August 13, 1981 | The Courier-News (Bridgewater, New Jersey) | by CARL AYERS; Courier-News Staff Writer
Stainless steel autos filling Bridgewater lot
The first shipment of the sleek DeLorean sports cars arrived this week in Bridgewater, which will serve as the eastern distribution center for the $25,000 imports.
Brought in from Northern Ireland, the cars are lined up on the old Dooley Chevrolet lot at 385 Route 202-206 to be readied for delivery to dealers. There should be 400 on the lot by the end of the week.
The unpainted, stainless steel cars, which a spokesman admitted were made with the affluent in mind, are manufactured by John Z. DeLorean, a part-time Bedminster resident. They can hit a maximum speed of 125 mph.
DeLorean, a former high-ranking executive at General Motors Corp., shocked the auto industry eight years ago when he left his lucrative job at GM to start his own company. Another surprise came later when he obtained financial backing from the British government to help construct the company’s assembly plant in Belfast.
Last April, he and his wife, fashion model Christina Ferrare, bought the 430-acre estate of the Cowperthwaite family for $3.4 million — reportedly the highest price ever paid for a Somerset Hills residence. They live in New York and use the estate’s Lamington House as a weekend and summer vacation home.
The automobile lot in Bridgewater, which is being leased from its current owner, is the site of the firm’s Quality Assurance Center for the eastern half of the country. DeLorean could not be reached for comment, but Michael Knepper, a spokesman for the company, said the facility is being used to “make sure everything fits.” The cars get a final cars get a final check before being shipped to dealers east of the Mississippi River.
Once the facility is fully staffed, which Knepper said should be within a week, it will take about five days for a shipment of cars to be checked out before being trucked to dealers. He said he did not know how many people would work at the site.
“I would hope by the end of next week we’ll have cars being shipped out to dealers,” he said.
The center is one of two in the country, he said. The other is located in California and is the distribution point for cars being sent to dealers in the western part of the country.
He said that 8,000 of the autos have already been bought by dealers throughout the U.S., who have in turn sold their orders of the highly touted sportscar.
“Each dealer has made a minimum investment of $25,000 in equity stock in the company,” Knepper said. The dealers also had to purchase some special tools and spare parts and guarantee to sell
between 50 and 150 of the cars within the first two years they are available.The car’s black interior is a mixture of leather and vinyl. The carpet is a light shade of gray and the two bucket seats are genuine leather.
Standard equipment includes an AM-FM stereo radio and cassette player, air conditioning, digital clock and electronically controlled windows.
It has a standard 5-speed transmission; a 3-speed automatic transmission is available at additional cost. The engine, in the rear, is a V-6 built in France by the consortium of Peugeot-Rennault-Volvo.
The company says the fuel-injected engine gets 19 miles per gallon (mpg) in the city and 29.4 mpg on the highway. The automatic transmission engine gets 18 mpg in the city and 24.5 mpg on the highway.
There are 14 dealers of the DeLorean cars in New Jersey, including Autosport on Route 22 in Somerville, Knepper said. More than half of the 345 dealers across the nation are GM distributors.
The car, the only model produced by the company, has been on sale out West since June. It is now being sold only in this country, and the company is completing arrangements to make the cars available In Canada and Europe, Knepper said.
Dealers have received 12,000 orders for the cars from customers who had to deposit between $1,000 and $5,000. Knepper said the company expects to sell 20,000 cars next year. “The only problem we have is building them fast enough.” He
said people placing orders for the car might have to wait two months to a year before delivery.Knepper said the car’s “gull-wing doors” — which lift up rather than swing out — are examples of aspects of the auto that attract the people “who buy quality no matter what the price.”
Although they are not painted, the cars are “brushed stainless steel,” which gives the autos a silver color.
DeLorean left his $650,000 a year job at GM in 1973, citing the company’s growing dissatisfaction with his desire to build smaller and sportier cars.
The British government, anxious to aid the economically depressed Belfast area, offered the DeLorean Motor Co. $160 million in grants, loans and equity for the company if its production plant were built in the troubled Northern Ireland city.
The 56-year-old DeLorean and Ferrare, 30, have two children, Zachary, 9, and Kathryn, 3. One of the world’s highest paid fashion models, Ferrare was on the March cover of Harper’s Bazaar. She has also been on the cover of other top fashion magazines.
