Spring Social

This year's Spring Social was a great two day event! Despite the soggy weather report for Saturday, we all got out things together and met at The Auto Works in Westwood, NJ for the first part of the social. David Teitelbaum had coordinated with the owner of the shop to let us use the property for our tech session, door adjustments, and to have a place to keep our heads dry during the bad weather throughout the day. The shop proved to have a ton of space, and everyone was comfortable and enjoyed themselves.

The day's events kicked off at 9:00am. Members were there bright and early and began to put the shop to good use almost right away. As always, Rob and Debbie Grady from P.J. Grady were in attendance. Rob was fast at work doing car inspections for members while Debbie had a table of parts and supplies ready to be purchased by members. We are always happy to have Rob and Debbie attend our events and spend time with us. They have a lot of technical advice to offer and are always great to talk to about anything DeLorean (and non-DeLorean) related. THANKS AGAIN ROB AND DEBBIE!

The Spring Social is where many members come to look at each other's cars, and talk some DeLorean talk. One of the great things about our club events is how everyone is more than happy to pitch in, get their hands dirty, and help someone fix a problem on their car. Sometimes it is a new adventure for everyone as we look at a member's car and try to fix issues that they may find, and usually everyone goes home much happier!

It's a great feeling to see a group of members gather around a car and admire a feature or modification that the owner did, or offer them advice on a problem. Just another example that DeLorean Owners are good people.

As many of you might have noticed, the DeLorean Mid-Atlantic club is pushing to offer more to their members, and really take advantage of the internet and other computer related frontiers to expand the limits of what we can offer.

We were struck with inspiration to modify the existing membership database with a whole set of new tools and to also make it available online to the club officers for ease of use and membership tracking!

Cheryl Abato did a great job collecting club dues at the event, and coordinating member information in the new and improved database! Wait until you see what we have planned next for our members!!!

David Teitelbaum has many hobbies other than his DeLorean. He also collects and restores pinball and arcade systems. Dave is fortunate enough to have TWO fully restored and operational Back to the Future 1,2,3 pinball machines! He usually brings one of them to our events and many of us have a blast playing it. It's a wonderful game, with lots of great sounds and graphics. No matter who attends the Spring Social, you can bet that they will wind up playing at least one game of pinball.

During the two day event, we had a total of 18 cars! (If you attended the event, and are not here, you must have been one of the people who were so hungry you ran in for dinner!)

Every year at our Spring Social we had a raffle to help raise money for the club's future events. The prizes this year included DeLorean and Non-DeLorean related products. The club president Scott Tice and his son Zachary pulled the lucky numbers and dispensed the winning prizes. Everything from brake pads and rotors to DeLorean Pins and glass candle holders were awarded. For those that didn't quite win the prize they hoped for... well... Let's just say there was some trading going on afterwards. :)

One of our newest members is Jon. Jon has done some very interesting restoration work on his car in his first year of ownership. Jon has totally cleaned, painted and restored most of his interior and engine. Way to go Jon Welcome to the club! (When you're done with your car... some of us would like you to clean ours for us also)

It was almost 5:00 in the evening, time to wrap up our tech session for the day and head out to dinner with our guest speaker Fred Dellis. We all hopped in our cars and took a short drive over to The Manhattan Deli. When we arrived at the dinner location, there was a huge open space in the parking lot. It doesn't take long for a bunch of DeLorean owners to realize this and do something about it. Once again, due to the soggy weather, we could not get the classic "doors open" shot.

Just before dinner we heard from our guest speaker Fred Dellis. Fred was the owner of Legend Industries which was the company responsible for making the turbo engine for the DeLorean. Only a handful of cars with these engines are ever made.

As we sat and listened to Fred recollect all his experiences and stories about John DeLorean you could easily image what it must have been like to bare witness to the automotive history that happened right before him.

Fred was an excellent speaker, and he was kind enough to answer many of our questions. Below you will find video clips of his speech. Sorry about the quality... our video camera acted up on us that night so I had to capture these clips with my digital camera.

"It's day two, and our owners have finished doing their homework that designers Frank and Genevieve left for them..." OOOOPS!!! Guess I shouldn't watch "Trading Spaces" while I do the web site!

Anyway... It now WAS day two for the tour, and the group started off with a nice breakfast buffet at the hotel. Shortly after they got under way for their ride to the Palisades Mall! This mall is the 2nd largest in the world, and the weather had cleared up nicely. LOOKS LIKE AN AWESOME DAY FOR A DRIVE!

The drive turned out to be great, and the entire caravan was able to stick together without a hitch! Upon arriving at the mall, some members decided to go in and shop while others simply took advantage of the nice weather and hang out and talk to other owners who could not attend the day before, but came out for the ride to the mall on Sunday.

Overall, a great time was had by all! Mother nature did not dampen anyone's spirits and we all had a blast hanging out. We had a total of over 18 cars in attendance throughout the weekend.

Stay tuned! The DeLorean Mid-Atlantic club is getting the next event ready soon. Keep an eye on our website events page for details!