the guy that uh wrote the music for Neon Neon, he says, you know, it's been a pleasure to write about a specific subject and to think about various scenarios relating to his life and imaginary scenarios that may have happened to him on the way.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_00: So musically, we've been writing in a style that personally mirrored his kind of fast cocktail-driven lifestyle, and it's a very frivolous electro pop record about the first Playboy engineer.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the only.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was trying to think of who is the second Playboy engineer.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe Zuckerberg?
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe Steve Jobs.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Stevie.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_00: Was he a Playboy though?
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, not really.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: He was a weirdo.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, who's a who's a Playboy engineer?
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't I mean Musk?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: Is he an engineer though?
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think he's got, I mean, he has a car company and a space company.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, I guess is he the second or just a Playboy engineer?
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: A Playboy engineer.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there it's kind of a a small group of people.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: If if if you out if the audience out there knows of any Playboy engineers worth noting, please send us a note.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_02: Not at dirtnapcity.com.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: But he was a particular kind of guy, right?
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_00: A particular kind of guy that you can kind of picture without ever having seen a picture of him.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can kind of picture his vibe, right?
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of 70s uh fast car, fast women.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, jeez.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but you know, also I think probably unfairly maligned, maybe because his car was goofy and his company didn't do well, and he was mixed up in the drug string, but it's actually a very successful three quarters of his career, you know, it was it was textbook.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: If he had not quit and become head of GM, he would then have had a life like uh Lee Iokoka or something, and he would just be an old auto executive that we knew about, but he wouldn't have had that same kind of crazy end to his life.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: And he probably wouldn't have been featured on Dirt Nap City.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly, because that's where the interesting part comes in.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, the qualifications to be on this show not only have to be dead, you have to be interesting.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: And sorry, Orville Redenbucker, you didn't make the cut, man.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: The Purdue Watching Man ain't gonna cut it.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: And your 60 kinds of popcorn seeds.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if I put it this way, if I've fallen asleep reading your Wikipedia page, you ain't gonna get on the show, man.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, John DeLorean, here's to you, man.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: Here's to you.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: Gold Wing Doors open.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_03: John DeLorean, you bought a dream.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_03: Silver machine on Times Wide Stream.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_03: Fast as lightning, sharp as a steam, cutting to life like a wild machine.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_03: Stay listed.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_03: Play the card with a camp first.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_03: You should fire and heal your life.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_03: Let's go.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_03: Always have fun.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: Careful John, don't come on to changing the world with your legacy.
• 58:38
  SPEAKER_03: Let you spirit free.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_03: Stay free from the glory.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_03: Live in your dreams.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_03: May the world be open alive.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_03: And let's jail by stay outside.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_03: Let you spirit fleeze.