Consultant has auto motive for this plan.

• Author: Martin, Edward
• Position: PEOPLE

Though he's 60, Dick Dell never got over hot cars, particularly his first new one, a glacier-blue '63 Falcon Sprint with four on the floor and a high-revving V-8 under the hood. Now he's the driving force behind the Advanced Vehicle Research Center of North Carolina, an R & D center on 630 acres in Northampton County. It will, he says, put the state on the international automotive map.

Cars have come a long way since that Falcon, Dell says, through advances wrung out in places such as the research center, scheduled to open its first phase late next year. "Air coming out of the tailpipe of a new Toyota is cleaner than the ambient air of Los Angeles."

Born on Maryland's Eastern Shore, he grew up in Baltimore, enlisted in the Air Force at 17 and served in Vietnam and elsewhere. He returned home in 1967 and took evening classes at Johns Hopkins University, then joined IBM in 1968 as a field engineer. After several transfers, he put down roots in Raleigh before leaving the company in 1989 to start Triangle Group International, a consulting business.

As a car buff, he cringed as the state lost bids to land Volkswagen, Mercedes and BMW in the '80s and '90s. In 2005, he approached the state Commerce Department with a plan. Three years later, legislators awarded $7.5 million to the nonprofit center, owned by the county, which provided the land, North Carolina's Northeast, a...