The previous owner of my DeLorean did an excellent job in documenting all of the repairs and upgrades that he completed by keeping all of the receipts. I have kept up with this as well and have a long Google Sheet full of all previous parts purchased, so I have an accurate picture of what's been done from 2007 to the present. Unfortunately, I know very little about the history of VIN 02087 prior to the previous owner, who was located in Mississippi. A vehicle history report that I purchased during the negotiations of my car didn't show any history of ownership prior to 2006, but did show that the previous owner bought it from someone located in Wisconsin.
During my effort of documenting all previous work, I found a plastic sleeve with various service records from 1990 through 1992 with the owner's name on the documents, including a Florida Vehicle Registration Certificate from 1990. I started Googling information about the previous owner. There were actually two different names listed in the various service records, both men, but I discovered that one of the people in the records had passed away in 2007 in Naples, FL. I found his obituary and discovered another name in the obit for his son, Terry, from Wisconsin that was listed in some of the service records.
After doing some more digging online, I was able to track down a couple of possible phone numbers for his son and decided to give them a try. The first number I tried was no longer in service, but the 2nd number was still good and I was able to leave a message explaining that I was looking for the previous owner of my DeLorean and to give me a call back if I had the right person.
Later that day, I got a call back from Terry, a very nice man now in his 80's, who was the true owner of the car back in the 90's. He actually had owned two DeLoreans at the same time back in the day, so he didn't know which of the two that I had. I understand that he had one car with him in Wisconsin that he drove a lot, while the other one he kept at his father's place in Florida, which had to be the one that I had. He didn't recall a lot of specific details about my car, but I brought up some of the service records that I had found, including one from the now defunct DeLorean One in Houston, TX. He recalled that he had shipped the car to Texas to be worked on in the 90's, and from the looks of the records, he spent a lot of money making sure the car was in good condition.
I can't tell if the documents I have are for quoting purposes only, or if everything listed was indeed completed. Above are pictures of the registration card, and service records for a couple of shops in FL. If it was all done, he spent a small fortune just at DeLorean One (shown in a previous blog post), which was over $14k in the early 90's. The records also show that it had 43k miles at that time, just a few thousand more from the service records from 1990.
He didn't remember who he ended up selling the car to, but it must have been to someone else in Wisconsin as that appears to be where the previous owner bought the car from back in 2007. The strange thing is that from 1992 to 2007, the car was only driven a few thousand miles as it only had 49,800 miles when I bought it in 2011. I contacted the previous owner to see what details he could recall about the former owner, but I haven't heard anything back yet.
Terry was a very fun guy to talk to who has led an interesting life. Even though he's in his 80's, he still owns and drives a Ferrari 360, has owned and flown several planes, and has owned so many various cars over the years that I wasn't too surprised that he didn't recall too many details about my DeLorean. I'm glad I took the time to track him down and speak with him before it was too late. If I am able to track down any more historical details about my car, I'll come back and post an update.
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