In Defense of VIN Counters

[Gfrank]

They didn’t advertise it as a automatic. As far as everyone was concerned it was vin 500 rolling off the line. I’m also not speculating as I just had a conversation with Barrie about this. Granted it’s been some years sense, but I still take his word. 500- manual 501-auto. Which makes sense testing both down the line

[Shep]

VIN 500 is still on display and will be this Saturday, my Dad and I are still planning to go. Here's another link with a few pics, this time from the museum curators:

https://www.wrhs.org/cleveland-starts-here/

Seems like it's tied into the 150th anniversary of the Western Reserve Historical Society somehow. I can only speculate the reason for now, I will be sure to take a picture of the plaque saying what role it played that's bound to be somewhere. That also explains why it had such a lengthy restoration prior to the "reveal", 150 is a nice round number and they clearly planned ahead of time.

JZD was born in Detroit, and beyond the DeLorean-Cadillac dealership many older-than-myself people remember (born in 90) there's not much specific to Cleveland. Not that anyone's complaining though!

That said, there are still some DeLorean family members around Cleveland, I won't get into specifics without knowing how much attention they want. The one I see most frequently has license plate of "I AM DMC" though...

[Shep]

Guess that DeLorean-Cadillac dealership was family-owned! That's what the sign said. Pics coming ASAP, I'm grabbing them onto my laptop, sorting through them, posting them on Imgur this time (most of my older pictures, while still existing, are no longer at the original links, and I want to avoid that here -- plus Imgur hosts them at full resolution, which is amazing for a free service with zero bandwidth restrictions). I will start a new thread when I have the pics uploaded to Imgur.

Few interesting notes:
- First thing you see when you walk in. Like, you walk in, it's right there. I think you can technically grab a few pics before you need to pay.
- Leather binnacle, vinyl steering wheel -- this is correct, and both are in great shape
- No dash pics (too dark, no flash allowed, can't tell mileage unfortunately but I wanted to badly!!!)
- Blackout HVAC panel, although some pics might have shown the temperature control as red/blue (it was really blackout from human eyes)
- Windshield VIN plate was incorrectly cleaned off, there is supposed to be black paint on it like there is on mine (later ones aren't painted)
- Door sill VIN plate, this should not exist at all -- my Dad's iPhone was the winner at avoiding a blurry shot, but it was a bit of a reach!
- Rear bumper "DeLorean" logo was outlined in gray paint. Don't know who thought that was right.
- Despite major (?) restoration work, they picked the shittiest left rear side marker lens that had scuff marks and what looked like paint or serious dirt on it.
- Also not terribly sure if the undercarriage is faring well, I got a shot of the passenger side fiberglass and it was about 90%, there were some things that said "this might need work" but other things that didn't, such as:
- PRISTINE Goodyear NCT's! Looked like original rubber to me! I think I saw the little stubs coming out where they inject the rubber even. Brand new. Worth a pretty penny and quite the lookers!
- Door latches were "slots", I took some close-ups as there was writing around each one, which was interesting (the slots I knew about from my own car though)
- They had free magnets with two shots of VIN 500 on them, which was amazing, except I kinda wished I could pay for those so I could buy like a thousand and not feel bad when I give them away for free at the next DCS. Now I only have four of them out of the stack of eight, one of which I will give to DPI and three kept for myself. I took a pic of it though for posterity.

Again, image megadump and Imgur link coming soon, I will link to the new thread as soon as that's done! It's really worth the visit, but I could tell some of the loaner cars there were just cars that had only moderate historical significance but wild popularity and thus easy "hey can I park this here in the winter?" "hell yeah!" kind of reasoning to be there.

[Shep]

Finally finished (phew! busy guy these days). New thread:

http://dmctalk.org/showthread.php?16...Imgur-Megadump