DeLorean Legacy Project #3 – Tony Vallelunga

Tony Vallelunga - Senior Director of Manufacturing and Quality for DNG Motors

With well over 40 years experience in the heart of American auto-making in Detroit, our guest has seen it all.

Contact: Tony Vallelunga at Visit Online!

  

• How did you start your career? What ties do you have with the DMC-12? Where did you go from there?
• How has the manufacturing line changed since you started your career in the automotive industry?
• As  technology starts to replace some of the manufacturing positions, does that open up the door for other opportunities within the automotive industry?
• How did you find yourself to be the Senior Director of Manufacturing and Quality for DeLorean Next Generation?
• What gets you excited about being involved with this project?
• How do you see this program impacting both its participants and the industry?

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.

When people look at a car, they tend to immediately associate it with a brand or maybe just a family name like Fedra, Porsche or DeLorean. But in actuality, it takes hundreds of people to make a car truly come to life. From the imaginations of designers to the complex calculations of engineers and programmers down through the manufacturing process with tool and dye teams, chassis builders, as.

Assembly and quality assurance. With well over 40 years of experience in the heart of American auto making in Detroit, our guest has seen it all, and in the late seventies and early eighties, he could be seen running what was at the time, a state-of-the-art 1200 ton hydraulic press, the largest of its kind in any plan.

It was his job to take new development dyes and make them into parts for a very special build. He fondly [00:01:00] remembers getting the orders one day. Goldwing doors in stainless steel, suddenly realizing that these parts were destined for the new D M C 12. With us tonight to talk in depth about the manufacturing side of the automotive business is Tony Beluga, senior Director of Manufacturing and quality at D N G Motors.

And I’d also like to welcome back my co-host, the one and only Cat DeLorean to break fix. So welcome to you both to the show. Thank you for having. Yeah. Thank you for having us. So Tony, like all good break fix stories. Everybody has a superhero origin. So talk to us about the who, what, when and where of Tony v, the Petrolhead.

How did it all get started for you? Did you come up from an auto making family or did you get interested in cars as a kid? And take us on the journey into how you started working in Motown. Well, the journey started when I was a kid. My, uh, father. I had a 1957 [00:02:00] Chevrolet. It was fairly new at the time, but he taught me how to do maintenance on it.

But when I saw all the fancy styling on it, all the chrome, the bumpers on the hood and everything else, I was just in awe. I had a curiosity how mechanical things ran. You know, when I was a kid, I asked my father if I could tear apart the lawnmower engine. He said, sure, go ahead. From there, my curiosity was how do we make a fender?

How do we get a quarter panel? How do we make cars? What’s involved and it just bloomed from there. So I’ve heard tell stories of you grow up in the greater Detroit area. There’s certain schools that everybody goes to. I even met somebody other day that said, you know, I went to school at the same place that John DeLorean went.

Not the same year, but the same place. They’re all sort of involved in the automotive world at some point and in some way, especially being in Detroit. How did you find yourself coming up through the system and then where did [00:03:00] you end up? Like we know John’s story, right? He started at a Packard and then he moved to other places and so on down the line.

So. My journey started in school, actually junior high. They taught us how to do household wiring, wood shop, metal shop and so on. Carried through high school. I was in on all those classes. I also had three years of auto mechanics. You had auto one, auto two, and then you had a technical course in your third year of high school, gear you to whatever you wanted to do after high school.

So I thought about, do I wanna work on cars? Or do I wanna build cars? Right. I had an opportunity, well, I chose to build instead of being a mechanic, then I had the fascination of manufacturing. Now, I was just always so curious. Well, being in a Motown here, back years ago, there was a. Almost a tool and die shop in every corner.

I remember the story of Tucker, right? He was doing tool and die out of his shed. Yes, [00:04:00] yes. That’s just how it starts, right? There’s all kinds of manufacturing around here. Everything you can imagine. I just always wanted to stick with standings. I had a curiosity how you take a flat piece of metal and turn it into a fender.

It’s truly magical. So is that something you went to school for? Is that you learned it on the floor of the factories? I learned it on the floor of the factory. There is some schooling, some taught on the floor. It was your choice, however you wanted to pursue it, but most everything I learned was on the floor.

Even some of your small shops will have classes and still get credits through whatever classes they give you. You get college credits. You could either go part-time to college, work full-time, or however you wanna do it, but most everything I learned was on the floor. You know, you learned by doing, weren’t you in an apprenticeship program, much like we want to help kids go into when you first started?

Absolutely. You know, the apprenticeship program. , you have to have four years of college or eight years [00:05:00] experience. So it still will get you the job you need, but it’s just how you wanna pursue it. So where did you cut your teeth at? M msi, prototype and engineering. Right where? Where I met John. That was the start of it.

I had worked previously in. Smaller, so-called job shops, went over there and it was a perfect opportunity. We did everything there from woodwork to plaster, to a foundry, everything you could imagine for manufacturing everything you ever needed. Just a golden opportunity I had at the time. So this would’ve been circa the late sixties, early seventies, then mid seventies.

So John had started to have some gray coming in right at that point. So what was your first impression of him? A walking saint. Uh, as only always I can describe it, right. He was the man of the day. Would you say his reputation preceded him, especially all the work that he had done at Pontiac, at, uh, Studebaker and Packard, et cetera, and so on?

Yes. He did very well [00:06:00] for him. We did whole type work, but we knew when John came through, we knew who he was. We knew that it wasn’t just any car, it was a galling car, and not only was it a galling car, but it was made outta stainless steel. Totally, totally awesome. Awesome experience to be able to do that because it was unheard of, did stainless steel before, but never to this extent.

They put stainless steel trim on cars or gas tanks were made outta stainless steel back in the day. To have a gall wing car, stainless steel was the most awesome thing in the world. I knew when we were doing this, it was the most awesome thing in the world. And if you can master stainless, you can master anything else.

What an experience. You never forget it. So let’s walk that back and unpack it a little bit. It’s a bit of a marvel to see how you can take a flat sheet of steel or even stainless steel or aluminum or something else and suddenly it turns into a, so for our audience that’s kind of scratching their heads going, well, how does that exactly work?

[00:07:00] Can you kind of talk us through it, maybe boil it down and make it easy for folks to underst. Start with the designer, right? They give us the blueprint back then we turned them into wood models, copied them in plaster. We would do a dye development. So to, in order to take apart, we just can’t take the exact shape, say, Hey, we’re gonna stamp it out.

We have to develop curves and shapes for stretch and form to eliminate wrinkles, right? So we call that draw dye development. So the guys who do this can basically back then look at a. See where we need to stretch it, where they know where the wrinkles are gonna come in. So they develop the dye along with the part.

Once they do that, they copy it out a plaster, and then they pour the dye. We’ll say for prototype we use cur site and curly’s a soft alloy. They can be formed and shaped quickly. And once they pour the dye, we had a tracer machine that would cut off the plaster to cut the right [00:08:00] patterns in the. They pour it, clean it up a little bit.

We throw it in the press, make parts. It’s simple in a way and the way it is. Once you do the dye development and it’s operational, when you get it running, it’ll run forever. But you have to create tool and dye for every panel and component that you’re pressing out, right? So there’s a left fender and a right fender and the doors and the, the quarter panels, and the trunk and the hoods and all that kind of stuff.

It’s a pretty big operation to basically punch out all the sheet metal of a car. Right. Huge, very huge. Yes. So are chassis also stamped out or sections of them? Yes, absolutely. Yes. Everything is to describe how big a facility would be to build. a single car, not talking like all of Chevy’s, different models that they have.

Cause you have to have tool and die for every single thing, which boggles my mind when you see car designers changing little things every year. It’s like you have to re-up all of your tool and die every time you make a change. How big are these [00:09:00] facilities just to create one car, something like the DeLorean DMC 12.

Yes, just massively the dyes alone. So, uh, for each dye or each part, there’s a checking fixture. So if you could imagine all these parts that are in a car all have fixtures to check a line. It’s, it’s this way. Huge way, way huge. How many different tools and dye are there on average to a vehicle, regardless of its size versus, you know, we’ll, we won’t get into convertible versus minivan.

Reach part on the. It takes three to six dyes to make. Usually your outer skins will take three to four, but any other complex parts takes at least six dyes. So that’s a layered approach. Then you use the first dye to make an initial shape, the second one, to then stretch that shape and another, and continue from there.

So you have a draw dye, right? It’s the initial form dye. Once that’s developed, the rest of the dyes are pretty fundamental, right? You have a restrike trend. Maybe a little reform, but the most important part [00:10:00] is to get the first Draw Dye developed. In the instance of talking about the original DeLorean.

Why is stainless so much harder to work with than a lot of the materials we use today? It’s tough material. We look for ductility, and that’s the ability to stretch without breaking stainless steel is. It has less ductility, so it takes more work in the dye to get it to form certain shapes. It just takes longer.

Regular steel has more formability to it than stainless. For most people that do tool and die work, stainless steel is rare. Most people will have a learning curve on it. Until you get it. The folks at Kohler and Delta know how to do it when they’re making sinks. Right. But they’re all square, so it’s not too bad.

Well, right, but you have, in a car, you have all kinds of exotic shapes. Right? Exactly. And remember, for most manufacturers even, well, today we build cars at one a minute. So these [00:11:00] things have to. If you couldn’t imagine all the dyes, right? Well, we can’t run ’em all the time. We have to dye set ’em all the time right in, in various presses.

So it’s, it’s a huge process. It really is. Is there heat involved in the pressing process On rare occasions, yes. Mostly it depends on whether they try for high volume. Try not to. Right. But for exotic shapes, yes. Sometimes there is heat involved. A little bit of persuasion, right? Yes. Yes. Uh, well, yeah, it’s very important.

Right? You were talking about the deductibility of the metal. There’s also the malleability to the metal, right? The its ability to fold without breaking as well. Yeah. How different are the dyes for metals versus those of, let’s say, carbon fiber or fiberglass? Or are they the same? So for carbon fiber, right, you use a type of vacuum form to get your shape, but it still has to be cut and trimmed and holes put in and everything else, but to get your shape, yeah, it, it’s done the same way.

It’s. You got a [00:12:00] cast it get your shape. Could you use an old dye, let’s say the left front fender of a DeLorean and suddenly make it out of fiberglass or carbon fiber instead of stainless? Or do you have to make a whole new dye? Yes. It’s a different type of dye. Yes. It’s a different process. But you could use the old dye as a mold.

Yes. You, once you have the shape, yes. Yes, you, you, you, you can do that. Uh, we’ve been nerd out here, Kat, sorry, . As he’s describing all of these process. I have a picture on my desktop of the old car and the new car. So if you see me getting lost, it’s cause I’m listening to him describe doing all of these processes and thinking about how it would apply to manufacturing the new car, which is kind of what’s happened to my brain lately.

Everything goes back to manufacturing the new car. Tony’s been talking to me for quite some time now about all of the different processes that go into building a car. It’s always amazing to hear just how much goes into a car and [00:13:00] a car a minute. I hadn’t heard that. That’s staggering. Astonishing. You can’t even eat M&M’s that fast.

I mean, yeah, I know , they’re flying through these cars. So on our show we talk a lot about design and cars and how styles have changed over the years, and there’s been periods for just certain shapes. There was the wedge period in the seventies and you had all the boxy cars with round headlights in the eighties.

And going back to what you were talking about, the fifties, it was all the big fins and the swooping designs versus. The cars that came before them were very much, let’s say beetle, like to use a car analogy. Are there certain shapes that are easier or harder to manufacture than others? Absolutely. Yes. Yes, yes.

So I’m gonna guess the square cars are probably easier to make than the round ones. Uh, every shape has its own challenge. Never say never, right? Yeah. They all have their own challengers. Imagine making those fins back in the day. I can’t believe the guys that were [00:14:00] hand hammering out the old car from the thirties and forties and stuff.

I mean, that’s just masterful work in and of itself. I wonder when you look at the DMC 12 versus the D N G, and you look at their shapes, obviously they’re radically different. One inspired the other. It’s an evolution of a thought as we talked to Angel Guerrera on a previous episode. So when you look at it from.

Technical approach. You compared the two cars having worked on the original and now gearing up to tool up and die the new car. What are some of the things that you see on the new design that may pose a challenge in the manufacturing process or something you go, oh my God, this is so much easier than the early cars were.

So I, I’ll look at something and picture it in my head and I can envision how to make the dyes where to split ’em off at, right? What will work and not work. I look at the car. and I already have in my head what I would wanna do with it. I look at the shapes and I look what’s easy, what’s gonna be hard on it.

Uh, maybe if we made the hood, I would look at it and say, Hey, well [00:15:00] maybe we will have the hood shape and fenders a certain way, and this is where we will body open the hood in a certain area. Because I know in my head that we can make a die to do. And still have it look right and still be functional. The shapes, how many dies ripe and it just comes automatic to me.

So that’s what goes through my head when I look at a vehicle. I want the superpower, Tony. I wanna be able to like look at a car and just be able to pick it apart and see it. I can imagine in your head, like explodes into body panels and you can turn it around. It does. Yeah. I’ll look at it. I’ll look at a shape.

Okay, well that’s doable. And. Maybe this won’t be doable, so we’re gonna change this. And that’s just how, I think, that’s my, uh, thought process. But yeah, I could just look at it and know. But today, that’s all different. Today we have draw dye simulators that will simulate. The forming of metal in a dye right?

A certain way we are gonna tip the dye or [00:16:00] shape it. How has that improved the manufacturing process? So being able to actually use the technology before you have to put it into production, how has that improved the whole overall process? It helps most people out who don’t understand draw eyes because when they see it in a simulation, it clicks on their head.

Oh yeah. so it makes sense. But we didn’t have draw eye simulators years ago. We just knew in our head from doing usually a generic fender or a generic quarter panel or generic door. The guys on the floor know how to make that draw eye, how to develop it. It was all up in our heads, right? They knew where we needed to stretch and not stretch and hold a certain.

But today we have drawn ice simulators. They’re about 80% correct . So you’re already pretty intimate with how to stamp out the Gowin doors, right? A doors. The doors a door. But when I look at the new design, I look at that front end, [00:17:00] and as gorgeous as it is, it. , it kind of throws me for this one piece clamshell, similar to like a Viper or a Lotes lease, and with the reverse popping hood like an E 30 or a Corvette.

So do you see that as maybe one of the more challenging pieces to create on the new car? Yes, absolutely. When you look at a car and you look at all the shapes, right, do you have to remember or die in a press only run straight up and down. So when you design your die, You have to design to shape in the tip of the actual, say, we’ll say a fender right.

What has to be tipped a certain way for Backdraft angles because that press only runs per ply, right? , that’s it. We know this, so we figure out how we’re gonna get the shape. Do we need another dye to get a certain angle to kick it in? We have to remember that press and I go straight up and down. Do you think that with the advent of technology, we’re gonna lose some of what is gained [00:18:00] by somebody like you who has all the knowledge because you understand the process so intimately.

we as humans can put together much more disparate information than a computer, cuz the computer has to be told to do so. And from what you’ve been describing and from working with you, it seems as though these new simulators are going to actually start to cause some loss of innovation in this process because the masters were no longer be able to pull a car apart in their.

and figure out how to do it better. Exactly right. Yeah. It’s kinda like learning math. We didn’t have calculators years ago. You had to learn and just do it. So once you get a calculator, well you lose the ability to learn your math skills. It’s the same thing with simulators. You, you need to learn hands on to really get a grasp on it.

These simulators, they’re just aids. to help. But yeah, same thing. If you have it, then you rely on it as a crutch, but [00:19:00] it, it’s a help. It’s, it’s a tool. There’s some value in what’s learned when you have to work through troubleshoot things. My experience working with Sony, he’s able to come up with some of the most fantastic ideas and thoughts just out of the blue, because you’ll start talking about some component of the car and hearing him describe it.

I can now picture every conversation that he was picturing everything in his head and picking it apart. Just listening to this conversation. That’s a masterful skill that has to come from years of troubleshooting. Tony has talked about just some of the ways that he’s been able to. Solutions that I think have led to somebody who can understand how to change things and bring you to a new way of doing it.

Well, yeah. So I always have a saying, you learn by doing. Yep. Yes. Throw you to the wolfs and you go to work. Figure it out. Because if it’s not you, who else is it gonna be? Tony’s gonna teach me how to do it all, including forging and fire. Cause now everybody in the world wants to do that and Tony’s gonna.[00:20:00]

You can thank History Channel for that. Yeah. We have you doing a blindfold Before you know it, let’s rewind the Wayback machine for a moment. What was one of the most challenging things for you as the tool and die guy on the DMC 12? Was it the Goldwing doors or was there something else about the original car that posed, you know, a challenge that you had to kind of adapt and overcome to, uh, the doors were the most challenging, the hoods.

That was the easy part. Well, isn’t there all controversy over that too, depending on when it was built? The hoods are actually different or, so you guys change something flap or No flap. I, I, I lose track of . Right, right. So what we call those engineering changes, , or, or developments along the way. So yeah, those are the things we do.

Right. We either put a flap in or no flap when the incremental changes are. On modern cars, on the DeLorean, what happens to the old dyes? Are they able to be modified, to be repurposed? Are they just gotten rid of what [00:21:00] happens to them? No. So small changes, we can modify the D. It’s fairly easy. Yeah. There’s no reason to make for a small change to make a whole new dino.

Not unless you have a radical change. You know where it makes sense when they get rid of a model year. So the Corvette, you know C, so C. body dies. What happens to those? Do those get destroyed so that nobody can make them? Or do they get sense as somebody who can then continue to make them aftermarket?

Yes. What happens to the old body dies is they still have to make replacement parts for 10 years afterwards. So for replacement parts, usually before the end of the run, they’ll try to stock up the w. For service parts. But after that, they’ll have another company just run service parts. That’s all they do.

They’ll just run service parts for the 10 years for whatever, you know, damage rust. And that’s the way it is after the 10 years. Well, I’d have to say, what’s the [00:22:00] demand of the vehicle? Right. Perfect example, 55 through 57th Thunderbird. I had worked for the Bud Company in Detroit in the late eighties. The Thunderbird Club bought and stored the dyes there, and we ran replacement parts in the late eighties for the 55 through 57th Thunderbird.

So, . It depends on the demand. So you think maybe you just have to run service parts for 10 years, but that’s not always true. Depending on the demand of the vehicle. Of course, D M C is one of ’em, right? We still need replacement parts 40 years that later . So it just depends. But for the most part, they usually have to run service parts.

Notice he said nobody kept the 58 to 60 square bird dies, though. They were like, Nope, we’re we’re putting those in the ocean. Nobody wants parts for those supply and demand, right? Tony, you’ve had a very extensive career in the automotive industry and like you said, you met John at M msi and, and you know, you worked at D M C and everything else, but you also found yourself a Chrysler for a long time.

Tell us [00:23:00] about some of the cars you worked on. Some of the things that we would notice right away and go, that’s a car that Tony V built the dies for. It wasn’t all me, right? It was at this point, you know, it’s a company, right? But what I was involved in at Chrysler was the ram. The Dodge Dakota Jeep Grand Cherokee Chrysler’s minivan, and.

Part of the regular Cherokee. I had covered all those vehicles. I thought you were gonna say like s k car, but No, that’s, that’s okay. . No, no, no. Well, you know, we did do some stampings for those, right? ? No, it’s all good. Didn’t Mike work on parts for the Viper though? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So, He had a little different career in me.

He just stayed for 40 years and he got the chance to do all the exotic vehicles. Mike, uh, got to work on the, uh, four GT custom made panels, right, heat involved for some of those shapes. He also worked on the Viper. [00:24:00] Numerous other vehicles. Mike is the other gentleman on our team who works with Tony in Detroit.

Yes. Who also worked on the first cars that were built in Detroit. Yeah. Both Mike and I worked on the uh, D M C together. Were you in Ireland then with everybody else? No, no, no, no, no. Everything all that was done in Detroit. And then shipped overseas for assembly. Yeah, so what had happened was the prototype dyes were done here in Detroit, and the prototype build was done here in Detroit.

The first 500 cars were actually manufactured here in Detroit with the prototype dyes. . That’s the story that I’ve been told about. So basically the first 500 redundant Detroit. Mm-hmm. . Interesting. Yeah. So do they still exist? Because I’ve heard things about the VIN numbers don’t start at one and, and all that kind of thing.

That part of the story, I don’t know. Because there are the other, the early, early variance even. There’s the pictures of your dad with Juro, with the JZ D and then the DSV that proceeded it and all that kind of stuff. I [00:25:00] wonder where those cars ended. . Are they in a museum somewhere? Are they locked in a crate like with the dyes?

What’s weird is that I know that my dad had six. that were on our farm in New Jersey. I have a photograph of them. The Peterson Museum has one of the prototypes, don’t they? There’s proto one and then proto two, but there’s also another prototype car that to some extent exists. But the first 500 DMCs, it’s very interesting because you’re not the first person to ask, where are these cars?

Where are these cars? I have no idea. This is a new mystery that’s turned up. Maybe somebody knows. Maybe it’s like when you get a checkbook for the first time and they ask you what number you wanna start at and you just kinda go from there. , I believe historically they’ll either use the prototypes for crash test.

Maybe they weren’t so-called street legal at the time. Maybe they have to destroy ’em. That’s a good point because a lot of the cars. [00:26:00] Crashed for crash test. It could be that a good portion of them were crash tested. It could be that the early cars too belong to special enough people that they’re locked away.

Yes. In somebody’s really special collection. Yeah. We just don’t know, but it’s definitely a question that has come up quite a few times during this journey. What happened to your dad’s cars and what happened to the early cars and why did the VINs all weird? I don’t know. Hopefully, we’ll, You’ve had, again, a long illustrious career working in different organizations within Motown in Detroit, and now you find yourself as the senior director of manufacturing and quality for D N G.

So what are you thinking? This is huge way. Huge way. Huge. I, I am so honored to be working with Kat and Jason. And everybody on the car. It, it is such an honor. I, I’m excited, I’m ecstatic. There’s no words to describe it. Grateful, something I’ve [00:27:00] always wanted to do, whatever I could do to help because, uh, what John has done for me.

I think a lot of people might be thinking, well, manufacturing and quality, that’s, that’s like after the fact, right? Especially the quality part. But you’re involved in the process right now, right alongside Angel who’s refining the design. Everybody else is getting involved, you know, in this massive circus that is what car companies are, right?

Like we talked about in the intro, it’s. So many people to make this happen. So what are you thinking about, you’re obviously interfacing with a bunch of people. What have you suggested any changes yet, you know, other things that are on your mind about the new design? The new design, in my head, I wanna make exactly as angel woodwind.

The best of my ability, we’re gonna give them, if we have to change something for a reason, we’re gonna talk about it and tell ’em what I see fit for a form or how we’re gonna match up a door to a quarter panel or a [00:28:00] hood to a fend, or a vice versa. That’s what we go through, right? But we want to try to give Angel exactly what he.

What he’s looking for. So have you already started putting together the prototype dyes yet? And I guess the question that we didn’t ask that goes along with that. How long does it take to construct a dye? Well, that’s a huge question. Usually once we get the green light to go, Three months. And that also depends on the material you’re making it out of?

Yeah. It depends on the material, right? We’ll have to tune it in to the type of material we use, but the shape will generally be the same. We’ll just change the process a little bit. If the decision gets made to go a hundred percent stainless again. , do you see anything getting in the way of making that successful, or has the manufacturing process for stainless changed enough in the last 40 years that it’s, it’s just like anything else.

When I first [00:29:00] saw the new car design, I pictured everything in stainless and what it would take to make it work. If you could do that in stainless, you could make it outta. After that appointment, so this is actually a great time to talk about some of the challenges that arose trying to make the car out of stainless.

So we have a couple of different things that we need to address in creating a car and a company. There’s a whole order of operations that should go in, which was blown away by everybody coming and saying, here you go. Let’s skip all the steps. We have a situation where we have a lot of things before most people normally would, including the whole team.

Incredible people and actually an engine and all sorts of things that we shouldn’t have at this point. One of the things that posed a really, really critical challenge was making the car out of stainless steel, the funding that’s required to do so, and the challenge of working with the metal in the time that we have to actually build a show car.[00:30:00]

We are working to address a lot of different things in how we actually manufacture the car out of stainless, and one of the challenges that I’ve given my team, . My father’s not the only person that I need to honor in making this car. It’s also the people who’ve kept his legacy alive all these years. So it doesn’t matter if John would’ve made it outta stainless today, it has to have stainless to honor the people who really wanna see it in stainless.

But given what we have available to us today, can we leverage what new technologies, new ways of manufacturing new. that we can use to make it lighter because the stainless car is heavy, so what can we do to actually manufacture it and still maintain that look and then have something that’s lighter? A lot of the ways that we’ve come up with, they either work or they don’t.

One of the other things that is important to address is the positive intent of the stain. , which was to make it cost effective for the owner to maintain. So if we can’t make it out of a solid stainless panel [00:31:00] for whatever reason, what can we do to honor that aspect? How do we still make it look the same, have the same stylistic aspects to it, and be able to meet the challenges?

And as we go along, we’re taking notes of the changes and the things that we have to do because it allows us to address the questions such. Why does the DeLorean have AAL tension? There are reasons for these things. They all have to do with the challenges that we’re currently facing and trying to manufacture this car exactly the way my father did.

Tony has been incredible coming up with some really unique out of the box ways that we might be able to actually build this car and keep it 2,500 pounds instead of 3,200 pounds, make it actually go really fast and handle very well. I that comes under advanced manufacturing, I would say. It’s been a lot of fun though because what we also get to do is think outside the box and brainstorm some pretty crazy and fun ideas, and these guys are brilliant and I am having the time of my [00:32:00] life learning things I never thought I didn’t know about making cars.

Oh, now is a perfect opportunity. Time to do this right now. Right? So it’s fabulous. If you look back in automotive history, we’re sort of repeating ourselves in a way, not necessarily the DeLorean story. What I’m getting at is if you look at the 1920s versus the 2020s, in the original twenties, there were all these boutique manufacturers.

and you see it now with a rise in the advent of ebs, every time you turn around, some new company is developing some alternative fuel vehicle, whether it’s electric, hydrogen, or otherwise. And then eventually the market course corrects itself and they get absorbed by, you know, the bigger companies, just like they did back then.

The truly inventive survive. Right? And then they, they flourish from that point. I see. With this car in a lot of ways and all the things that I’ve been privy to thus far. You know, kind of the out of the box thinking and revolutionary ideas. I think you guys are at the pointy end of the spear when it comes [00:33:00] to some of these techniques.

I’m really curious to see how it plays out because. The engine packaging alone makes a huge difference on the body panels themselves, because internal combustion engine or a hybrid, even for that matter, you don’t have to worry so much as like a negatively charged body like you would end up with in an ev and then you have issues with, if it wasn’t in stainless steel, With the painting process and even the, let’s say, the car care application process, you have to get specially manufactured waxes and things to work with EVs.

And a lot of people don’t realize that when they buy a Tesla or Lucid Air or something like that. So to your point, Kat, there’s so many different pieces of this down to the. How do we do the LEDs in the brake light to how do we keep it light? How do we make the body panels and all that? And I, I think there’s some compromises out there.

We talked about this with Angel. It’s like maybe a composite material, something space age, something that hasn’t been thought of before. There is a huge challenge with building a car [00:34:00] in Detroit. Which is what we’ve promised and what we are working to do. I want to manufacture it there because I want to be able to give work to the people who are there, which is more important to me than the building of the car.

But when you have people who can hand build the car out of composite materials and produce the same car without actually having to build any dyes, and you can save money like that, you have an opportunity to produce something that you can actually show people while you work on the manufacturing.

Because you do have to build those dyes, and one of the ways that we’ve been talking about is if you hand build the card of composite, the stainless panels become something that is. Much more of a challenge cuz then they would have to be hand formed for the car. That’s little pani area for me when it comes to the price of the car, and I love those cars, but I’d like to not have mine cost that.

One of the things that I asked was specifically, can we get a wrap? I was told that that would not translate white as [00:35:00] well, but we are looking into an alternative way to actually create that sin sheet of metal to go on top. One of the problems that that. is, it becomes merely a stylistic component, and then we have the aspect of the body panels could end up in a landfill because they can’t be recycled and broken back down.

If we cover the composite with the metal, how can we then recover the materials from it and turn it into something that matches my father’s positive intent? Part of the reason why the panels weren’t stainless was so that they could be sent back to the factory, melted back down, and body panels made from crashed cars, making it incredibly cost effective for the owner to actually own.

Now all of these things are next to impossible to implement into a one off prototype. Car. So having something that’s gonna be affordable in a prototype is not a realistic thing, but we’re using this whole process [00:36:00] to find out how do we reduce the cost of manufacturer? What materials can we use? What processes, how can we distribute the manufacturing to actually bring the cost down by simply going to unique places, never thought of before.

How do we create a new way of doing it and a new way. Building the car where we can give both the people what they want and still be able to meet these challenges. If I fail, you’ll know why I failed and how I failed, and what needs to be done differently in order to succeed next time. But we’re gonna have a car, it’s gonna be amazing.

And it better be stainless steel of some kind. . Yeah. And we’ll get it not a. The fun part’s gonna be everybody being able to learn a little bit more than they ever knew before about how this all goes down, because we’re going to take everybody along with us and explain what’s going on to tell my father’s story.

So that’s the fabulous part about this. Bringing people on board and collaborating different stories [00:37:00] together. Right, and learning from one. Extremely happy to be part of this, ecstatic, it’s gonna be a great venture. The way that we’re working together. From what I’ve been learning about how everything’s always been done before , it’s truly a unique experience and the way that we’re going about it and the way that everybody has come together to do this, the collaboration, the minds, the people who come forth to participate have astonished me.

They’re tru. Geniuses together. We are definitely my father’s mind. I can tell you that much, which is saying a lot. Well, thank you for orchestrating all this, right? No, you all found me and said let’s build a car and all I’m here is to be the person to run the meeting. . It’s really all I do. I guess that’s what a leader’s job is, is, is to let their people.

Exactly. They’re great stuff. They truly are remarkable and I don’t think anybody has ever had this much fun building something [00:38:00] as stressful as a car company. . Well, we try to keep it fun as much as we can. Right. There’s a, a serious side too to it, but. We have fun along the way for sure. I just love collaborating on different ideas all the time.

It’s just fabulous. Cat has me really thinking outside the box when it comes to being creative on manufacturing and with your experience in the industry. I mean, obviously you’re bringing that to the table, which is. To Kat’s Point, kind of short-cutting the process, and there’s a lot involved in this, but you’re passing that knowledge on, right?

Rather than us going, how do we use a simulator to make this work? But , there’s the other side of the D N G paradigm here, which is the STEM program. I wanna address your involvement in that and how you take everything that’s in. Vast experience and translate that down to high school and college kids that don’t know a spanner from a ranch at the end of the day.

So how are you planning on turning this into an educational moment for them? [00:39:00] See what their knowledge is at the time and keep it simple enough. To where they understand it and run with it from there. So are you gonna have them maybe building scaled versions of the dyes and stuff to stamp out, like smaller models?

Did you do that? Yes, absolutely. One 18th scale, please. That’s, that’s all I’m gonna say about that. But , so you know what was funny? When Kat and I first met and we got on a conversation, they asked me, can we source some fenders or parts outta stains? And my first question is, sure. , how many you went? . Uh, then it turned into building a car.

Okay. Then I, I said, okay, how many you went ? Just having that knowledge and to be able to pass it on to somebody for me, it, it would be easy, right? But to explain it to somebody and they can, A person can only grasp so much knowledge at once, so you have to be [00:40:00] careful and keep it simple in the beginning and.

Work with it and go from there. Once you know the whole process, it’s. Fairly fundamental. It just depends on a person and how fast it clicks. My experts that I have, what I’ve been asking them along the way is for what I like to call, how to put on your socks. Jason told me about a basketball coach who would have his players put their socks on correctly with the seam in the correct plates because then they could play longer without their feet hurting.

So what we want to do is what are those fundamental. To think about and teach and create muscle memory for what will create a good manufacturer or a good engineer. And so each of my experts in the field particularly useful are people who have that knowledge prior to simulators. , it seems, what are the things that we could have the students do that will form this fundamental knowledge that can then be built [00:41:00] upon when they go into the job space and create somebody who has a stronger found?

To be able to learn it faster. And Dan Milliman in his book, the Complete Warrior’s Way, he was a coach of gymnastics and he said he sees natural talent as the ability to learn something faster, not the ability to learn something better. . It’s just that other people need more time to be taught it. So if we can bring people up to that base level by giving them the exercises and the foundational knowledge they need to be able to learn it on the job just as fast as everybody else, or send them with the skills to know how to ask for what they need to be able to get what they need to.

The way that everybody else does, then we can create people who can just excel and enjoy at what they’re doing. I’ve been working a lot, asking a lot of questions. and Tony helped me very early on to map out some of the classes we have, [00:42:00] the vocational schools, they start a little earlier in Detroit, but most schools, you can’t take auto shop until junior year.

We want to have something that can actually work with the other teachers and be able to tie their knowledge and their automotive program to other subjects for. , how did World War II impact the automotive industry so that you understand how that happened, or what can you learn about your customers in sociology and how that can impact how you design a car because you understand more about humanity?

Everything that we learned, as we’re out there experiencing the world, every subject that we take pertains to what goes into automotive design. Cuz it’s all about the people, the marketing, the build, the manufacturing, the safety. All of these things have components in all of the subjects we learn. So how do we teach them to think about all of it and put it all together in the end?

And that’s where my experts come in. But I’ll tell you a secret. We are working on virtual reality [00:43:00] manufacturing. For the students to be able to practice some of these skills and immerse them in things that they normally wouldn’t be able to experience due to safety or location. That’s awesome. Very cool.

Fun story. I go to a car show in celebration usually in the spring. I haven’t gone since Covid, but it’s an amazing car show and they raised money for Make-A-Wish, and I got to meet these two wonderful people. Douglas Saunders and Nick Kobata. Incredible and so much fun and we’ve become really good friends over the years and they’ve been working on this incredible virtual reality platform that they’re focusing on for what it’s designed for now.

But I said as we go and build this out, would you consider working on a virtual reality lab? Hopefully we can make that a reality too, cuz. that would expand access to this knowledge to so many more students. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Nice. Obviously the program’s gonna be limited in the number of people that we can put in the seats in the D N G STEM program.

[00:44:00] For the listeners out there, or maybe even folks that are in the industry right now, I, I happen to know a few myself. Any words of wisdom? Anything you can pass on to them, maybe some lessons learned in the field that you’d like to share with these? Biggest thing is given the opportunity to do it, given the opportunity in working with a group of people and bounce out ideas off one another is just how it’s done.

Pass this knowledge down to everybody we can to the next generation. What I’m gonna enjoy doing, I can’t wait. . The DeLorean Legacy Project is dedicated to extolling the positive impact of John Z DeLorean and his creations on this world that continue to this day through the 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 about the project, check out www dot lian legacy dot. or follow them on social at [00:45:00] DeLorean Legacy on Twitter. You can catch up with Kat on social media at Cat DeLorean on Instagram, at Catherine dot DeLorean on Facebook, and you can learn about this stellar new cutting edge technology.

D N G Motors, vehicle ins. Inspired by Angel, Tony, and a cast of other folks at www.dngmotors.com. Or follow the cars, build progress at dng dot motors on Instagram and Facebook, or at d n GMOs on Twitter. So Tony, I can’t thank you enough for coming on Break Fix and sharing your wealth of experience with us talking us through the old days of both the D M C 12 and the heyday of Motown, sharing some of your insight on how the new car is gonna be built.

So we’d be keeping up with you and watching the progress, and I think all of us are saying the same thing. We can’t wait to see this thing in person. I’m gonna always thank my team, including you, Eric. Without you guys, I could definitely not be doing what I’m doing right. , I am [00:46:00] only as good at this as all of you are helping bp.

So always and always. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Again, it’s everybody involved, right? Extreme cooperation is just fabulous. Thank you for having us. Thank you for hosting us. We’ll be talking again, right . I can’t wait.

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