Cold Calling a Legend
John DeLorean made me.
The man was a legend, for reasons both good and bad, but there was little reason for me (born 1970) to know who he was. I was too young to remember the GTO first-hand, didn’t even know what a Packard looked like, and knew about the man primarily from stories about the rise and messy demise of his stainless-steel sports car in my dog-eared copies of Car and Driver.
Though I’d been writing professionally since before getting my driver’s license, my magazine training before writing for car-buff booksmagazine. There, I acted as fact-checker — making sure that everything the writers wanted printed was in fact correct, and that the ever-growing state’s area codes didn’t change overnight before we went to print. I drove 165 miles a day round-trip, for minimum wage, wearing a tie and big-boy shoes, just to cut my teeth in the world of magazines.
