intrigued by their vision: a high-concept design in the mass-produced quantities he had recently achieved with the Volkswagen Golf...
The scale model Randall had seen (it was epo-wood, he had since discovered, not balsa) was the first fruit of their three-way collaboration, although by the time DeLorean handed it to him the plans had already been modified. It was clear even without the benefit of a full-size prototype that the Safety Vehicle name was not going to stay the course: too awkward on the tongue – too much drag. They settled instead on DMC-12, the concluding digits a reminder to everyone involved that despite the name change the ambition of delivering a safe – and ethical – car at an affordable price remained undimmed.
Also notionally installed in Long Lake Road was Dick Brown, who had made a name for himself with Mazda, taking it from nowhere to fourth in the American export market in just two years, and whose job it was to build up a network of dealers willing to part with $25000 in advance for the rights to sell the DMC-12 at a profit to them of $4000 a car. His target was a hundred and fifty dealers nationwide in the first twelve months, hence ‘notionally installed’.
More rarely sighted still, but of even greater importance to the whole operation, was Roy Nesseth, Big Bad Roy, one of the few people Randall encountered in those circles taller than DeLorean, six-six, with the heft to go with it. Roy had started out as a dealer himself – still had an interest out in the ‘field’, as Randall quickly learned to call it, Wichita direction, and still had some of the abrasiveness with which members of that trade were traditionally associated, unfairly you might think, unless you had actually met Roy. The more other people complained about his manner – and other people did complain about it, a lot – the more it seemed DeLorean valued him. He it was who coined the nickname, and revelled in using it at every opportunity. ‘Most times you run up against a wall you are able to find a way around it. Other times you have no option but to go straight on through. Those are the times you need Big Bad Roy.’
DeLorean talked at times like a football coach (he had a share in the San Diego Chargers) deploying his specialists according to the play. Roy was his gunner, bearing down on the opposition’s punt returner, putting the fear of God into him. It wasn’t always pretty, but you couldn’t argue with the results.
As for Randall he was, to borrow from another code, a classic utility player. Whatever needed doing, he did it. Technically he was in the employ of Tom Kimmerly and the DeLorean Manufacturing Company, which controlled the DeLorean Motor Company, but at any given moment of any given day in the years that followed he could be acting for the John Z. DeLorean Corporation, the DeLorean Sports Car Partnership, the DeLorean Research Limited Partnership, or the Composite Technology Corporation, whose function it was to oversee development of the Elastic Reservoir Moulding process for the car’s body.
JZDC
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DRLP
CTC
DMC squared
Almost from the start there were accusations – Randall’s old pal Anderson ran one of the first in the Daily News – that as much energy and imagination was expended on moving capital from company to company as on designing and developing sports cars. DeLorean invoked Preston Tucker again, and his ill-starred attempt in the post-war years to break the Great Triopoly of Chrysler, GM and Ford. Tucker’s problem wasn’t so much that he had only one basket: he had only one egg . He left himself too get-at-able.
Besides, walk into any boardroom, or barroom, anywhere in the country and what else would you hear but talk of investment opportunities, rates of return, tax-saving options, making money work ? Some made it work harder, and more effectively, than others, but not to have made it work at all was not just unprofessional, it was close to un-American.
The state of