The DeLorean Legacy Project

Kat DeLorean - CEO for DNG Motors, Inc

Daughter of the Legendary John Z. DeLorean.

Contact: Kat DeLorean at Visit Online!

          

• What is DeLorean Legacy? – Take us on a journey. Many people think the DeLorean story starts at Pontiac, but your grandfather worked at Ford? I’ve heard that the DeLorean name was actually changed at some point? Delorian vs DeLorean? Was this the result of an Ellis Island scenario?
• Tell us about the JZD that we don’t know?!?
• When someone visits the Delorean Legacy website for the first time, what should they expect to see there, is it a time capsule, a memorial and an homage? What is the experience like? 
• Creating the John Z. DeLorean Foundation. What is that? 
• What is the John Z. DeLorean Automotive Engineering Program, what are the goals for the program? Who will be the beneficiaries? (and/or qualifications). 
• The future of the DeLorean name.
• What’s next for Kat DeLorean? 

and much, much more!

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Gran Touring Motor Sports Podcast Break Fix, where we’re always fixing the break into something motor sports related.

Starting as a book and growing into a movement, tonight’s guest seeks to accomplish the telling of the untold story of the Maverick of General Motors who went on not only to inspire the American Muscle Car revolution, but to create one of the most iconic cars of all time, the D M C 12, Katherine known to many of us as just Kat DeLorean.

Yes, that DeLorean started the DeLorean Legacy Project to help you learn all about the man himself with firsthand information that expresses the joys and trials of growing up a delore. Kat interviews family and friends. As part of the effort. She shares stories, photos in some of her father’s, more intimate moments with his family, demonstrating how much of a loving and devoted father he was.

And we are honored to have her here with us on break fix to [00:01:00] give us a truly behind the scenes look at DeLorean, the man, the myths, and much, much more So welcome to Break Fix. Hello. Thank you for having me. So like all good, break fix stories. We usually ask people about their who, what, where, when, and why, superhero origin.

But in your case, I think a lot of people already know about that. So why don’t we talk about this DeLorean legacy project. Why don’t you take us on a journey? Many people think the DeLorean story started at Pontiac with your father, but your grandfather was also in the automotive industry, right? That is true.

Actually. My grandfather, he worked for Ford and he was one of the first union leaders, which is pretty impressive back when it was a lot more difficult to do. So my father tells some really interesting stories in his book about what it was like growing. The child of somebody who was a union leader in that time.

One of the things that really touched upon me was a story of the goons that would come and threaten the family and they would [00:02:00] come and toss your house and look for anything that they could find that they could hold against you. And he talked about hiding under the bed and how terrifying that was. And it just goes to show what people had to do to fight for these union rights back in the day.

So did they look like the sixties Batman Goons with the bowler hats and the black T-shirts? That said Goon or what? I kinda imagined something similar to that, although I was thinking More gangs of New yorkish, but big cartoonish sized men in the gangs of new Yorkish style . Yeah. So your dad came by the automotive industry, honestly then, you know, with your grandfather starting off at Ford, and then eventually your dad found his way to, as the story goes Packard, right?

Correct. Yes. He started at Packard and the accomplishments he had at Packard are what truly launched his career. My husband was going through doing the research for the DeLorean Legacy project, which includes researching his contributions to the automotive industry and his patents and things like [00:03:00] that, and he was reading about his time at Packard and he stopped and looked at me and said, I think your father’s.

Responsible for how the modern automatic transmission works. And I said, yeah, he told me that story. It was because some old lady went off a causeway, and that’s actually an interesting story. I didn’t know that it led to the high dramatic transmission, but he did tell me the actual story of what led to that.

There was a woman whose accelerator got stuck and she went off a causeway. He never wanted that to happen again. He went and he re-engineered what he needed to to prevent that from happening. My father is responsible for the way the original modern automatic transmission. They’ve, the smart transmissions have come pretty far and are pretty amazing

So let’s talk a little bit more about your family legacy. Like a lot of us here in the States, many of us came over either pre or post-war as immigrants, and there’s all sorts of stories about names [00:04:00] changing and you know, being changed by officials at Ellis Island and things like that. And so I’ve heard some rumors about the DeLorean name.

It wasn’t actually the way we’ve all come to see it, it changed at some point. It was spelled with an I or it was with an E and this and that. And then there’s some special things about the space between the the de and the rest of the laurean. So why don’t we talk about that for a moment. Yes. So I actually have learned even more about my family name recently when I posted what I knew already about it on Facebook.

So what I do know is that the name never had a space. And no capital L. This is for certain. My father added the capital L and the space because he wanted the name to sound more exotic. And the space is very significant too, right? Cuz it’s not a full character space. It’s like a half a space. It’s got, it’s very specific.

He wanted it to be dead laurean. So, of Lian, I believe that is actually. Spanish name now, but at the [00:05:00] time, at least before the internet, I didn’t know of anything that was DeLorean. It wasn’t a real word. It wasn’t anything at all. It was my father made it up to sound French. As time went on, I was contacted by family and Hungary, and they told the story of what happened when our grandfather left Hungary.

He kind of left all the family behind. They had a hard time tracking him down until my father became famous, and then they were able to actually reunite the whole family. And at the time I was told that it was spelled with an i. I don’t remember the story very well about how this came to be, but I believed for a very long time.

That our name was changed from an I to an E. My cousin recently contacted me and said, no, no, no. I did all the research and I traced back our heritage and it actually has always been an E cuz she remembered when I was told all this or when we found all this out, it was always with an E. The lineage is still very small if you look up.

The number of people in the world with this [00:06:00] name. It’s incredibly small and most are still in Romania, but the spelling of the name with the space like that, that was my father’s invention, and he created that name because he wanted it to be more exotic, and it was all about the marketing. So the space in the capital L is a marketing ploy.

If you did a 23andme or you know, one of these ancestry dot coms on the DeLorean genetics, your genetics, where does it trace back to? Does it originate in Romania? Yes. Is it French? Is it Italian? What is it? It’s Romanian. It originates in Romania. My grandfather’s from Romania and my grandmother was from Hungary, but she’s from the part of Hungary that eventually became part of Romania after the war.

Interestingly enough, they’re both from Romania, but technically she’s Hungarian. And that was important because my father actually spoke Hungarian. But when I say he spoke Hungarian, he knew how to say, can I have whipped cream on my hot chocolate, please? That was what he counted as speaking [00:07:00] Hungarian

Why don’t you tell us about the John DeLorean that we don’t know. Let’s talk about growing up Cat DeLorean John’s daughter. We’ve heard things about the jackknife exercises and he had a fascination with shoes and all this crazy stuff. So what are some other untold stories that you’d like to share? Oh, this one’s hard.

I talked to Jason about this before we came because I’ve shared a lot of the stories that I can remember. There’s very few stories that I haven’t told. There’s some that were jogged by reading his book, so those are still public. But I wanted to. A new one. This one’s kind of funny. It also, it just kind of encompasses the guy.

My dad was, I had a birthday party in California and I was in elementary school, so, and I was 10 years old and he threw me a birthday party at this pizza place called Regular Johns. It wasn’t quite Chucky cheese, but it was a place where you had [00:08:00] pizza parties and he hired, I remember a puppeteer, so we at least had entertainment, but he was hoping some of the moms would stick around and help him out with an entire class.

Cuz you had to invite the entire class, which was 25 students, and 10 year olds at a pizza restaurant. And nobody stayed. It was just my dad and 25, 10 year olds running around screaming and throwing things and pizza everywhere, . But to his credit, he entertained. , all of us only lost one. No, you didn’t lose any of us

It was one of the best parties that my friends had been to. Imagine being left all by yourself with a bunch of 10 year olds, and your whole life as an adult with children, you’ve had help. And when I say help, lots of help, many people, you have pain to help you deal with this situation and he [00:09:00] never. Got upset or frustrated.

He just went with it and was laughing and you never would’ve known how terrified and upset he was about the situation that he made. Very clear telling the story much later in life because he was just somebody who rolled with the punches. Fast forward to my 16th birthday, which was a giant bonfire on our property in Bedminster.

One of the kids got pulled over on the way to the party, told the officer where the party was. A few hours later, an officer shows up at my house and I go to my father and I said, dad, the cops are here. And he said, so I said, well, they wanna talk to you, . He said, well, You made it to one 30. I think it’s a pretty good party.

And he closes the door and he walks up to the field, he looks the officer in the face and he says, what the hell are you doing on my [00:10:00] property? Just like that. And the officer looks at him and says, well, sir, we got a noise complaint. He says, really, we’re in the middle of a field and I own every piece of property within three and a half miles of this very.

I told all of my tenants what was going to happen. You can’t hear the music from your car. Who the hell complained? And the officer just looked at him and he said, I didn’t think so. So if you can’t tell me who lodged the noise complaint, you’re trespassing. And I’d ask you to please get off my property.

Now we won’t talk about whether or not there was alcohol and teenagers involved in this situation, but the officer did have to vacate the premises because the local Bedminster police were there monitoring the whole thing. , that was kind of the guy that he was. He was a little bit on this side of, eh, let’s have some fun.

And, you know, and he, uh, rolled with the punches and he just [00:11:00] was a good dad. A good dad who never let you see him falter, I guess. And through pretty good birthday parties. So your dad from the outside, all of us see him as this strong striking figure, very assertive, very confident. Was he able to pass that on to you and instill confidence?

Raising daughters, especially many, many years ago was different than it is now. Right? We treat all kids as equals. We want to give them all the possible opportunities, but we still want to maybe give a little extra to the girls out there. So what did your dad instill in you? He never treated me differently because I was a.

Never allowed me to believe that I should be treated differently because I was a girl. He understood how difficult it was going to be in the world that I came from and the world we still lived in. To be able to have a mind like I did and be able to [00:12:00] define yourself in science and technology and engineering, it’s a big deal.

Women in STEM is a big deal. There weren’t a whole lot of us, and there was a lot of things that I had to face that weren’t so pretty. One of the biggest things that he did was he never allowed me to be treated differently or feel different. He didn’t even compensate for it. You know when you’re compensating for it and you can tell you’re compensating.

He literally just treated me the same. He fostered a true nothing is impossible. Mentality in me. There were no questions that couldn’t be answered, or obstacles that couldn’t be overcome if we just figured out a way. Engineers don’t see walls or problems, they see puzzles that need to be solved. The biggest thing he did, and so this is key.

This is something that I actually believe that I failed in some way to provide to my children in the way that he did for me. So I’ve [00:13:00] reflected a lot on this exact question he provided for me opportunities to succeed and to fail. and to succeed from those failures. He allowed me opportunities to make mistakes and to see that those mistakes were not life-ending, that they led to new knowledge and understanding.

He did this by exposing me to as many things as he can, as many opportunities as he. Jason used to joke at me. You did everything. Like I was making up the fact that I did everything. And then he realized I was not just saying I played the flute and the piano and the guitar and the drums, and I skated and played basketball and played soccer and and did all of these things.

No, I did all of these things because he got me voice lessons and ice skating lessons and horseback riding lessons and tennis lessons took me as many places as I could go. [00:14:00] And not everybody has that opportunity to pay for all these things that I had. But what we do have is the opportunity to give our children the chance to succeed and fail on their own merit.

You can go get them a little keyboard and allow them to learn an instrument and to face how difficult it is to learn how to read music. To instill the confidence in our women and our men and our non-binary people, we have to give them opportunities to understand what it feels like, the intrinsic motivation that comes with hard work, paying off, and the understanding, the support, that when they fail, you’re gonna be there to help guide them.

That they’re not going to catch on fire, that their world is not gonna end. That’s what he taught. So your dad dreamed big, I mean, the DeLorean, the vehicle was a dream realized in some aspects. But for you, what were his aspirations? What were his dreams? Did he want you to go into [00:15:00] the automotive industry or did he have other plans?

He wanted me to do what made me happy. No matter what it was. He taught me that same thing I told my kids. If you wanna pump gas, and that’s what makes you happy, I support you. I will support you till you can support yourself. If you wake up every single day excited to go pump gas, why? Because you are going to be successful in life and happy.

You will wake up every day thinking about how to make your customers have a better gas pumping experience. So you’ll invent a better gas pump or you’ll own a bunch of gas stations, but it doesn’t matter how much money you make, as long as you can live, you are going to have a much more fulfilled life if you’re happy doing what you wanna do.

He had a lot of things that he wanted for me. He really, really, Really wanted me to be a famous actress, really badly , and he supported that. I loved acting. I had a lot of fun. I [00:16:00] wasn’t so keen on the fame part of it. And so that was when I was like, yeah, you can’t do one without the other, so we’re just go ahead and not do that.

But he was very, very careful to support anything I wanted to do. He wanted me to find my own way. Unfortunately, he gave me so many experiences and so many opportunities and so much background in things. I literally could have done almost anything I wanted to do. And then that became a problem because you can’t decide what to do.

And then I just kind of did what came my way, which was a pretty cool job in computer. So let’s talk a little bit more about the DeLorean legacy and the website that goes along with it. So when someone visits the DeLorean Legacy Project website for the first time, what would they expect to see there? Is this a time capsule?

Is this a memorial? Is this an homage? What’s the experience like? It’s sort of like a digital museum, and maj is a good statement. What I [00:17:00] wanted to provide to the community is a place that people could find the positive impacts that my father has had on this world. And that starts with. The high dramatic and no more old ladies going off Cosmics , and it goes all the way through to the DMC 12, which has this story of inspiration, which inspired the Dolorean Legacy Project.

What you should hope to find are the stories that inspired others, the accomplishments that my father has had throughout his life. We’ll have all of his patents stories collected from myself and family members that help show you the man we knew and the things that you won’t find anywhere else, and a place where you can hear the stories of the people whose lives he touched and inspired because the owners are why I’m here.

The owners are why I started this. Their [00:18:00] stories about how when they first saw the car or heard his story right from Pontiac through the D M c, people’s lives have been changed and impacted in. Drastic and dramatic ways that are incredible from people becoming humans who rescue other humans, to finance managers, to mechanics, art directors, you name it.

They’re inspired by this car and their lives are changed. And how amazing is that? Decades after he’s passed on, he still inspires people’s lives through what he’s done. So this is what that is. This is to help maintain that inspiration, to share it, to collect it, to give it back to the people who kept this legacy alive for so long, and give them what they’ve always asked for.

A place somewhere that people can find the truth, the real story. The positive impact and what this car, his other [00:19:00] cars, his whole story, what it means to all of the people who have been inspired by him over the years. That’s a very powerful statement for sure. And visiting the website myself and looking at everything that’s there, turning pages going, I didn’t know that was a thing.

I didn’t know that was a thing. That’s pretty cool, to be honest with you. Your dad comes up more often than not even on this. , and it’s almost surprising when you go back and listen to the 150 plus episodes that are out there, how many times DeLorean comes up in conversation. It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about.

It’s just absolutely amazing. So I think what you guys are doing and what you’re putting together and the pieces that you’re collecting, whether it’s from the family side, from the fan base, from the archives, it’s an absolutely mammoth undertaking to collect all this stuff. But in addition to that, it’s something, to your point, that needed to have been done years ago.

You know what’s funny is that that. I didn’t know that. I can’t tell you how many times that keeps happening to me during this whole [00:20:00] project. So for instance, I don’t know if you know about Grand Prix of America and Malibu Grand Prix. So my childhood was spent at the arcade and Malibu Grand Prix was a huge part of my childhood.

We were there all the time and I found out they stole that from him. That’s crazy. , my father invented. That was his thing. Wow. Oh my gosh. I found this out because there’s a guy whose father owned one of the tracks and he’s restoring the cars and he’s reconnecting with his father’s story. And he reached out to me and he said, did you know this?

I went, no, I didn’t know this. Oh my gosh. And it ties to my cousin and my uncle Jack. And so I contacted my cousin and she’s like, oh yes, I have all that grand PR of America stuff. So now we’re on a whole journey of reconnecting. It’s incredible. 20 years after my father died, I get to relive his life in a way that you couldn’t even imagine.

It’s incredible . [00:21:00] Some people that aren’t as deep into it would probably be shocked to realize that your dad didn’t stop designing cars after the DMC 12. There were several prototypes and concepts and vehicles after that, and it’s just like, Wow. Like, did you know that? And those are the kinds of things that you do find on the website and lots of internal documentation as well that I found fascinating.

Interestingly enough, there was a scopic kinetic engine that my father and I designed together. I had a poor man’s patent on it. Mike still have that somewhere. I do believe that it ended up having something to do with a whole mass purge when my daughter was born, but I do still know my patent attorney, so I am going to get in touch with him and find out if he has it.

He was inventing engines and he had a car company right after his court case was over. Immediately after his court case was over, he and Fred Dallas had a new car company in Louisiana, had a whole factory to [00:22:00] actually build cars. It was a done deal. Something happened, but he was just going and going and going constantly, always trying to bring back his car company.

He believed in what he wanted to do and he didn’t wanna see it. Wasn’t about him. It was about doing what was right. It was a little about him because he was pissed off that they just wouldn’t stop . He wrote a book called the GM Repair Manual, and it was all about how GM made the mistake of creating Saturn instead of investing in their existing line.

If they had just invested 25 cents more per truck in the cloth interior of their work trucks, then the cloth would last the lifetime of the truck and they’d have better customer satisfaction. I remember I said to ’em, I said, why not do that? He said, 25 cents per truck times millions of trucks is a lot of money.

Still didn’t make sense to me because add the 25 cents to the cost of the truck , [00:23:00] but that’s not the way it works. He was always trying to do something and reinvent himself and come back and he never, never gave up. He never stopped dreaming until the very end. He was trying to create a golf course. I have all the plans.

We’re gonna put him up soon for Lamington Estates golf course. The whole golf course was planned out. He invented soda pop in shoes and maglev trains and a tennis racket. Apparently my husband’s liked. Did you know your dad invented a tennis racket? No. I didn’t know he invented, he invented a tennis racket, apparently.

A whole new tire manufacturing process, all that stuff. Who knew? Right? Who knew? You know what you said about. His continued work after the fact, and even some of that consulting back to gm, whether they wanted it or not. , it’s rather ironic in the sense that his first book, which he didn’t write, but he dictated, and we’ll probably talk about this on a subsequent episode.

I’ve read it on a clear day. You can see General [00:24:00] Motors. I’ve said this before on a previous episode, there are nuggets of knowledge in that book that are still valid and very poignant. Even today, nearly 45 plus years later. He wrote that in the seventies. You know, it was published in the eighties, all that.

But it’s just an incredible read and the insight into his mind and how he saw not only the automotive world, but the American business world. You sit there and you read it and you go, he’s right. He’s right. Nothing’s changed in 45 years. He’s still right. , . So I don’t know that, you know, he necessarily wanted to be right.

You know, a lot of us want to be right. We all have that inner need, but he’s right up there, at least in my opinion, with other visionaries like Ayaka, like Bob Lutz, like other people that stood back and said, look guys, there’s another way to do. Just listen to me for a second. And sometimes that plays out okay.

And other times, you know, we, we suffer silently and, and come up with alternatives. , [00:25:00] it’s very interesting cause I haven’t actually read all of on a clear day yet. That’s what I’m actually reading now. I did just finish up to the Hoffman part of his book for the first time, and when I read it I realized something incredibly profound.

My career has mirrored. Only in information security right up to retiring at 44 to go do my own thing, . But it’s been incredible to understand that I am my father in so many ways, and one of them was. I was a hacker at a Fortune 100 financial institution. Pretty cool job. My whole performance plan had a non-management track.

I had been a manager, I’d been a senior leader, and I had decided I no longer wanted to do that, and my stepfather had asked me then, how do you succeed? I said, well, I woke up one day and I had four job offers in two days. One of them was my dream job. I wake up every day, sometimes at seven 30 and [00:26:00] decide I’m just gonna go to work cuz I’m excited to do it.

I think I have succeeded because I enjoy what I do and I haven’t worked a day since I started my job. . What happened after that was I was able to define myself in a specific way where I said, this is who I am and this is who I’m gonna be. Take it or leave it. Because I was so sought after as an employee and what that allowed me to do was be the one people got to blame for doing the right thing.

I found a way to. impact the change that I wanted to see by offering people an essentially a sacrificial lamb to blame for not having to do the wrong thing, to still behave in the way that things were always done, or to just be able to kind of get around some of these things that were always done a certain way.

There’s a new way to do it. Kat says, so , and it made me very excited [00:27:00] to read on a clear day for the very reasons that you were just describing it, going, oh my gosh, I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I can’t wait because I really do wanna get into his mind after working, especially in the banking industry and seeing a highly regulated corporate environment, and there are reasons why it functions that way.

I believe that part of what was missing from his perspective on business and how it functions in the way that he saw was so incorrect is the change management risk management process. That exists, that has to exist in order to prevent catastrophic failure. Now there are better ways to go about addressing it.

A lot of his ideas encompassed what would’ve brought us to the next level of corporate reform and a lot of things that would’ve led to what is now in technology, like the IT l processes, the things that allow us to function in a more dynamic way in corporate environments. In reality, a lot of his problems with what was going on in corporate [00:28:00] America, aside from the politicking, Jason calls it tiny PP syndrome.

Is it for everybody though? Like it’s just you feel smaller than everybody else, and then you aren’t willing to give up whatever piece of your control that you have. He wanted that to stop where he failed in his approaches. You’re not gonna get it to stop. You need to stop trying to get it to stop and understand how to function within its malfeasance.

Its malfunctioning. A lot of growing up, John DeLorean’s daughter was being able to understand, he was able to impart on me even though he was taken from me when I was just starting my career. So I was in my early twenties, mid twenties, late twenties. Sorry. The whole birthday thing. That’s a funny story.

Asked me sometime about how, I didn’t know how old I was when I married my. . That’s a good one. . Um, yeah. Anyway, I was in my twenties when my dad died. You aren’t really an [00:29:00] adult and have formed your whole adult life yet, but I was able to learn from him. He still allowed me to take what he had, his knowledge and build upon it, and I still was able to take that to the next level.

And he did that because later in life he understood that he wasn’t going to beat them at the game, and he taught me to let it go. He taught me to understand what I called knowing your animal. In the corporate environment, in the business world, you’re always gonna come across somebody who’s gonna upset you for whatever reason.

They’re gonna be lazy, unreliable, angry, mean all whatever. The thing is, is you can’t control that. You can’t control that they’re lazy or mean or uh, whatever. You can’t control how it impacts you. As long as you know that maybe they’re not lazy, they’re just unreliable to you, and you don’t know why. Maybe they have like 18 kids at home and a sick mom and all this other stuff going on that you have no insight into, and you just are angry at them because they can’t [00:30:00] dedicate their entire life to sitting in front of a computer like you can.

I learned to let it go and to look at what they were saying as to why they can’t meet my needs. How can I get you to still meet my needs and not fight you? . That’s what I learned from my dad and his approach and how I was able to take it to the next level and where I see his fallacies in his approach were.

But I believe he saw that too and he taught me to look at it differently than he did. Very grateful to him for that. One of the best parts about growing up as his kid. Well, her audience probably needs to take a deep breath after all this, right? So why don’t we, sorry. Yeah. Deep, super deep. Sorry, . So why don’t we lighten the mood a little bit with some break fix, pin stop questions.

So of all the cars your dad created, which is your personal favorite, this could be going back to the Packard days, his time at Pontiac, the DMC 12, everything before after enduring, or is there something else that we don’t know about that you really, really liked? My car. [00:31:00] Oh, that’s a Firebird WS six from the look of it.

Yes. 1998 Ws six, my car. I fell in love with this car. When I saw it in a magazine. I saw the ad. It said to a bug, it’s a 350 horsepower blender. I lived in New York City. I couldn’t get one. He called an old Pontiac dealer of his to actually have one procured for me in black, because that’s what I wanted. I couldn’t get a manual, but I did get black.

When I brought it home, he walked around it and gave it a look that only now I can appreciate as a father of this car. He sat in it in the driver’s seat. He looked at me and he said, I named this car. Did you know that He was so proud of this car? It was so beautiful to him. He said they did a really good job with it.

That’s my favorite. Next 66 Tri power g t O. So you brought up something interesting because it’s a thing in the enthusiast community to name one’s car. It’s very prevalent in the Volkswagen community that all Volkswagens have names. So I’m [00:32:00] wondering, did your dad’s first DeLorean, it bears his name, your family name, but did he have a name for the first DeLorean?

Hmm. I wonder, I never asked my father what the names of his cars were, but every vehicle I have has always had a name, and I wanna say that’s because he taught me to name my vehicle. I will have to ask if anybody knows. I recently got back in touch with the caretaker of our farm growing up for 15 years.

His son was my best friend. He took care of my father’s DeLorean. I posted the picture on Facebook so I can ask him, did dad have a name for his cars . So that brings me to another all-time favorite pit stop question, which is, What’s the sexiest car of all time? The concept Mako shark Corvette. Ooh, that’s a really good answer.

You’re the first person to bring that car up. I actually got to see the actual concept car once. My first car was a Morgan. My next car was a Mercedes, but the first car I picked out that was [00:33:00] mine was a Z 28. And there was only one guy who was allowed to work on it at the Corvette connection in Van Nuys.

And one day he called us up and he said he had the concept car to be worked on at the shop, and we got to go down and actually see it. And it is just as gorgeous as all of the pictures. That is why my zero six is my favorite, that body style. Actually looks a lot like the Mako shark and I have it in the gray.

Which generation? Zero six. C5. C6. C7. So now I gotta ask you the opposite of that question, which is, what’s the ugliest car of all time? The Dale. Oh wow. You’re two for two tonight. Well, it’s not even a real cars. So we, we could probably have a whole episode on what your dad thought about the Dale, if he met Elizabeth Carmichael, like all that fun stuff.

I do have another question though, because oddly enough, a Pontiac product does come to the rescue of this question every time we ask it as an answer. And that’s [00:34:00] the Aztec. So I’m wondering what did your dad think about the Aztec as a Pontiac? Man, I love the Aztec. Oh my God, love the Pontiac. I wanted one so badly.

I can’t tell you what he really thought of it, because I really liked that stupid car . It was the most ridiculous, terrible suv and I loved it so much because of the stupid camper that came with it. And I love camping. And that marketing campaign got me and. Totally called me out on it. , it was not a great car, and he was somewhat vocal on the fact that it was not a great car because I did not get one, which means he very much convinced me not to get one, and I wanted one very badly, unless there was a very good reason to not own it.

That was safety or reliability or something [00:35:00] related. He would not convince me not to do something just because he didn’t like it. He had to have a good enough reason. It could have been poorly engineered, but still, then he’ll just say it’s poorly engineered. And leave it at that. He was very careful not to try and make us into the people he wanted us to be.

He wanted us to be individuals. If you visit the DeLorean Legacy website, there’s lots of really cool stories on there. You had a vlog for a while telling some really intimate backstory, some funny ones too. And it, and it reminds me of the story of the banana yellow n s NSX that your dad had and being pulled over and fleeing the pops by pulling in the garage and all this kind of fun stuff.

And it made me wonder, your dad was in the car world. He was the godfather of the muscle car. You know, with the introduction of the GT O and all that, and even the DeLorean, the DMC 12 itself is a sports car. My question is, did your dad do any racing or was he in the motor sports world in any way? I actually had to ask Jason this question because I assumed my dog raced around with us on [00:36:00] motorcycles and in his cars and all this stuff, but.

It was something that I actually wondered not too long ago, and he’s been doing a lot of the background research while I talk to people. Cuz if I’m doing the research, I can’t talk to everybody. And yes he did. He was very close with Smokey Munich. I’m sure he raced around with him quite a bit, but he raced with Roger Penske, he did cart racing.

He started the Grand Prix of America. That whole thing was his whole deal. I don’t think that he was necessarily a race car driver himself. However, I bet Roger Penske would know . He raced around in lots of different things, whether or not he participated officially in racing, not. . I think the other question people would like to know, especially in the DeLorean enthusiast world, you know, they always start their emails or si sign their emails, hello from, or signing off from VIN number 1, 2, 3, 4, or whatever it is.

Do you own a [00:37:00] D M C 12 and what’s the vin? I don’t, but I am going to build my own first DeLorean. So I was going to have a DMC 12. Don Steger was going to build me an Ls D M C. Unfortunately, he passed away before I made that a reality. Now there’s a few different ways that I am, might just come about my own DeLorean.

My first one, however, is very likely going to be A J C D. Ooh. So let’s expand upon that. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about it? So the model JZ D came to me because of the DeLorean Legacy project, angel Guerra. Contacted me and he told me, Hey, I designed this car as a tribute to your father.

It’s a 40th anniversary version of the original D M C 12. He took X’s original designs and [00:38:00] documentation, and he applied modern day design principles to it. So he took the exact design and. . If he were to design this car today, what would it look like? And then he had to change some things to accommodate the intakes for the electric engine and that sort of stuff.

So there are some things that were changed because it was a different type of engine in the car overall. The car that you see that was designed, the model, J Z D, is intended to be an exact modern version of what the car would’ve been if Shero had designed it today. It came to be, I was going to be writing this book.

I was trying to figure out how to reconnect with all the fans and gathered their stories. Angel came to me with this car and then said, by the way, I have this website, gloria legacy.com. At the time I was trying to register, DeLorean legacy.com got pretty upset because it was. , it was parked. There was nothing on it, and I was told it was probably [00:39:00] purchased to prevent it from being used by anybody else.

So as I’m being upset about this, angel says, oh, I have this website, and I wanted to create a place where people could write letters to your dad and tell ’em what he meant to them. I said, are you kidding me? Because that’s kind of what I’m trying to do. Let’s do this thing together, , and he gave me the website, which Alan Portillo had designed, the original one and the renderings that were on the car.

And as we started to just connect with people and go through all of this, everybody said, let’s build the car. I said, well, you know, I’m working on this engineering program and maybe we can build the car to promote this engineering program. What if we built the car? Maybe we do a show where we record us building the car for the engineering program.

And all of a sudden people started to come from all over. I have people in the automotive industry that I love your dad. I have a manufacturing plant. Let’s go ahead and let’s make it, I know [00:40:00] how to make body dies. Let’s do it. I worked for your father and went on Tony V. He had a manufacturing at Chrysler.

He wants to work with us. We’re gonna contact the original prototype house and work to build it there. And then I have Bill Collins sending me people to work on the engines and the rest of it is being built with the help and the energy and the ideas of the fans because all of this is because of all of you and is happening.

With all of you, and I sort of am letting that be the driver of it. The car is being built to fund the engineering program. What is core to what needs to be done is that it must be something that helps to change the world in a positive way and keep the momentum of the DeLorean Legacy Project to provide these opportunities to people.

The engineering program’s going to allow high school students to be a part of the car manufacturing and engineering process. It’s gonna make kids excited about making cars [00:41:00] and it’s gonna bring some of my father’s ideals and principles. To the automotive industry and help fund the research that allows everybody to make cars that are more reliable, fuel efficient, safer, and more durable, and the things that were important to him.

And because I want it to be a nonprofit car company, it’s kind of happening in a way I never anticipated everybody. Everybody wants to be a part of it. The Jay-Z B is this iconic representation of the inspiration that my father is to the world and I’m gonna use it to make my dream happen, which is to change the world one person at a time through mentorship and opportunity.

What you just described with the STEM program and the high schoolers, that’s part of the John Z DeLorean Automotive Engineering Program. Yes. And that backs into the John z DeLorean Foundation as well, the nonprofit organization that you were mentioning. What other components are inside of that, and who are some of the beneficiaries of the nonprofit?

We have a [00:42:00] cool little mission statement. DeLorean Legacy Foundation understands that everyone has a dream, but not everyone has the tools to achieve it. The goal of the foundation is to bridge the barriers to equal opportunity and access to fulfilling careers across multiple employment sectors through innovative and thoughtful approaches to education and community support.

The idea is we’re starting with a teen center and this automotive engineering program, it’s going to encompass all of stem. It’s starting with automotive engineering because that’s what’s available to. . That was what was inspired by my daughter’s boyfriend who had to choose between auto shop and engineering in the two vocational schools.

We hope to build this out and we want to bring opportunity to communities that will allow people to have those dream careers be successful because they’re passionate about what they’re doing. Not every school district and not every system has the ability and the freedom to design these [00:43:00] programs or the ability to partner with corporations.

We would love to partner with. Major automotive brands who want to allow us to help fund their research and development through these high school programs. I’ve worked with these STEM kids when I was at my financial institution in these award programs that we sponsored these students, they were 16 years old.

One was winning the National Intel Science Competition. Another was Sensit sizing a new protein at Cornell University, and another was graduating high school, owned her own app company and was making prosthesis for other people at 16. These kids can help design better cars and cut the cost of research and development for the major manufacturers, as well as lead to rewarding careers in these fields.

We want to help provide these opportunities. Preserve land that can be used to study, to create scientific nature, preserve study, [00:44:00] climate science, whatever we need to do to innovate in this world that we’re in now that we can leverage this wonderful name. That my father gave me this incredible community, all of this inspiration to help people right now at a time when couldn’t we all just use just a little bit more of it?

Like us, you’re East Coast base. So where is the foundation gonna be headquartered out of, I wanna say Greenville, New Hampshire, because that’s where our mill is, but. I stopped because I currently live in Antrim, New Hampshire, and that was not a mistake. Antrim, I learned when buying this house and Googling the sign on the barn is where the car was built in Ireland.

Ooh. The Irish time says the first 10 cars rolled off the line in county Antrim. So I’m kind of thinking maybe it should be here. However, for now, it’s in Greenville anyway. You slice it, it’s in New Hampshire, , which is [00:45:00] pretty cool because not only do you not see a lot of car companies, East of Detroit. You definitely don’t see them in New England, so that’s pretty neat as well.

Well, that’s the foundation. There is a whole DeLorean back in Detroit aspect to this. Ooh. That we haven’t even got to. That’s a whole thing Jason’s working on. There’s a whole pitch for DeLoreans back in the Motor city, which is so cool. I, I hear the old Packard factory is still empty, so you never know.

Right. So Tony V was an apprentice at the prototype house, and the program we want to build will help high school students actually enter into these apprenticeship programs. We wanna have a sponsorship for them. So the first year of entering into the apprenticeship program, we wanna offer them a sponsorship for a cost of living.

So they have all of their basic needs met, as well as provide them the support that they need. I call it a one 800 adult, so that they have somebody that they can reach out to to ask. All of the silly questions about figuring out life. We wanna [00:46:00] give people the best opportunity for success in life overall.

So, I mean, all of this is absolutely, it’s unreal. It’s super cool. I mean, I can’t believe another car is coming to light. You know, everything you’re putting together. We get really excited about STEM programs here, especially more women in the automotive industry or in science and engineering, especially in the past.

We’ve talked with other people that are doing lunar racing as part of STEM and bringing kids into that. Another facet of this world of engineering, like we’ve talked about before, it’s even more than stem. It’s what somebody else referred to as steam. There’s a silent A in there, and that’s the artistic side.

And I wanna take this back to the beginning of this part of the segment where we were talking about the concept car. Are you building that exact car or a car based on that car? No, we’re actually going to be building angels. So Angel is going to engineer the car. For whatever we build the car for. What I mean by that is, as I [00:47:00] mentioned before, the car is a modern design based on Giros original designs, and it was modified for the electric engine.

We might not be doing an electric engine. We’re actually exploring different options as far as different combustion hydrogen and electric options. So the car may be re-engineered as far as adjusting the intakes and what needs to be adjusted for aerodynamics based on the type of drivetrain that we have in the car.

However, the car. Was designed by Angel as a tribute to my father. Changing it would not be correct. That’s his car. This project, this is all driven by the fans. It’s for the fans. I’m just here to be Spartacus . That being said, as a fan myself, of all the designs I’ve seen, angels design is true to form exactly what you’re saying when I saw that first hit and there’s other variants out there that exists and some that are more recent than others.

When I see that car I go, that’s the new [00:48:00] DeLorean. And there’s just something about it. It does scream Giro as well. And I do wanna explore the relationship between your dad and Giro in a subsequent episode because there’s a lot of mystery around that as well. How did that happen? Your dad’s a car designer, you know, those kinds of things.

But we’ll put a pin in that for now. . But it brings us to your point about doing this for the fans, doing this for the enthusiasts, bringing back the name, bringing back a car that pays homage. To use the word from earlier to your father. It really has to do with the future of the DeLorean name. What’s part of the DeLorean lifestyle?

What’s the message there and what are some of the awesome items that every DeLorean fan should probably have in your opinion? . So to me, the DeLorean lifestyle is to be who you are and be loud and proud about who you are. My dad was the maverick at gm. He wore jeans in Converse in his big corporate.

because he [00:49:00] wanted to be comfortable because that’s how he worked best. He was unapologetic for who he was. Being a DeLorean means as long as you’re doing the right thing, don’t apologize for who you are. Be who you are, be proud, be kind, thoughtful, and considerate of others. My father didn’t judge other people.

He didn’t look at anybody as flawed. He looked at everybody as simply needing just a little bit more help or different help or more support. Some people might need more tools. They might need more money. They might need more time, but they can still do it. To write them off because they can’t do it as fast or as cheaply without support is unfair.

You should allow people to follow their passions because they can innovate. It’s about believing that the people that you employ for the job that you employ them for are the ones that are the expert. In that field, trusting your team, trust [00:50:00] in the people that you hire. It’s about inspiring others and always taking the time to say hello and have compassion.

and just listen. People say, my dad encompasses this rockstar life. Mm. That dude never left his couch . He was a shut in. But if you knocked on his door like Ken Baker did once and said, Mr. Delore and I got your pizza, he’ll invite you in, eat it with them, because he likes the company. It’s about random acts of kindness just because you.

That’s what it’s about. Many of us love to sport all sorts of logoed kit. Even myself on this episode, I got my D M C T-shirt on. I’m wearing my DeLorean watch by Charlie Foxtrot, which I’ve raved about in the past. Is a gorgeous watch, by the way, reminiscent of the louvers on the back of the D M C 12 and behind you, I believe, rumored that picture is actually [00:51:00] from your dad’s office of the C 12.

Yes. So what should every DeLorean owner or DeLorean fan put on their Christmas list this year? They should put what they want. Okay, so that’s not a fair question, . That’s not the way that I work. I work the way my father does, and I’m gonna tell you that you should support the person that you most want to.

For me, I love Nick Patello and his wears. They were great to me. He gave me my wonderful sweatshirt that I’m not wearing that says DeLorean daughter. But I don’t wanna tell people what they should or should not have. I love how everybody gets really picky about the options in their car, like they had a choice.

I mean, everybody has their own thing that they love. What you should put on your Christmas list this year is one thing that reminds you the most of the time you first saw the car and why it inspired you. [00:52:00] That’s what you should put on your Christmas list this year. And for each person it’s gonna be different.

And then send that to you@deloreanlegacy.org , so you can get it up on the website, right? Yes, yes. And then send a picture and your story. For a lot of people seeing the car the first time was due to the Back to the Future franchise. So in our final pit stop question for this episode, what were your thoughts about seeing the DeLorean DMC 12 up on the big screen for the first time?

When that movie came out, everything was still very not good. We never really talked about the car. We never really talked about what happened with the car. We didn’t bring it up. Just kind of like. Thing we didn’t talk about . Oh, it came up later in life. As I got older and I turned into a teenager, we talked about it more in different ways.

Mostly what we talked about was how he felt about his workers in Ireland and how he felt about Ireland. He offered that up. [00:53:00] a lot. It just never came up. So there wasn’t really an opportunity for a relationship with the car and merchandise and . Not even that it, it’s part of the legacy it gave. Yeah, it turned a lot of things around for the DMC 12.

And so I wonder, has anybody from Hollywood reached out to you as part of this project or anything like that? Are you working with them on. No, we have plans to get in touch with some of the people that I’ve spoken to and worked with over the years through the DeLorean community like Bob Gail. I love the Back to the Future franchise itself, not so much the movies as the franchise itself, which is weird.

Realize that cause I’m one of the few people who’s not as super fan. I don’t dislike them. I’m just not as much of, I suppose I’m judging my fandom of the movies my like of the movies by the people I’m surrounded with in this community, which is probably making me feel like I’m not a fan when really I do like the movie.

It’s a big deal because it did what it [00:54:00] did for the cars, for me, how I feel about Back to the Future and the DeLorean. And first of all, I would like to publicly say, please stop fighting over the time machine versus no time machine. My father wanted people to enjoy their cars. That’s their car. I know that there might not be a whole lot of originals left, and yes, that’s very sad.

I love cars, but he wants people to love their cars. And if that’s what they want to do to love their cars, please let them love their cars. But at the very least, stop fighting with each other. We love each other. Thank you. But this movie helped bring this inspiration to so many more people. So to me, I love the fact that it gets to inspire so many more lives this way.

That’s what it means to me. On top of that, it’s not a crappy movie. It’s a great movie. It’s a great story. My husband, when he met my father, asked him how he invented the flux capacitor. My father tells him he fell off the toilet, goes right into the story. It’s iconic in and [00:55:00] of itself. What a great way to remember the car to make it iconic.

It’s just a perfect marriage of the two. But the fact that they wanted to put a Mustang in the movie, and it was Bob Gail who said it right. Doc Brown doesn’t drive an effing Mustang. They made that into a T-shirt that day. It was said, I have it. I wear it. I love it because Doc Brown, I won’t drive a Mustang.

I love Ford people, but I will never date a man who drives a Mustang. Sorry. I am an F Body girl. I was gonna say you’re a GM gal. Through and through . I drive F bodies, so I hates by proxy’s. Just the way it works. Sorry. What I love about what Back to the Future is done for the DeLorean, and my husband and I talk about this a lot because of Back to the Future being the type of movie that it is and the type of fan that it attracts.

You have a whole different [00:56:00] type of car owner in the DeLorean. They’re geeks. And yes, this is another one of those things that for some reason has become a division point. Please stop their Car people. And there’s the Geeks, and that’s what’s beautiful about the DeLorean owners. Is there a unique brand of people who are brought to the car community because of this movie?

Stop looking at it as some dividing factor. These are people who are brought into understanding things about combustion engines. They would’ve never known because they weren’t computers or robots, but because of this movie, , all of these IT people now love cars. Not that it, people don’t love cars. No. A lot of my friends, they love cars, so let me make sure I’m clear on that.

But a lot of the people in the DeLorean, they’re a different kind of car owner and that’s what makes them special and that’s what makes getting their story special and that’s what makes going to these car shows so much fun. They’re amazing. Sorry, I get very excited. , [00:57:00] you mentioned Ireland, your dad talking about that and everything as a result of the movie coming out, kind of in lieu of talking about the back of the future movie, was it a British car?

Is it considered an American car? Does it have a background like, you know, Volkswagens are German, Andro males are Italian. So what is the DeLorean? My father would be proud to tell you, it’s the first Irish car , but it is an American sports car because it’s American car company and it was. An American competitor to the Corvette, but he will tell you it is an Irish car because the Irish built it and they earned it.

It’s their car. Sort of like the Brickland built in Canada. . I’ll leave it there. And I know him and Malcolm were buddies too, so that’s a whole nother thing. Let’s just shift gears one more time here. So what’s next for you, cat? DeLorean, what’s the future hold outside of all these things you’ve already talked about?

What’s, what else is going on? I retired after 20 years. [00:58:00] I have a wonderful career in technology to focus on mentorship and teaching others and helping others. I was looking for a way to give back. I had a lot of different opportunities to do so, and you all came to me with a way to make my dream come true with my dad.

So what’s next for me is, This, I am going to focus on changing the world one person at a time and living my dream, which is to create this engineering program, which will embody all of the foundation and the engineering program are going to encompass and champion all of the efforts that my father actually had started and wanted in his.

which I found out after I had already started to pick them up myself. I learned from all the people that I’ve been connecting with, that the things that I’ve been working on are actually things he started when [00:59:00] he was alive. So what’s next for me is continuing my father’s legacy and living my dream.

With you guys, Kat, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you’d like to share that we didn’t cover thus far? Yes. I would like everybody to check out my friend Jay Ryan’s show as well. Cars and Comedy please, and then a sponsor of all of my efforts and somebody whose family to me owns Alternative Medicine Brewing in Vernon, New York.

His name is Jordan Hahn and he makes the most fantastic brew. You have to go try them and then of course, come check out our website and if anybody who wants to be part of the efforts, please do reach out. We are looking for people who want to offer connections to local people in your area that we can work with to help create some of our program.

People who want to sponsor or start the programs in their area, and [01:00:00] anybody who wants to just go out and perform random acts of kindness in the name of the project. The DeLorean Legacy Project is dedicated to extolling the positive impact of John z DeLorean and his creations on this world and those that continue to this day through his fans and owners of his cars.

The DeLorean Legacy Project’s mission is to change the world one person at a time to learn more. Be sure to check out www.deloreanlegacy.org or follow Kat on social at Cat DeLorean on Instagram, at Catherine dot DeLorean on Facebook, or at DeLorean Legacy on Twitter. That said, Kat, I can’t thank you enough for coming on this first of hopefully, DeLorean episodes here on Break Fix.

And I have to say, this is a very, a humbling experience to be talking with you and learning all these things about your dad and about your family. And I do appreciate you opening the doors and letting us take a peek inside to see what that’s all about. I love that. So for a long time [01:01:00] I had this really weird relationship with my place in this community.

I didn’t understand it. Everybody wanted my autograph. Everybody wanted to talk to me, they wanted to shake my hand, take pictures and. My parents had sex and I came out like, what did I do? Why is this a thing that I am like, so somebody came up to me at the Co Corvette Museum after the Kentucky show. She said, thank you for coming to these shows.

You humanize your father, you turn him into a real person. You give us stories that show us he was a real human. That’s when I understood my place in representing him, and that’s how I was able to really embrace my place in this community and what I can offer to all of you. These stories about who he was as a person and the insight into him as a man.

If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about gtm, be sure to check us out on www.gt [01:02:00] motorsports.org. You can also find us on Instagram at Grand Tour Motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows. You can call or text us at (202) 630-1770 or send us an email at crew chief gt motorsports.org.

We’d love to hear from you. Hey everybody, crew, chief Eric here. We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix and we wanted to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization, and our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes like this one at no charge. As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies and GTMs swag.

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