[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Dr. Eric M. Schiffer

After John Delorean moved onto Chevrolet in early 1969 Jim Wangers soon left the Ad agency and Ace Wilson Sr. sold the Royal Racing Team to George Delorean. A memo from John Delorean that all high performance parts, blocks, heads etc. will be picked up. All of the items went to George and his Leader Automotive in Ferdale.

Basicly, the hand writting was on the wall and the new PMD general manager and PMD head engineer would no longer be budgeting Royal Pontiac from engineering R&D fund. The support that Jim Wangers and Ace Wilson's Royal Pontiac had gotten from Knudsen, Estes and Delorean was now over....

The beginning of the end....

For another perspective, Dad was inside the Pontiac Engineering building some time after the news came down. There was a wire bin/fenced in area where they kept all of the special "one off" engineering parts. Dad was walking throught the building one day and there was a guy in that area scrapping all of those parts.

Dad said "...what are you doing?!?"

Guy: "...they said get rid of all this."

Dad: "Can I take some out?"

Guy: "Take what you want, but it will all be gone by the end of the day".

So - Dad loaded up the trunk of his Lemans with everything he could grab in one trip. I recall he said that there were two blocks, a couple sets of cylinder heads, at least one tripower and at least one Armasteel crank - all marked with red paint as "scrap".

There was a little dip in the driveway where the cars went through the Security gate - Dad said the back bumper of the Lemans drug the pavement in that spot on his way out!

K