Thank you to Ed Bolian and VINWIKI for featuring the story of how VIN 515 was discovered after it crashed in 1981 and was tucked away in a barn in Fort Wayne Indiana.
Are you still interested in in in my stuff?
and I said absolutely what’s the story?
he goes can you be here tomorrow?
I said sure !
[Music]
My name’s Ken Kapalowski I um have been into DeLoreans forever I think ever since I saw it rolling off the back of the truck in “Back to the Future” is when I
originally fell in love with it but I always remember seeing DeLoreans in the 90s and some even in the early 80s when I was still a kid, thinking they were just a cool unique different car.
The passion turned into a reality for me, I started saving my money and
told my mom I’m going to get that car one day and she leans over to me she
says “honey I don’t think that’s a real car sweetheart”
On my 21st birthday I came home and showed her that it is a
real car and the first thing she said to me she goes “oh how come it’s not painted?”
I said well they all come like that, that’s a stainless steel car that’s the
finish of this car. Fast forward to a few years later I had my DeLorean got a
second one and started turning it into a time machine and then married, children, and it goes from working on the cars to kind of Family Guy all the time finding time to wash the cars and enjoy them in between. As few and far between so you enjoy it a little bit more but you have less time for it. I thought it would be a cool thing to get my kid a little “Back to the Future” DeLorean Power Wheels. I’ve seen them on the Internet before and they kind of pop up now and again on eBay and I found one on eBay that I’d never seen before. It was brand new in the box! and I put my bid on it I won the auction and I drove out to pick this thing up in person.
I lived in Burlington, Ontario in Canada and I drove with my brother all the way out to Fort Wayne Indiana met with a gentleman named Dennis Listenberger. Dennis was a super nice guy he he had the DeLorean out on display in his yard when we went there to pick it up, and he was explaining to me about where he got it and how long he’s had it and I was fascinated that it was still brand new in the box. I said how on Earth did you have this thing brand new in the box for all these years and he goes well you think that’s something I got three more in the garage! Then he showed me around the garage and I was like a kid in Candy Land because this guy, he was a DeLorean fan!! He had a brand new dealership sign he had a “Back to the Future” pinball machine in there, he had had a stock automatic DeLorean, he had a crash DeLorean and tons and tons of Parts just everywhere in this shed.
He used to be a body shop guy and I’m looking at this stuff thinking like this
is great that I got these power wheels but it kind of didn’t matter anymore I was like what what about that?! what about the dealership sign?! what about the pinball machine?! what about all these really cool things like do you want to sell any of that stuff?? He says no no I’m I’m good I think I’m going to hang on to those for a few more years but if I ever do decide to sell them I’ll give you a call.
I kept in touch with Dennis over the years and kind of poked him every
once in a while see if he’s willing to sell something and no such luck and then
for a few years it just was radio silence I started getting nervous and thinking like what the heck’s happening with this guy! did I did I piss him off?
did I say something wrong? whatever but I even went out to a DeLorean car show in Chicago and my friend Gary was there with me and I said “hey Gary can you stop by this address on your way home and see what’s going on?” he’s like sure! tries to drop by and and ended up not making any contact, knocked on the door nobody was home, and couldn’t tell if there was still DeLoreans or “Back to the Future” stuff in there it was just the house for all that mattered so I kind of left it at that and said well you know we uh we tried.
Then Travis Bell I had known him from years before my brother drives a 1969 Dodge Monaco done up like the Bluesmobile so of course we gravitated towards Travis and his super cool DVD ripping through the Old Blues Brothers
Mall in Chicago before they tore it down then I was buying license place and
stuff from Travis over the years. I knew he was in Indiana and I said hey if you’re ever out towards Fort Wayne can you stop by this address see what’s going on see if Dennis is still there and what’s happening with these cars nothing nothing came of that either I was talking to to Travis a couple months ago and he’s like what whatever happened with that guy? I was like funny you should ask, he called me up out of the blue!
So it’s October I’m at work and I get a call from Dennis on my cell phone, and he’s like “hey Ken it’s Dennis, how you doing? you remember me? I’m the guy you bought the DeLorean power wheels from!” and I said “yeah of course I remember you! what happened to you? I’ve been trying to reach you all these years! I sent you handwritten letters in the mail, I had people stopping by your house to knock on the door” and he goes “oh I’m busy I’m just I’m not good at communicating so I’ll uh you know I’m calling you now because I said I’d give you a call when I’m getting rid of some stuff and I’m moving to California are you still interested in in in my stuff?” and I said “absolutely! what’s the story?” he goes “can you be here tomorrow?” I said “sure!”
So I I started coming up with a plan, I had to pitch to the wife what I’m doing and how it’s not a crazy thing. Booked a flight from Fort Lauderdale to Detroit,
met with my friend Gary. Gary met me in Detroit picked me up with his fiancé Sam. We drove from Detroit to Fort Wayne and picked up:
- the automatic DeLorean
- the dealership sign
- the crash DeLorean
- all the DeLorean parts
and I tried so hard to get that pinball machine, but Dennis promises me he put my name on the back, my phone number and email. He gave it to his daughter because his daughter really wanted it. She didn’t want any of the other stuff, but she really wanted that pinball machine and he said that this the best I can do and maybe she’ll call you up again in 15 years and offer you that pinball machine. But it was fine, we got all the stuff packed up but the interesting story now is that crash DeLorean.
Dennis had the automatic DeLorean and all the parts and he figured get a crash car he saw an ad somewhere. He told me the story he was in Detroit and he saw an ad in a local newspaper for Salvage DeLoreans for sale. He drove out to look at them and there was three of them on site and he picked that one for the reason because it was the most complete it still had the airbox on it and uh it was automatic because his car was automatic. So he bought the car for like $1,000 something like this trailered it back home. It had no wheels on it, parked it in the driveway and I’m sure explained to his wife what I explain to my wife why are you bringing this piece of garbage home? It sat in his garage I guess for 20 plus years just underneath all these things and I think he told me he ended up taking the governor off of it and when me and Gary got there to pick up the stuff he was in the process of taking the the passenger side torsion bar out of it to put into his automatic car. As far as we know that’s all the the part swapping that’s happened between this car but it essentially sat for 20 years in the back of his shed or garage.
The significance of this car though is it’s not just any crash test DeLorean. As we kind of dug through and learned what it was it had the original VIN plate on the dashboard and it’s VIN 515 which is infamously the 35 mph crash test car from the DeLorean Factory. The story with this car was it was an arrangement with John DeLorean and the Department of Transportation. They hired a company called Fitzpatrick engineering to do crash test of the DeLorean a production made vehicle with airbags. So they added the airbags, they took out the DeLorean steering wheel, they put a Volvo steering wheel in it they put dual airbags, they put two crash test dummies in it and no seat belts and they crashed this car into the wall at 35 miles per hour! The significance of it was to see how the Department of Transportation could learn about putting airbags in a car that’s already been made, that doesn’t have airbags, and how well it would perform once they’ve been retrofitted in there. So we thought that was an interesting story and and when I told that story to Travis, Travis is like “dude that story is so much bigger than the DeLorean community! it’s cool that you got that car and you finally got all those DeLorean things that you wanted to get from Dennis but the story of this crash test car is is fascinating” and I said “yeah, I guess it kind of is!”
So now I’ve been talking a lot to some folks in the DeLorean Community. James Espey at DeLorean Motor Company, he’s a big advocate of keeping the history alive. There’s Tony Swann out in Chicago, Rich Weissensel out in Chicago, Tamir Ardon, he’s been huge in the DeLorean world over all these years and uh just trying to figure out what this car means to the community in addition to what it means to to just the car Community with being an airbag test car. The stories that we’re hoping to unearth for more people as we let the world know that this car exists and hopefully figure out where its sister is, 517 because there was two crash test cars 515 which we have now, the 35 mph crash test car is found and unearthed, and then we have 517 which was the 40 mile per hour crash test car. That one allegedly we we can’t say for sure yet but it sounds like it ended up somewhere in Europe and was parted out, don’t know.
The only other story that I have for it is, Rob Grady another guy who’s been doing DeLorean stuff for years, he remembers, I had a conversation with him a few days ago he says “I remember vividly being in Detroit in 1982 when DeLorean was liquidating all of their assets and they had a bunch of dies and and parts” that he said that “couldn’t really make me any money working on these cars so I just kind of left it alone but he remembered vividly seeing these two crash test cars they wanted some un ungodly amount of money they wanted $5,000 a car in 1982 for a smashed DeLorean”. He kind of looked at it and said it doesn’t make any sense for me to buy these cars I’ll just pass on them but they were definitely together then and then when Dennis saw these things again in 1989 1990 when he picked them up there was three of them! So I’m assuming it was 515, 517 and maybe another 500 series VIN. I’m still getting some pieces of research together. To see that car survived all those years and then just lived in his garage, it’s great that it’s preserved now we want to take it to the next level and kind of get it out to the world take it to some DeLorean car shows.
We’re going to take it to a car show in Toronto to have it displayed for the first time ever called Motorama. We’re really hoping that more stories will come out and kind of paint the history of this car from everybody that we’ve talked to we all concur it has to stay exactly as it was. It hasn’t changed, the story that Rob Grady told me when he saw those cars in 82 he basically told me it was only good for an engine and transmission there was nothing left. It was basically crashed into a wall, the pieces that were falling off the car after the crash they threw away, and what was left was basically what we have today! nothing’s changed since it’s hit the wall! So the idea is keep it exactly as it was. We’ve managed through Tony Swann to track down the original seats that were in the car for the crash test we’re still trying to figure out a way to to prove it, but trustworthy guy and I think the stories that we have at least behind them and the way that they look is very true to these being the crash test seats. The plans for what we want to do is not restore it we don’t even want to clean it, I mean it’s Dennis did a good job despite that it had all this stuff piled on top of it over the years it did a good job of preserving the car because nothing it didn’t even have dust on it when we got it I’m sure it had some crash test dust inside of it but from how it sat from 1981 to how it sits today aside from the missing governor and the attempted passenger side torsion bar, that car is as complete as it was when it hit the wall.
We had to put some wheels on it. Dennis had some Toyota truck I think I can’t remember exactly he mentioned to me but we’ve removed those tires and put original early style DeLorean tires on it with the original NCT tires a rubber on the tires so it’s as close to as exactly what it was when it hit the wall there’s no plans to uh change anything from that we want it to be exactly as it was when it hit that wall so I think the only thing we need still now is a uh a binnacle to put back in it and maybe some Crash Test Dummies to put in it would be pretty cool but try to find a crash test dummy it’s harder to find than a crash test DeLorean!
Special thank you again to Ed Bolian and VINWIKI for being such gracious hosts and helping tell the story of VIN 515!
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