This former DeLorean factory employee opened up about what it was like to work at the company, as he called it the ‘best job I ever had’.
Neal Barclay, worked for the factory in the UK, when the iconic car was first being rolled out in the early 1980s.
The company – and the car itself – had tumultuous but fascinating stories.
For Barclay however, it was always ‘history in the making’.
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Working at the DeLorean factory in the early days
People may debate over what the best car of all time is, but the debate over the most iconic movie car has been well and truly settled.
The DeLorean takes the prize every time, thanks to its pivotal role in the Back to the Future series, which spanned three movies from 1985 to 1990.
And to this day, it’s still a full-fledged icon – even when it’s having mechanical issues.
But before its gullwing doors ever opened for Marty McFly, this was a car being built in Dunmurray, Northern Ireland, UK.
Neal Barclay was one of the men working on it, and he granted an interview to Autoblog about his experiences.
“I started work [as a traffic and dispatch officer] on March 16th, 1981. The first day was spent getting talks about the company and photos taken for my ID, [and] also a tour of the factory.
“I was given an information pack, which I have to this day, as well as my ID pass. In the next few days, more workers were taken on.
“There we were, a small team of us. Half of us worked at the factory, [and] the others worked at the compound at the docks in Belfast,” he told the website.
The first shipment went out on April 19th, 1981, heading out to Long Beach, California.
With journalists around the world gathered on the dock, it’s no wonder that Barclay declared it ‘history in the making’.
He hadn’t even been booked in to work that day, but he went down anyway with a camera.
How ‘the best job’ Barclay ever had came to an end
Although production ramped up to the point where they were making 80 cars a day, things weren’t going smoothly behind the scenes.
In the early 1980s, the US was going through a recession, so interest in the DeLorean hit a slump.
But the company kept producing them, leading to a large inventory of unsold cars and further financial woes.
On the 31st May 1982, Barclay lost his job.
“I lost the job I loved, and to this day, it was the best job I ever had! There were workers there who did not have a job before.
“For me, I never lost a job before, so I had to face unemployment for the first time. It was very hard for me to do,” he recalled.
He then retrained to get a HGV license.
In the 40 years since, the sting of losing his beloved job still remains.
“Even today, it still hurts losing my job at DeLorean, but it is too easy to blame people for what went wrong.
“Over the years, I have met owners from Ireland, the UK, and other parts of the world. The DeLorean Dream is very much still alive today as it was then back in 1981,” Barclay said.
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