How I Came To Drive A Delorean And Other Exotics At Age 14: I Was A Lot Boy In My Father’s Repo Business

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– Posted on November 21, 2021

Part 2: The Exotics In The Repo Lot:

 

You can see Dad’s Dodge wrecker in the background there, what looks like a giant Thunderbird next to it, and a Monza with all of the tape stripes Chevy offered that year.

 

I’ll lead off with one of the more interesting cars to keep you awake: a Lotus Esprit Turbo in arrest-me red, wearing Jersey plates. This car came in during the summer of ’85 and made everything else in the lot look like it was cemented to the ground. As the lot guy I was supposed to be maintaining all of the cars in the lot—but James Bond was parked outside my house! I spent every possible minute sitting behind the wheel, dreaming of driving off a pier into the waters of the French Riviera with Catherine Bach in the passenger seat.

I remember it being easy to start, but the clutch was very tricky, and the pedals were tiny and right next to each other. The interior also felt like it had been assembled with a hot glue gun and some double-sided tape. We opened up the engine bay and were surprised at how small it was, and it took us a while to locate the battery, down at the bottom of the engine bay when it needed a jump.

As I recall, the bank was pretty keen to get the Lotus back, so that one left on a flatbed about two weeks later while I was at school.

 

Behind it you can see the first of three Mazda shop trucks and a big old Parisienne my Dad had for a couple of months. Wish I had that Trooper now…

 

Next, in stark contrast to the Lotus, a cocaine era Corvette, also in arrest-me red. This one was a bitch to start and had been flogged pretty well for a brand new car. The tires were bald and it didn’t like to idle. Inside the lessee had treated it as poorly as possible, which made Chevrolet’s already questionable QC look worse. I remember the plastic panels feeling cheap and squeaky. It was a nightmare to move around the lot, because it barely ran and the visibility was terrible. Sitting in the seat felt like laying down on a bed. It felt four times the size of the other Corvettes I’d driven up to that point both inside and out.

The ‘Vette stuck around for a couple of months and then one day disappeared—I’d guess the bank sent someone to look it over and they auctioned it.

Here’s a Jaguar XJ-S, something I’d only seen in magazines up until that point. I thought it was beautiful. However, it’s parked on the far side of the lot in front of the gate because it had been towed in, and it never ran while we had it, which probably made getting that K-car out from behind it fun. I recall sliding underneath with J-hooks, ready to pull it forward with the wrecker, and finding suspension parts that looked very delicate and very expensive. I remember this car smelled really good inside. Most of the repos smelled like mold and feet and desperation. This one smelled like wood and leather and expensive British problems.

The Jag stuck around for a long time—it stayed in the back corner of the lot for months. We charged a daily storage fee for each vehicle, and sometimes when the fees got too high, the bank wrote off the car completely, signing the title over to Dad to auction. This is how we wound up with some cars that were less than ideal, but essentially free to us minus the repair bills. I got my VW bus this way.

Interesting look down the lot here. There’s an Omni next door, a Datsun 200SX, and some kind of Oldsmobile by the looks of the vinyl and B-pillar. On the far side are a 300ZX, a K-car of some kind, a Japanese sedan, and a red Ford dentside.

 

Next we have the first of several Porsches. The first was a basic 924 that came in sometime in the fall and stuck around until the snow fell, which was odd for a Porsche. I don’t remember much about it, as I was a 14-year-old snob, even though Porsches for the Road claimed it was the real thing.

I’d seen a couple before this and my tastes ran to the ones in the posters I had on my wall, not the plebian Volkswagen Porsche. If I recall correctly, this shared a doorhandle design with VW, and the doorhandle on this one was broken exactly the same way the VWs did. Inside it felt very downmarket—not too distant from the Rabbit my sister was driving at the time.

 

In the back I can see a red Camaro, a Subaru GL wagon, and a J-body of some kind. Behind that is Mom’s black Dodge Ramcharger, a beloved member of our family for several years until something expensive broke, and we got rid of it. My mother has never forgiven my father for this.

 

This 944 looked more like one on my posters. It wasn’t bright red though, but that pretty wine color matched with a set of gold BBS wheels. A little too flashy for my taste, but it sure did feel nice to sit in. This one had been well treated and I remember it ran well but was terrible to drive in the snow.

The clutch was easier than other Porsches I’d driven but it wanted to get up and go and the tires had no grip. We had to order specially cut keys to move some cars, but I think I recall these took VW key blanks happily. This was towed in because it’s sitting outside the lot. They must have dragged it out of somewhere backwards because flatbed guys always preferred to hook up from the front. But a buck is a buck, and you had to grab them when you saw them.

This Porsche 928 was the only one I’ve ever sat in or driven, and I remember it being brought in and almost as quickly taken back out. The 928 seems to be a polarizing design, but I preferred it over the 924/44 because it looked more sinister and they weren’t as common. I remember this one being equipped with a Blaupunkt Berlin—the radio that had controls mounted on a stalk that stuck up next to the console. I think this was also an automatic, which was just sad. I think I only drove it once, to get it into the lot, and that felt like piloting the USS Enterprise.

 

Behind it sits my sister’s ’81 Honda Civic, the first stick I actually drove on the road and the one I still measure other manual transmissions up to.

 

Next we have a 911, of which I only have one picture. This was an early 80’s model and had been ridden hard and put away wet; I seem to remember there was some body damage which had tweaked the frame and made the doors hard to close—almost as if someone had been recreating some Dukes of Hazzard stunts, landed really hard on one corner.

I do recall that it never ran when we had it. Here it’s sitting outside the lot in one of the tow-in spots, and I don’t remember if we ever got it moved inside the impound lot, or if it got pushed to the back field to await its fate. I remember it was full of fast food wrappers and garbage—a terrible way to treat a thoroughbred like this.

We often found bizarre stuff in repo’d cars. Divorce papers, tax returns, wallets, and sometimes cash. All kinds of weapons—clubs, knives, nunchucks, and swords but I don’t recall ever finding guns. Bags of weed, coke spoons, needles, and other drug trash. Marital aids (you’d be surprised how many). perishable food items. One time we had a van with cases of chicken livers. Sometimes they were so disgusting we left them the way they were and never got inside. The banks always auctioned those when they got the condition report.

Finally, we have a car I lusted after, an early 70’s 911T with a 2.4 badge on the rear grille. I loved this thing, color be damned. This car just felt fast sitting inside, and was brought in on a flatbed and dumped into a snowbank until we could get a key cut.

Is that a Fairmont I spy sitting next to it? Clearly I was so in love with the Porsche I never bothered to clear that one off.

 

From there it was a steep learning curve working the clutch to get it into the lot; as I recall the sweet spot was very small and the pedal throw long. I got pretty good at it though, because I moved it around the lot at the slightest opportunity.

This one smelled like Old German Leather inside, and the fit and finish were superb. The sound of the door closing matched only that of a SAAB. It stuck around in the lot for awhile for some reason. But one day a guy came and drove it up onto a rollback and out of my life.

Moving back to the domestics, here’s an extremely odd vehicle to arrive in our lot: a ’65 or ’66 C2 Corvette sitting on some crappy wheels. Classic cars didn’t often get leased for obvious reasons, but somebody somewhere thought it was a good idea and signed off on this one. (We had the odd classic Mustangs, C3 Corvette, and first-gen Camaros come through now and again).

I wasn’t schooled enough at that point to know what I might be looking at on this one, and as I recall I never had to open the hood—it always started fine for me. This one looked sinister from the outside and stank of some kind of cheap car scent on the inside—cherry or strawberry—so I never spent much time behind the wheel (that car scent oil got stuck in your clothes and never came out). I remember the transmission being finicky and scaring me the first time I had to move it around: it made some whirring noises as I shifted into D and then it CLUNKED into gear. This one waited around for a couple of months until the bank auctioned it off, and I lobbied my dad HARD to keep it, with no success.

 

Here’s a weird one: a Jeep CJ-7 with the Levi’s appearance package. Pretty much a standard CJ with a straight 6, matching blue wagon wheels, a stick (I remember because it was a pain to get into gear) and a blue soft top.

The seats were upholstered with material that looked like bluejeans, and the little Levi’s tags stuck out of the piping on both seats. I took a picture because I wanted this Jeep too, but my Dad knew it was pretty rough and told me the bank was taking it back anyway.

 

Fits right in with the extended white TV production van on the left and an Aspen/Volare wagon on the right.

Finally, I’ll leave you with the strangest vehicle I’ve got pictures of: an honest to god DeLorean. Much like the Lotus, this was like a spaceship had landed in our impound lot.

There was a recent article on the DeLorean here that went through the history of the brand, and it’s a fascinating read. I just remember we’d never seen anything like this car before. I think I remember moving it once or twice around the lot, and it was impossible to gauge where expensive parts of the body ended and the rest of the world began. I think we eventually parked it nose-in on the front row so we could get to the engine if needed, and there it stayed (the front row was only one car deep while the back row could go as deep as three cars). Opening the gullwing doors for the first time I could feel how heavy they were even though the struts did most of the work.

The dude in the picture was one of the original lot guys who showed me how to start balky cars, where the ignition key went in a SAAB, and how to run the hydraulics on the wrecker.

The DeLorean came and went pretty fast if I recall correctly, maybe two weeks in total. It was still very new at that time, and I’d bet someone at the bank wanted to get rid of it quickly.

Dad owned the agency for a bit over ten years, but the recession of the 1990’s and changing dynamics in the auto leasing industry put the squeeze on a lot of independent repo agencies. Dad closed the business in the early 90’s and an offbeat chapter in our family’s life came to an end. But I’m proud to say I was 14 when I drove a DeLorean for the first time.

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