Saving the DOA?

[Farrar]

I didn't join the ranks of ownership until 2007. Prior to that, I attended a few gatherings in my home state. No one ever mentioned the DOA except as something that existed on the west coast (other side of the country from me). Recently I got an invitation on Facebook to join their group. I joined it and looked at their posts, and the only thing there was weekly advertisements for DeLorean Expo. It looked to me like that's all they do is put on an annual show. So I left the Facebook group. Although I can understand the appeal of having a "mothership" connecting all of the regional clubs, I can't really think of any great advantage to doing so, especially when their social media game is so weak.

[DaraSue]

A follow-up question for those who aren't interested in the DOA in its current form - would you be interested in joining if membership included online DeLorean World archives? If so, what would you consider a reasonable price per year for that?

[Farrar]

A follow-up question for those who aren't interested in the DOA in its current form - would you be interested in joining if membership included online DeLorean World archives? If so, what would you consider a reasonable price per year for that?

That is a neat idea! Maybe they could do a Patreon thing and have different tiers of perks.

[Michael]

We want to be the mothership....right there is a problem. Everyone want's to lead. Nobody wants to help.

[eight8toy]

I think I joined DOA when I bought my car initially. That being said, I've had more interactions and better experiences with simply joining the various Facebook groups like restoration and technical help ones as well as our local FB group.

I would say that's just a sign of the times, less of us newer owners are interested in some general owner's association but rather prefer a smaller group and more up to date information online versus some old magazine. To be fair I think I only joined for the DOA sticker but then I lost that too!

[David T]

Many car Marques use a national umbrella or association/club to coordinate and/or run a national event, be a clearinghouse for inquires and direct inquires to local chapters/clubs. They provide a way to get insurance and run a website. Few publish a hard copy newsletter but some still do with the associated cost of printing and postage (mostly the older ones where most members don't use the internet). With today's internet, local clubs can act as if they are national in most respects diminishing the need for a "national" organization. The vendors fill in the gaps. Bottom line, there is not much need for a national anything. Any groups or clubs still having a national are just maintaining a remnant of the past or a large enough to justify one.

[SamHill]

Most people don't understand that insurance used to be a huge issue. Thank God it's not anymore.

DOA could prove to be a viable concern as a nonprofit if some monied person contributed a property for a real museum and permanent home for DCS/Expos. Aside from that, I agree its raison d'etre has disappeared.

[matt clark]

It's hard to put dates on this, but I would say that what I'm talking about comes from the late 90s or the very very early 2000s - in the UK, there was really no information out there on the car. You could forget seeing one easilly; there were almost non in museums and with at that point probably about 100 cars in the country, you just never saw them in passing. The internet had a few sites, most of which were geocities-style and pretty dreadful. One of the few exceptions was the DOA's site, which presented as very clean, professional - and this is the key thing - aspirational. The magazine, the expos, the layout of the site, all of this pulled me in at a time when I could probably have drifted onto another hobby.

However, the internet was changing rapidly, and the site never really changed, whereas other sources popped up and had plenty of small tidbits to contribute (off the top of my head - Ken K's and Michael Babb's website were amazing, not sure if Tamir's was around at that time or I'd not found it). It was still kind of an aspirational thing to join, perhaps because it's presence was unchanging and unconcerned about the internet at large, but at the same time it seemed a bit impenetrable unless you paid the membership rates (which as a kid I wasn't going to). When I started getting to know the UK club - which was largely in person as opposed to online, I'd often hear bad things about the DOA specifically in regards to the historian aspect of it - much of the interesting elements of DeLorean history come from here in the UK and they were dismissive of it - I remember it took a long time to get them to acknowledge the existence of the RHD cars, for example. As internet presences increased, more solid regional (or national, in our case) clubs formed and appeal of joining the DOA faded. Of course, the argument here is that as a non-US, non-owner, the DOA didn't really have to do anything to appeal to me as I wasn't giving anything back, but other clubs were a bit more openly inclusive. Several people I know, who are my age, have finally bought their car after years of saving, which I think is down to the open nature of other clubs, which was welcoming and nurturing of the goal of ownership.

However, I really do think there is an argument for a mothership club, because of this:

DOA could prove to be a viable concern as a nonprofit if some monied person contributed a property for a real museum and permanent home for DCS/Expos.

I think this is the answer - history. One of the things about our car is that it has a shedload of history in a very small space of time. We don't have loads of different models of car to discuss or research, or racing pedigree, but we do have an interesting story of how it happened, how it ended, and what almost happened during that time. I think we're living in a golden age of DeLorean information - thanks to Barrie Wills, Nick Sutton et al dusting off their memories and writing books, we now know so much more than we did before. But these books - for commercial reasons - only contain so much information. Much more info comes from them on social media, which has the best reach for people (at the moment), but it is absolutely the worst place to archive stuff. Information will be lost in a comments thread, posts last a day and then disappear forever. The DeLorean Fanatics page, for example, has probably hosted some of them most interesting obscure history for the last couple of years while at the same time being a complete idiot pit where people ask on a weekly basis about "new DeLoreans' because there's no permanence to information. Photos are uploaded at whatever the contemporary resolution is, but not at the best quality, and compressed, so they're not archival use. Members of small clubs have done a lot of their own digging up on information, but it's not always accessible unless you know where to look (see Al Vanstone's work on the Middle East cars, it's incredibly niche even by our standards, but that information isn't really 'out there' for people). The club I've been part of has had forum updates where old threads and attachments are no longer available. Look what happened here. Some of that information is just... gone. Digital is great for accessibility but it's very much in the here and now.

Barrie, Nick etc won't be around forever - there should be a club cataloguing this info for when they're not here any more. Keepers Of The Knowledge, if you will, but not dicks about it. I think *this* is the value to the magazines etc. It's not so much about having the physical thing in your hand (although that is nice) but it's the issuing of information with references, indexes etc to go back to. It doesn't have to be a literal magazine, it can be a digital thing, but a more serious approach to archiving our history seems like the key thing we should be aiming for. My memory of the DOA was that it was trying to be a blue-chip car club with polo shirts and spiel that fitted a Ferrari Owner's club. I appreciate what they were trying to do, but it would have been better for them to simply accept they had an orphan car with a scruffy and messy history, and owned it, and made the most out of that. After all, what was once something 'shameful' is now part of the car's USP. A museum - in the UK or the US (or both!) would absolutely be a great goal to work towards, and that's perhaps only really in the reach of a mothership club. I also think that events like Eurofest - which is actually a pretty big deal - only really happened because of the size and the relative clout of the DOA, which is another positive for a larger club.

Money and time are the barriers to this - the money thing I think can be minimised as an issue with a larger club having a larger paying membership. Time... well there's an obvious joke there that I'll leave but I don't know how to get around that. I've taken over the magazine and rebranding for the UK Owner's Club; it's a bit of a pain in the arse - sometimes its a stretch to make the most obscure DeLorean info engaging to read - and I'm often writing the magazine on planes or trains or while on set at work, but I'm thrilled with the end result because you get to archive information in a specific place that people can cross reference. It's also a bit of an 'event' to receive the magazine, which makes it worth reading and remembering. That can easily be a PDF that people can download, or that can be stored on a club website, but I think the end result is the same.

How you achieve all of the above, however, I have no idea. Personal politics are a nightmare, and in the UK there's two clubs now because some people decided they didn't like the way the existing club operated; this was insane becuase there's really no need for two clubs with a memberbase this small. This did, eventually, lead to some good things, but also the dilution of information/shared resources that we have today. The DOA definitely needs a rebranding and perhaps a changing of it's mission. I have noticed they're working much harder on the social media front, though, which is actually way more time consuming than it sounds.

[dmcnc]

I would say yes - especially if you could easily search through the tech articles.

A follow-up question for those who aren't interested in the DOA in its current form - would you be interested in joining if membership included online DeLorean World archives? If so, what would you consider a reasonable price per year for that?

[David T]

The internet and forums like this have replaced the tech articles in a magazine. You get almost instant feedback, and can ask and have questions answered in a way that a magazine can't duplicate. As for archives, you can do searches of past posts relative to your questions. There are no fees or club dues and anyone can join or leave whenever they want. The world changes and organizations have to change with it to be relevant or die. Another example is the classic version of a car show. Used to be you would go to a show with your car and pay to show it. Spectators get in for free. You are stuck there for most of the day till the show ends if you wanted a cheesy trophy if you got one at all. The C & C type shows (Cars and Coffee) are free to everyone, arranged over the internet, last only a few hours and you can come as go as you please. Magazines are a vestige of a bygone era that a vanishing few still want. Like newspapers. The modern version is an E-Zine or forums like this. Why pay for printing and postage anymore?