To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Classic Car Restoration, JDM, and Automotive History
The ultimate automotive history and classic car restoration podcast exploring the motoring memories behind iconic vehicles. Hosted by Doug and Dave, we trade technical specs for the unfiltered stories and family car history that reveal the soul of car culture. Join us every #TorqueTuesday for a deep dive into automotive nostalgia with restoration junkies and vintage vehicle enthusiasts. 🏎️🛠️
To All The Cars I've Loved Before: Classic Car Restoration, JDM, and Automotive History
Ford Tempo & DeLorean DMC-12 Dreams: Brian Paone on '80s Car Nostalgia ⚡🚗
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Ford Tempo memories and DeLorean DMC-12 history. In this episode, we sit down with author and detective Brian Paone to explore the unfiltered motoring memories of growing up in the 1980s and the dream rides that defined an era.
We trade dry technical specs for the real stories behind the metal. Brian shares the hilarious realities of driving his first car—a classic Ford Tempo—and the near-miss purchase of a DeLorean DMC-12. From Back to the Future dreams to diagnosing finicky electrical relays and keeping vintage daily drivers on the road, this conversation dives deep into authentic car culture and '80s automotive nostalgia.
In this episode, we cover:
- 🚗 The Ford Tempo Era: Learning the ropes of car ownership in an unloved 1980s daily beater.
- ⚡ The DeLorean Temptation: Talking yourself out of buying a stainless-steel DeLorean DMC-12.
- 🔧 Mechanical Realities: What not to do when troubleshooting and replacing vintage electrical relays.
- 🕹️ '80s Car Culture: How pop culture, cinema cars, and childhood memories fuel our lifelong passion for vehicles.
Don't miss Brian's favorite episode with fellow author, Robert O'Connor telling us all about Jeeps that inspired his new novel "Jeep Show” https://www.buzzsprout.com/2316026/episodes/15046730
🔗 Check out all of Brian's books: https://brianpaone.com
Connect with Us: Got a great car story? Email us at stories@carsloved.com. Find all our content and social links here: linktr.ee/carsloved.
Podcast News:
- Our co-host, Doug was a guest on the Driven Radio Show Podcast to share the origin story of our podcast and connecting with his late father through his DeLorean project.
- Check out the amazing article about the podcast by Elevate Society and Tal Gur, author of "The Art of Fully Living"
- Feedspot selected To All The Cars I've Loved Before in their list of Top 100 Car Podcasts and 31 Best Road Trip Podcasts For Your Drive
- Our co-host, Doug was featured in this magazine article along with his DeLore...
Around the World and Back Again
ChristianWelcome back America to all the cars I've loved before. Carslovecom, carslovecom hey, you know it is my habit to say welcome back America, but that is actually inaccurate, because this little podcast that could has made its way around the world. We are downloaded and followed in Europe, in South America, in Canada yes, I know, that's the same continent as North America and Asia and Asia. Well, I mean, as we're speaking, everyone's filing on board thegoodshipcarslovecom. Hey, I am your co-host, christian. This is my esteemed technical guru of how To Doug how you doing, buddy.
DougI'm doing great, doing great. Just coming back off a trip from LA where I saw some pretty awesome cars and some pretty awesome scenery.
ChristianYeah, we're going to get into that and it's March for us, if you're listening, so everybody's going on vacation. We've been on a bit of a hiatus here. As we ramp up. We're trying to get into a cadence of dropping an episode every other week and seeing how we can squeeze in some unexpected interesting things for Cars Love Nation. And again, thanks for being with us.
ChristianRemember, as you listen on your podcast platform choice to follow, download the episode to follow and to work your social network. Okay, so if you like what you're hearing, please share. That's how we get these analytics, this information that flows to us from a bunch of different podcast platforms and once we get that feedback loop of data coming back to us, we know who is listening what and where. So, hey, good to have you. We're really surprised, unexpectedly surprised and happy for the around the World and Back Again attention. So thanks for following and please continue to boost. So that brings us to. We're really excited to have our guest here today. I just met him and he is a friend of Doug's, so for the warm handoff and introduction, I'm going to pass the baton off over to Doug.
DougAll right, thank you, christian. So we're going to introduce a good friend author, kind of a rock star, police officer, detective, dad of four. That I know of, that he knows of, he wasn't in the military, holy crap.
DougI love it. I know of that, he knows of he wasn't an anniversary, holy crap. I love it. And he's also who I consider kind of the godfather of the delorean dmv group, um dc maryland, virginia group and he. I found him on facebook and, lo and behold, x number of months later, I end up with the delorean so weird?
Brianyou're not. You're not the first person for that to happen to.
BrianSpecifically with me, because in our group alone Curtis got his Delorean because of me, jim got his Delorean because of me and I also helped one other person that's not in our group, that's somewhere else in the country get their Delorean, and it's not even like I'm trying, it's just like someone says, hey, I'm looking and I and it's not even like I'm trying, it's just like I someone says, hey, I'm looking for one, and then I kind of stumble across one and then I get them to meet up, and that's how us DeLorean people are and, and you know, with that, um, I don't want to take anything away, but we have the wonderful, the handsome, the charming, Brian Paone.
DougBrian, you want to introduce yourself beyond the little bit that I just said? Sure, yeah.
BrianI'm 5'4", 130 pounds long. Walks on the beach, tacos are my favorite food. Mint chocolate chip ice cream is definitely burnt. Orange is my favorite color. I was born and raised in Salem, massachusetts, in a funeral home, and I was in bands for years and toured, been an author for years trying to think what else is. Oh, I have web feet. You know, if you don't know about that, about me, Incidentally, we, up until my fourth child was born, we were always under the assumption that I had web feet as a birth defect, because my mother was taking morning sickness medication in the 70s and then they took it off the market for having birth defects. Right then my, my daughter, uh edelweiss, is born and she has the same exact toes on her two feet up to the same spot than I do. So we're like, oh, maybe this is genetic because you. There's obviously something to this.
ChristianI think we could talk to Brian for 30 minutes and never get around to cars.
BrianJust from that preamble that we got oh, we're not talking about cars. No, we're not even going to notice, we're going to have him back.
DougI think we should have him back as a guest host too.
ChristianYeah, because you'll want to check him out. If you go to carslovecom, we're going to have pictures, links to all of Brian's personal websites. Will some of them be my calendar shoots when I was working at the fire station? Absolutely, we will get it all up there. I was Mr March.
ChristianAnd it is the month of March and that's why we have him on, quite frankly. But yeah, so we'll have links to his books. I had my suspenders on, immortalized in March, with suspenders and wearing little else, but yeah, we'll have links to his books, his music, all the things that he's done.
DougHis calendar. Yeah, we'll be for sale.
ChristianDownload only his calendar. Yeah, yeah, we'll be for sale. Download only, I hope. But I hope that doesn't run us afoul of any federal or state regulations, but digging it. Well, brian, it is a complete pleasure to have you. And should we start with news or should we just kind of get into to to Brian's world here? Doug, what do you think? What are we feeling today?
DougLet's audible, you know let's just say, you know, we lost a very important automotive designer that a lot of people may not know by name, but they know him by his works. Do you want to talk a little bit about our dearly departed friend?
ChristianYeah, I came across this article in motortrendcom here and Doug and I have been talking about it today here. The great Italian designer, marcello Gandini. First off, I just want to say the name over and over. Marcello Gandini has died at age 85. Okay, and so he was the designer of several Lamborghini cars. I think by way of Bertone was he with that design house, but anyway, he was integral in the design of the Miura in the late 60s, in, I believe it's pronounced Countach Correct A little over a decade later, from the early 70s on, I think they made those until the early to mid 90s when they were outrageous and then just looked like spaceships from another dimension. But yeah, interesting guy, beloved, just very beautiful cars, and his Italians, what can you say?
BrianHey, I'm Italian. Come on, I'm a peone.
BrianYeah, that's why we brought it up Right right, my grandfather came over on the boat when he was in his late teens and he hit Bostonoston harbor. What year would this have been? Um, must have been. It must have been 20, 20 something. He was, yeah, because, because he was born in 19, 19, 19, I think, I think. Okay, and he was. It must have been 19, maybe even 1930s then, because he was a teenager, but anyway.
BrianSo he hit boston harbor and um, they were at the, at the, at like immigration. They were trying to get him to drop uh, the pronounce the, using the e sound at the end of our name paoni, right, yeah, and he, because they wanted to americanize it, because they thought that he would get discriminated against. Uh, because boston was so irish and was so yeah, you know, um, he would try to. They were trying to make his life easier, but he stead, held steadfast and said no, keeping the e sound. So my name gets butchered. No one can say my last name correctly because it doesn't look like it should be spoken in english, right, you know, because it's an italian word and it actually, in italian, loosely translates to peacock and our, our coat of arms, um, has a big peacock in the middle.
BrianAnd, another fun fact, on the top of our Christmas tree we don't have an angel, we have a peacock for the name. So I just gave you a lot of information that you probably didn't want or need and love it.
DougAnd you mentioned the web feet, so maybe peacock inspired, maybe.
ChristianI'm part peacock Kind of like how octopuses are part alien. You know, so it could well. I see the tail feathers towering over behind you. So I think the peacock peacock metaphor is that you're gonna want to do something about that when you leave the house file, but no I was just gonna say just because I think you're handsome and I'm trying to you know, show my feathers.
ChristianThat's all moving on it's totally, it's totally working for christ Any more talk about the legendary designer, the Italian, and we brought that up for you because we knew you were Italian. You guys know how to party Cappuccino, designer shoes and supercars. Oh, now I'm hungry, thanks. Moving on Next item up for bids in the car news roundup.
Automotive News Roundup and Car Stories
ChristianLet's see the tailpipe emissions. Did we want to get into that? I know it's just a little bit of regulatory stuff Again. Yeah.
DougIt's good to mention, as it's just like when corn started being used for E85, people said, hey, there's going to be a big corn shortage Now that electric cars are taken off right. Of course there's a shortage in materials for batteries right, but it's created a surplus of Christian, you want to say the word? It's very scientific. Palladium, did I say it right?
ChristianYeah, platinum, palladium, rhodium, all in those heavy metal families. Metal families, yeah, go ahead, but but not a shortage correct.
DougMake sure I understood you right right, yeah, exactly there's.
ChristianThere's a glut because the yeah, so yeah, oh oh. So I see what you're doing. You are expertly interweaving a couple of these different stories. But yeah, platinum and these other metals are used in the catalytic converters to purify the air.
DougWhich, which sir? Which punch? Yes, they are a catalyst, if you will, and you know, the one good thing about it is there's probably less catalytic converters being stolen and you know, brian, less work for you as a detective in that case.
BrianI, I just you know I have not worked a stolen Cadillac converter case yet, so All right, fingers crossed. They know, because they know not to do it. In my jurisdiction the weak is young. They're like don't go over there, that guy Dig it. That guy will snap your neck by looking at you. That's me, I know he will, with the tail feathers of course.
ChristianHe'll show you, mr March. Yes, who knows, don't make me break out, mr March. Last item up for bid on the automotive news roundup we have. Let's see now. This is my favorite story of the week. We always try and end on something a little lighter. Again from Reuters. Reuters, god bless them. They just had it going on this week. This was oh, this was just a day ago. Reuters Maserati workers to work reduced hours at Italy plants.
ChristianSo I guess there are a couple of ways to view this story. They, as they move into, I guess, decrease in output for one reason or another. Okay, so I know the little electric Fiat 500 has been has not had the demand they were looking for. This is weak demand for its fully electric 500 small car. They're just scaling back operations at the Mia Fiore plant and that's where they make at least part of the Maseratis here. And you know, I just and of course this is all contractual, like labor contracts being able to just kind of shut in for a little bit. But I just, you Italians, brian, I can just see I don't mind that I don't work the rest of the day. I'm going to go get you know, I'm going to go get my Vespa and my cappuccino and a pretty girl and I'm just going to, you know, do donuts around the Coliseum. Check it out. Reuters Fun story.
BrianYeah, not necessarily in that order. Sometimes we get the Pretty Girl first and then we get the Vespa and the Cappuccino. It mixes up. If it's an odd number, wednesday, I think the Cappuccino has to be first and then, if it's an even number, friday.
ChristianThis is why we have Brian on, because he gives us the insight. He goes beyond Reuters, beyond Reuters. So you'll want to check him out on his website Again, carslovecom.
DougCheck us com. Check us out. Boost payonecom. We will have that in our show notes and links to brian's site on our website, carslovecom you got it.
ChristianWell, that is it. Yep, that's it for the car news roundup and I'm just a frustrated john stewart here wannabe with my daily news with the cars. But, yeah, we kick it over to doug and let's let's dig in with brian. What, what you got, brian? You typically you you've heard it before, but we got maybe your first car let's get into, and I know it was the.
BrianUh, we were talking a little bit before about the ford tempo 89 blue and named it the midnight cowboy and I had you know. This is back. This is before. You could just like go to etsy and have somebody print something. So I actually had to find somebody who would make me like a decal and I put it on the dashboard and I tell you that I got lots of girlfriends because of that decal on the dashboard. It's awesome.
DougDig it.
Car Enthusiast and Drag Racing Memories
DougSo why the Midnight Cowboy?
BrianSo one of my favorite bands of all time is a band called Faith no More and they have a song called Midnight Cowboy which is like an homage to the movie midnight cowboy and I. So it kind of went down this thing where I'm such a music lover and it sounded like a good name for a car right. It's a midnight cowboy because my curfew was midnight and I and I never made curfew, so I was.
ChristianWe turned into the midnight cowboy at 12 I wonder if you would have called it the 1 am Cowboy, if your parents would have given you a little grace. But yeah, I got my back broken a few times.
BrianI think I would have shifted to the KLF and did like the 3 am Eternal Cowboy. If you remember the KLF song, Brilliant.
ChristianBrilliant, I was singing that at the end of that.
BrianYeah, oh, I sing it every day. I sing in the shower. It's my favorite thing.
ChristianWhere did the car come from? The Delorean or the?
BrianFord Tempo.
ChristianOh, no, no the Tempo. Let's stay with the first one, yeah.
BrianMy dad, you know, owned a franchise, an automotive repair shop franchise, and he had a customer who came in with the car. The amount of work that it needed to be done was beyond what they wanted to pay for it. Because the car was worthless, my dad offered them some ridiculous low amount of money A couple hundred bucks. Yeah, I was like you know what? I'll sign the title, I'll pay you to stay here. And he fixed it up and gave it to me as my first car. I like that.
DougHow long did you have the car for Brian, the Midnight Cowboy?
BrianAnd I had it for quite a while and every time it broke we would keep fixing it. I was reluctant to let it go, even though I probably should have put it into its grave way before we did. I mean, I pushed that car a lot further than I should have, but I was so proud of it. That was the Minot Cowboy how could I let that? I've even named all of my patrol cars as a police officer, which is so obviously I have a problem with, like naming my cars, you know so I understand.
DougNot my first car, but one of the first cars I drove was a 88 white ford tempa that my dad had bought so and that was the most aerodynamic car we had in the house versus the brick Oldsmobiles. It was quite a departure.
BrianGot to reduce the drag. Yeah, we had like a Buick Regal and, I think, an El Camino at the time. I don't know, I don't know, I just it's so long ago.
DougBut so what happened to that car, Brian? Is there a story?
BrianI think it finally no, I think it finally broke down to a point where my dad looked at me and said you know, we've hit the point where it's safer and probably cheaper now for you to buy another car Like. We've run this into the ground. We got our money's worth out of it, very good, and I'm not a Ford guy, but I'm a free car guy, right. So, like my dad was giving me as a teenager, I love it I didn't have any.
BrianI didn't have a dog in the fight at all, or you know, I wasn't you know loyalty to any certain car company. I was loyally to a free set of keys, you know, and it took care of you, yep, pardon me, christian if I remember correctly.
DougUh, brian, so besides your dad owning a automobile repair franchise, he also, or it enabled him to do some actually semi-professional racing.
BrianYeah, drag, yeah drag. He owned two dragsters the Godfather and the Underdog. Those are the name of the two dragsters. He didn't own them simultaneously. I don't remember which one was first. So if he listens to this he'll probably be super angry. Oh, he'll listen.
BrianHe destroyed one racing in, I think, philadelphia. The car got a little bit of air off the front and he flipped it into the woods and it split in half, burst into flames, with him still in the cockpit. Good, oh gosh, yeah. Well, he had a fire suit right, so he walked out of it unscathed and thankfully, thank goodness, which prompted him to buy the second dragster. So I don't know which one the underdog or the godfather was first and which one replaced it. And then he had a 1970s Challenger that he also raced professionally and that was named the Budget Breaker because he said that of the three cars, for some reason that one was the one that cost him the most money to keep racing. And then when he retired, he still had.
BrianHe was on the front cover of magazines, he won tons of trophies, he had sponsors, the trailer, in fact. Here's a funny story when he got the dragster his first dragster it got delivered to his shop, not to to the house, and he didn't have a trailer at the time. So he had to wait till 2 am, when he knew there was the least amount of traffic and police officers on the streets, and he drove a dragster down, you know, from his shop to the house, and the dragster doesn't have brakes, right, it's a parachute. So he had to like just like idle coast, and so do you imagine being like two in the morning, like coming home, like from a bar, and passing like a legit dragster, like in cities, on the city streets.
BrianAnyway, that that's, that's how he got the thing home, so waking everybody up yeah, right, when you say dragster I'm, it's one of these that you, that I would see on tv these very long things yes, uh, the big, big tires, they, they come down to a point, yeah, yep, wow they call them funny cars, right as well no, a funny car is where the top opens up ah yes and it closes on you gotcha, a dragster is completely you're completely open and it's basically a frame and an engine and a steering wheel and you're in a cool cockpit, but the two tires in the back are massive and everything is skinny. It's very streamlined, right. The dragster itself is basically left to right the size of your body. There's no like you know. I mean it's like two pencils side by side and they go extremely fast off the line. You know, and my dad broke a bunch of records at oh, actually you know what?
BrianThis is? Audio only, so I won't get up and show you. This is video. I would have shown you because, right behind me, he gave it to me, my dad. Whenever you break a new time on a drag strip, they give you a patch that says what mile an hour you broke, if you're the first driver to ever do it. And my dad has a bunch of those and he sewed them onto his racing jacket. He gave it to me and I actually have it in this closet right here, my dad's old racing jacket, but have the patches, the actual patches that he was given for breaking those records at those drag strips.
ChristianIf it's okay with you, I would love to get a picture of that. So this is audio only for now, but if we get a picture and throw that up on the site.
BrianYou know, I might even be able to, like, dig up a picture of my dad, you know from the 70s and 80s, in his drag show oh, that's fantastic, we'd love to see your dad.
BrianBut so when he retired, you know he's still involved because when you're a drag racer you kind of like a home, like a home base, like a home stadium, so to speak. You know like a home team, and his was New England Dragway in Epping, new Hampshire, and when he retired he used to go then be the starter, be the one that you know hits the button to start the tree, and Issa was allowed to go up in the tower and watch from the tower where the announcers were. And then a few when I got even older, he would allow me to come down and start some of the races with him standing next to me. So like I would be this like little kid side by, you know, in between the two, uh, what you know, whatever was racing that day and I and I'd get to press that button, yeah, so that was kind of cool. What a memory growing up, growing up on the pits.
DougThat is wonderful yeah, yeah, so just real quick. So the dragsters, was he going for quarter mile top speed or it's quarter mile? Okay, gotcha, yeah, wow, yep. Do you remember one of the top numbers.
BrianSo we gotta remember we're talking late 70s here, right? So these numbers are now like scoffed at right. These these numbers now like street legal cars, do without thinking, like he, he like 175, well, you know no one's dragway, I'll show the patches around there, but so they're low numbers now. But we're talking 45 almost 50 years ago and that was crazy that people could go that fast in a car, you know so. So it's all perspective of the era, you know so thanks for sharing great memory great memory does he still have the challenger and we'll save that the ants.
BrianOh, he got rid. He got rid of the challenger such a beautiful car now, yeah, he, he drives a 2018 challenger. Now I don't know what year this might be the modern, the modern yeah yeah yeah, so he's a. He's a car guy still, even at 83 my dad's 83 now.
DougSo love that, love that still a car guy, very nice. So if we had the virtual drums, we would maybe talk to brian about one of favorite cars, maybe a dream car, I think it was alluded to earlier. You bet, what do you think, christian? Cue the drums, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.
ChristianThere you are. We'll have them digitally added later. We have a whole group of people that dub it in.
DougYeah, go ahead, tell us about your dream car.
BrianMy dream car was always and will always forever be a Pinto right, beautiful, safe. That's why we had you on the show. Good, family car. And then the Yugo. The Yugo would be second.
ChristianYeah, we got one. Yeah, it's great because you can get the exploding gasoline tank option along with the faux leather trim.
BrianBut go ahead. So no. So of course the delorean was always my dream car, probably since I was about six years old and, funny enough, you know, I I get not blamed but I get, I guess, accused. That sounds so derogatory, but I get assumed that I loved the delorean and own one because of the movies. I loved the car prior to the movies because I'd seen one and it blew my six year old brain. But then I kind of I didn't know what it was called. And even if I did know what it was called at the time, when you're like six or seven you don't remember names like that, you don't think to right, and I forgot about the car. I kind of forgot it existed. As a little kid I played with my ET toys and you kind of forget.
BrianAnd then, back to the Future, the trailer hit like TVs. They weren't really trailers, they were commercials back then, right, they weren't what they were today. And I remember being like that was the car. That was the car I remember seeing. Oh, my God, it's in a movie and it's a time machine. So the movie, I think, breathed a breath of love and fueled the fire again, but I definitely had experienced one prior to that. So there were times when people accused me of just being a fanboy, and that's the only reason why I love the car. Well, the movies are what kept the Predated. The movie, yeah, I don't know, is what made it up, made it viable, but I definitely remember loving the car when I saw it prior to it. So it's this weird juxtaposition that happens, you know, when I talk to people about the car gotcha.
DougAnd if, if not for the movies, right, you might not have been able to own your delorean because yeah, I might not even remembered what it was ever called.
BrianI could be sitting here right now being like I remember seeing a car when I was little and I can't remember the name, and oh no, oh well, you know.
ChristianYeah, my big question for you was so many people have this crush and then let it go, and in fact you sort of did. The movie rekindles
Dream Car Purchase Regret Story
Christianit. Now I'm assuming there's this stretch of time where you either pine for the car or don't. And at what point did it? How did it fall into your lap? They're hard to find If you want to buy one, like I was looking for one a while back and it was never around. And then there was this option that I really didn't want close to me and I thought, well, it's just. You know, doug kind of inspires me. So at what point did you think about it and how did you make it a reality? If that's not too personal a question, no, it's not.
BrianI became a woman of the night and I took some exotic dancing jobs.
ChristianThat's a lot Beautiful.
BrianVery ashamed by some of the things I had to do, but no, so my love for the car never waned after the movies came out. In fact, there are photos of me growing up through the ages, as a teenager in high school, like wearing DeLorean t-shirts. There's a picture of me in an amusement park wearing a delorean hoodie, right, uh, so you can. You can follow my not waning of the love of the car through through my whole life. There's, you know, there's, there's physical pictures that prove.
BrianIt seems like it intensified over time yeah, yeah, it did, um, but I always thought they were out of reach. I always, I never in a million years it was a pipe dream. It was a. It was what I call my genie wish car. You know, like, well, if I find a bottle and I get to ask for a car, that's what I'm asking for. They never in a million years ever thought I would, I would have one in my garage, nor, nor daily, drive the thing.
BrianYou know, it's a daily driver for you, then Mine's my daily. Yeah, the only time I don't drive it is so because I have four. No, I'll drive it in the rain, like it's supposed to rain on Saturday and I actually plan on taking it because I'm going out to lunch with somebody on Saturday. No, rain doesn't bother me with the car because it's a car, right, it was built and all my weather seals are new and good. It doesn't leak. I'm okay with driving in the rain. What I won't drive it in is snow, because of the salt collecting on the frame. So now we're talking about deterioration of materials, but when I drive in the rain I, just when I get home, in the garage I have like this really long squeegee almost, and I run it along the length of the car and I can have that car dry in four minutes flat. You wouldn't even know it was in the rain, right? So it takes me four minutes to do a little bit of maintenance when I get in my garage. But so what, I'm still out driving, right? Anyway.
BrianSo off topics, but I'd always the love of the car had never waned. I never thought I'd actually owned one. Graduated college, got hired by my first police department that I worked for in Massachusetts. It was kind of Google. Craigslist was still kind of new. This is 2002. Yeah, about 2002. So I was still trying to figure out the internet, what you can do with it, and I came across a guy selling one in New Jersey. That was basically like I had half of the money he was asking for it. So I got a person. So I applied and got a personal loan from the bank for the other half and it got approved. So I had my money for the DeLorean and my buddy, my best friend, and I were gonna fly down to Jersey, buy the car and we're gonna drive it back home to Massachusetts.
BrianHad it all planned out what I'm about to say. I don't necessarily have any regrets anymore, because now I do own a DeLorean and I actually think that the DeLorean that I do own was in way better shape and it was supposed to be my car more than this one. But when I tell people this part of the story, I get some eye rolls. I, I get some. You got to be kidding me, I get some. Whatever, I'm a huge football fan. That was the year the patriots went to the super bowl and I chose to spend my half of the money going to the super bowl because I was like, how many times did someone get a chance to go see, to go to a super bowl? Also?
Christianright, because that's a once in a lifetime experience, to say that you so that would have been one of their first super bowls then, with, with Brady at the helm Right, it was the year that they Beat the. Rams, I think you guys beat the Rams?
BrianNo, it wasn't. It was the year that they played the Eagles in Jacksonville. Okay, got it. So that was the 2003 season. Okay, good, yeah, so I decided to. I was like you know, we looked at tickets. I have season tickets to the Patriots, I have season tickets to the Patriots, and you know, so you get first if your season ticket holder gets first dibs on Super Bowl tickets. They do 50 or they do like a 30-30. And then, you know so we looked at me and my best friend. We looked at seats, flight, hotel, car rental, and I was like I can pay for this, like out of pocket, without putting it on a credit card, because I've saved this money. Wow, but this is. But this will deplete my delorean fund like this. Will you know, this will exit out.
BrianAnd I talked myself out of buying the delorean because I was like well, it's not in that good condition. I'm not a car guy, it's, it needs a lot of work. I don't even know who around here can work on it. I know I can. So I I actually talked myself out of it by only focusing on the cons of buying that particular DeLorean. And then I said, well, there, maybe, you know, maybe the few, like it always is. Like, well, there's more out there, right? So I? That's how I slept that night and I went to the game and I had a great time. I'm so glad I did them. So I'm so glad that I can tell people that I experienced the Super Bowl where my home team won, right? Just the pomp, the circumstance and the excitement around it. I don't regret it.
An Unexpected Journey
BrianThe next year, I met the person that I was going to marry, the one I had my four kids with and life starts happening. You start having kids. We bought a house. However, every year, she would ask me Brian, what do you want for Christmas, brian, what do you want for your birthday, brian, what do you want for Valentine's Day? Every year, no matter the holiday, I would say a DeLorean. That literally became my go-to answer. It got to the point that, about five years into our marriage, she would then say Brian, do you want for christmas? And don't say a delorean, because I was just, I was saying it so much that, that that she then had to add that to her sentence, right?
BrianWell, my first book I got my first book got picked up. It got published in 2007. It sold um, it sold well enough, where I was able to, you know, be signed on for a second book option. And my second book came out in 2010, 2010,. I opened up a separate bank account. That um was that all of my book sale royalties went into Um.
BrianSo not a penny of my book sales went to the house, went to the household, went to the kids, went to the credit cards, went to me going out eating dinner, didn't go to right, didn't touch it, and I called it my DeLorean fund and I said I am going to rebuild my fund and I'm going to use my book sales to do it. So I put every penny into this DeLorean fund, every royalty check that I got every month. And then, you know, my third book came out in 2015, which is my time travel novel, which then got nominated for a Hugo Award in 2016, which kind of put me on the map as actually as a viable author. It got taken more seriously. No-transcript, yeah. So I started looking. I do not know how to drive a manual, as we were talking about, so I had to find an automatic. So I kept having to. Every time a manual came across my radar, I had to be like, nope, I can't do that.
BrianAnd then Lady in Traverse City, michigan, puts her automatic 1981 DeLorean up for sale only on a website called DMC Talk. She did not put it on eBay, she did not put it on Facebook, she did not put it on Facebook, she did not put it on Craigslist, she only put it on DMC Talk because she only wanted a real, like DeLorean fanatic to buy her car. Because when you put a DeLorean up for sale on eBay and Craigslist, people call they say they're interested, but really all they want to do is take a test drive in DeLorean and then you'd never hear from them again. So she knew and I saw the ad and I was like holy shit, it's an automatic, that's you know, it's it. Like I couldn't believe it and it was within. I mean, I had the money like I could pay in cash. I didn't even need to find a bank to give me meet me halfway, like I did. So that's a very long story of how I got the car wow, what a great story.
ChristianAnd, goodness Well, did we have any follow-ons, or we? Uh, we're, we're, we're well past time.
BrianWe're just scratching the surface.
DougMy God, we're just scratching the surface inside info because I'm in the club that you are a co-founder of. I wasn't around to experience it, but you have a special shirt and there's some flames on it and it's not from a DeLorean doing time travel in a parking lot. You alluded to not being a mechanical guy. That's more of your dad. You alluded not driving a stick shift, but so there's a story here and every car tells a story and hopefully my ribs are going to be hurting as hard as yours probably were when this happened or at least after the fact. But tell the listeners about the fire I've set the car on fire twice.
BrianDelorean fire yeah, the first one, I think, happened before you, before your time. No, I've set my car on fire twice. Delorean fire fuse in the you know the compartment, the fuse box compartment, right. So all the relays and fuses are in the same compartment and I just bought every single one, every single one new. Some of them I bought from dave mckean, who's uh in the delorean world. Uh, he does uh solid state relay upgrades, and some were just you know, bought uh volvo or you know bosh.
BrianBut I wanted new ones, like even if they were working okay, I said I want to redo the entire thing. What my mistake was was I removed every single one and didn't replace them one by one, like I didn't pull one out, put a new one in, pull one out, put it into replacement. I stripped the whole compartment and then went uh-oh, I don't know what relay and fuse goes to what connector, so I'm gonna guess. Well, I plugged in a electrical component into a relay that was way off the voltage that it should be and I buttoned it all back up and I'm walking on in my driveway. I look over the inside of my car cue, the ominous music is completely engulfed like a fishbowl of that white electrical sweeping out of the car.
BrianCue the ominous music action is kill the battery, stop getting letting power go go to it right, but the problem is is, after the smoke cleared out, I still didn't know which one it was, because I'm looking at what I thought was correct. So I'm like well, how do I like? What do I do? So I had to keep unplugging one, turning the battery back on and waiting for it to smoke again until I found the one that I had messed up on. Aye, aye, aye, that's harrowing. Yeah, goodness, it was very harrowing, right. And then, the second time I did it, I installed LED halo headlights. I took out the stock headlights and I installed LED with the amber halo and those. In order to have an amber halo you have. It's a separate set of wires that then you have to splice and tap into your side markers.
BrianSo when you put your running lights on. The halos glow right, because when you put on your parking lights, the side markers glow.
DougAh, that's how it works, gotcha.
BrianSo that's what you tap into. So it gives them power, right? What I didn't do is I didn't. I guess I left.
BrianI don't quite know still what I did, but I must have not put electrical tape on one of the splices or left something exposed, because I had the running lights on for quite a bit of hours while I was driving around. And I get to a gas station and the entire front of the car was engulfed in that white electrical smoke. Again, it had short-circuited all my lights. I had no brake lights, no directionals, like it just fried everything. And when I went in there there was a whole clump of wires all melted together and I pinpointed it down to one of those halos that I was supposed to splice.
BrianI just wonder if I'm, because I don't really know what I'm doing. You know, is, you know, operator error? But so I had to replace everything I had to. I had to get new headlights, I had to replace, buy new wiring, you know, and that was, and I'm not, you know I did. So I. That was awful, but those are the two times that I have, you know. So someone made a t-shirt for me for that I wear on tech days. That's my car upside down with flames and on the bottom it says looks about right well nice.
DougWell, we've all made our we. We've all made our mistakes on our delorean. Uh, I haven't set mine on fire, but I did cause it to overheat in my driveway, so that's a special one For another day.
ChristianYeah, let's, brian. Let's keep it at two times. No, third time's a charm for that bud. Well, I think it's time to wrap up. This is our longest episode by far. Time flew by and, yeah, this is really. It's been so wonderful to meet you. You finally, brian, heard a lot about you. Thanks for taking the time. Man and um again check us out. It is no truer than what you've heard here. Every car tells a story, and even if you're not a car person and don't think you have a story by way of your automobiles, guess what you do? Some of our best guests have told us exactly that. So, hey, if you want to join the discussion, please email me, christian at carslovecom, or doug at carslovecom. Check us out on your podcast platform of choice to all the cars I've loved before, or at our website, carslovecom. I think that's it, doug. Any final thoughts?
DougNo, just let's not forget, there's a feedback form. You can also just fill that in. Give us some feedback and if you want to be on the show, let us know. Contact us. We're totally open. Referrals are appreciated. As Christian said, if you like us, click, follow. If you want to do a review, even better. But we're growing. We love the attention. We love hearing people tell the stories because, as Christian said, every car tells a story and we're going to have Brian back. You got it. This will not be the only DeLorean story. That's our teaser.
ChristianOh, we'll have more. We'll have more in queue. Hey, brian, again great having you pal. Let's have you back soon, okay.
BrianOh, thanks for having me Absolutely Appreciate it.
ChristianThank, you, guys All right brother, appreciate it If you are in Asia and you want to be on the show. If you are in South America and want to be on the show. If you're in Europe and you want to be on the show. If you are in Antarctica and you're a penguin and you had a black and white car growing up, contact us carslovecom. To all the cars I've loved before, every car tells a story. See you next week.
