From here on, though, it would start to flow back in again. The overheads too, now that they were in full production, would come down dramatically. The Hethel presence, for a start, could be scaled back. No need, with the initial research and development phase over, for a separate DMCL office onsite. Randall travelled across to Norfolk to oversee the winding-up of operations. Chapman apologised that the helicopter was otherwise engaged, and sent a car instead to meet him off the train up from London at Wymondham, a place that took half as long again to spell as it did to pronounce, lodging him in a wing of the hall (my God, the hall) with a view from his lead-paned window of a nine-hundred-year-old church. DeLorean was not wrong about the Brits. Chapman himself could only spare a few minutes the afternoon of Randall’s arrival. It was the Grand Prix season, he had just got back from Buenos Aires, where Elio de Angelis had – to Chapman’s evident disgust – finished ‘only’ sixth, and had another three races coming up in quick succession (three opportunities for de Angelis to make amends): San Marino, Belgium and Monaco.
