The Case of John DeLorean: RCR Stories

ever since the first RCR story I have received countless comments messages and even emails about one story I could really dig into if I found the time to do it and yet most of the people who messaged me about it tended to qualify the suggestion by adding that it's also kind of an obvious story to do because in some ways everybody's heard about it already in some form or fashion maybe not the whole thing but the broad strokes and that's kind of the curse of John DeLorean there's nuance to his story to his rise and fall and all that but you know people don't really know about that people just know about how the story ended but more than that it's as if no one really cares about who he was only the man that he would inevitably become most people just know the general story beats DeLorean was an engineer an auto executive who worked for GM founded his own company and along the way designed some of the most iconic cars to ever touch the open road from the pontiac gto muscle car to the Firebird and later the car that would sort of define his legacy the dmc-12 people know about how the car failed in its own era prior to the Back to the Future film's launching it into the public lexicon several years too late and the eventual federal case that ended up leading to DeLoreans downfall in the public sphere because while the word DeLorean might spark memories of a beloved 1985 time-travel film the name also carries with it the taint of scandal I mean it's hard to really think about the guy without thinking about the tail end of his legacy right and yet even more than anything to do with the dmc-12 itself or any of the cars DeLorean could take responsibility for prior to that point and more than the company bearing his name or the scandals that would him this is the story of a man just a guy with a lot of determination a bunch of ideas and a crazy work ethic a man from humble beginnings who would inevitably be corrupted by the seductions of excess power and celebrity that's what I'm interested in so know I'm probably not going to be talking much about back to the future or about how the dmc-12 has lived on as this automotive icon because of the movie because that's not really this is about and lord knows there are any number of other places you can get that information told far more succinctly and without a lisp or a stutter ultimately what this is is a series of tales wrapped together to form one weird legend about an even more particular peculiar man that's more than the sum of its parts so sit back and hopefully enjoy the story I'm about to tell you this is the legend of John DeLorean John Zachary DeLorean was born in Detroit Michigan on January 6th 1925 to Hungarian immigrant Zachary DeLorean and his wife Ann austria-hungary expat by the name of Catherine pre-beck as a young man Zachary DeLorean worked in a factory to make ends meet until he can make the journey to the United States at the turn of the 20th century first settling in Montana then moving to Indiana and then finally to Michigan as if the family had already been destined for the auto industry Zachary worked for the Ford Motor Company factory in Highland Park taking on a role as a union organizer despite an overall lack of education as well as a fairly crummy grasp of the English language not that this has stopped any number of people from making it big in America since then he'll Tommy Wiseau is sort of a cult icon and he sings only have a tenuous grasp on what actual human beings are supposed to sound like anywho Zachary's English wasn't always under a microscope considering his gig with Ford wasn't even a full-time job when not on call as a union organizer Zachary worked as a carpenter to pay the bills for himself and his wife Katherine in a marriage that seemed to have far more downs than ups as they welcomed four sons into the world with John DeLorean being the eldest the nature of the economy and the workforce meant that the family would move around a lot although Zachary and Katherine always managed to land on their feet by finding work in any number of fields most notably with Katherine working for the carboy products division of General Electric in a sense they were the prototypical by the bootstraps American family braced by one another support but while the DeLorean family did represent the American Dream in microcosm home life wasn't always a fistful of rainbow sprinkles considering Zachary wasn't emotionally and physically abusive man it was his parents marriage that in a lot of ways force John to grow up sooner than he might have liked you see whenever Zachary got particularly violent or drunk Katherine would take John and his brothers to go stay with their aunt in Los Angeles sometimes Katherine and the kids would stay with her sister for a year at a time while Zachary continued to work and get his attitude back on track but it was always an uphill battle particularly considering this was an alcoholic with no real support system of his own I mean I guess I'm just trying to see both sides of the DeLorean story but by most accounts Zachary wasn't a particularly fun guy to be around even when he was sober so it's no real surprise that Zachary and Catherine divorced in 1942 with Zachary more or less bailing on the family and living in a boarding house as a drunken hermit you could argue that his father's downfall served as a kind of deterrent as John looked to succeed where his father only found small successes but bigger failures as a grade schooler John was an attentive and dedicated student I mean sure I don't have his transcripts or anything but he did manage to earn high enough grades to be accepted to the Cass Technical High School in Detroit a school strictly for honor students here John studied Electrical Engineering earning grades that attracted the notice of the Lawrence Institute of Technology in Southfield Michigan where John would continue his studies after high school by earning of all things a music scholarship because in addition to being an A student and an engineering minded guy John also played a mean saxophone in his school's jazz band basically the guy spread himself pretty thin but didn't seem to be particularly fazed by it anyway it was at the Lawrence Institute that John changed curriculums from electrical engineering to industrial engineering quickly earning a spot on the Honor Society and building a reputation as one of the most gifted students in the entire school at the time naturally when your balls deep in an engineering education in an age before the tech boom odds were that your I would end up wandering towards the automotive industry like it had for countless future auto industry legends who grew up in this era case in point while an undergrad John put his skills to use with a part-time job at a Chrysler body shop all in all it was a promising start to John DeLoreans future as he was on track to finish school from which any number of career paths would be open to him except well the specter of war loomed large you see by now John was old enough for military service and the United States was well into the second world war so it was only a matter of time before John found himself drafted into the conflict it was 1943 and John had to put his career ambitions on hold even though it never we seemed as though he was 100% certain just what those ambitions would be this wasn't a lee iacocca scenario where he seemingly had an entire vision board of professions in the automotive field stretched out in front of him it took time for John to piece together just what kind of life he planned on leading over the course of the three years he spent in the military in the post-war years after he was honorably discharged from the Army John continued to maul the possibilities for his future one of the reasons for his uncertainty was the fact that his mother and his brothers were in dire straits after his return home from the war Katherine was struggling to make ends meet and the work situation wasn't exactly all that great for his brothers either so John decided for the sake of his family to put off his studies for nearly two years in order to support his family as a draftsman for the public lighting Commission whereas his father managed to walk away from Katherine and the boys John made the choices stand side by side with his family in the muck of near destitution it offered a glimpse into John's determination since he never planned not to return to his studies this was simply one detour on the road back to higher education and a future filled with vague but gradually crystallizing possibilities once his mother was back on her feet John returned to Lawrence graduating with a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering and while you'd probably think he would use this triumphant moment to transition into whatever his end goal would be John opted instead to bide his time by selling life insurance since he had already spent plenty of time backpacking through Europe during the war and yet that down period of selling life insurance helped John immensely because it provided him with the time to put his engineering experience to good use while working for the insurance agency John developed an analytical system for engineering leading to a sale of roughly eight hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of policies in just 10 months but like anyone who's really good at something John inevitably wanted to move on to something that was less of a sure thing for one John would later state that life insurance was never something he planned on doing long term it was simply a way to pay the bills while improving his communication skills since he was smarter than he was gregarious and what do you know it turns out his briefs adjourn in the light insurance game helped him boost his confidence and instilled in him a charisma that would help carry him farther in the auto industry than he might have gone without it so with his improved socializing and networking skills John quit selling life insurance and pursued work at the factory Equipment Corporation not that this new job held any more sway for him than life insurance did you see despite making six figures across these two separate career paths John had an eye set towards the automotive industry to this end he applied to work for Chrysler on the recommendation of a foreman at a Chrysler garage who saw immense potential in DeLorean not just as an engineer but potentially as an idea man as well so John joined the Chrysler Institute of engineering for postgraduate studies in order to further his understanding of automotive engineering while also attending the Detroit College of Law because he was hardcore like that I guess and while John didn't finish that law degree he did graduate from the Chrysler Institute with a master's in automotive engineering in 1952 and over the subsequent five years John would take night classes at the Ross School of Business in order to earn his MBA all while working for one year as part of Chrysler's engineering team among other jobs in the auto industry between 1952 and 1957 long story short John DeLorean was a man of incredible Drive pun only slightly intended in fact DeLoreans work ethic became so well-known within automotive circles that he became something of a hot commodity in a relatively short span basically Chrysler seemed to like having DeLorean around but not nearly enough to engage in a bidding war with Packard Motor Company who was offering DeLorean a $14,000 salary and a promise of working alongside widely respected chief engineer Forrest McFarland for context that 14 thousand dollar salary DeLorean was being offered in 1953 carries with it the buying power of around 125,000 $652 today this coupled with the promise of working under the direct supervision of one of the foremost automotive minds of the era made Packard a clear and easy choice for DeLorean who quickly made his presence felt on a project that had been giving the company some trouble in the months prior to his hiring the ultramatic transmission basically forest McFarland was something of a perfectionist so even while Packard was being beaten to the punch on automatic transmissions by Cadillac and their hydra-matic system McFarland was of the mind that it was better to do something right than to do it fast which is generally a good motto in the bedroom too if we're just doling out life advice over here man but I digress thanks to McFarland's obstinate attitude the ultramatic became the first automatic transmission produced exclusively by an independent automaker entirely in-house but it wasn't as reliable as it should have been especially for an option that ran consumers around $200 so McFarland worked with DeLorean to improve the torque multiplications for the gear start ultramatic DeLorean offered similar improvements to the new twin ultramatic which not only boosted his profile at Packard but allowed the company to whether the financial storm it was facing following the Second World War as it took the automotive market time to recover of course the financial issues were partially of Packard's own making as they refused to recognize the utility in manufacturing more working-class vehicles as opposed to luxury cars aimed at a segment of the consumer base that was unlikely to go with a Packard car anyway but for all the problems these thought processes caused they actually did wonders for DeLoreans growth as an engineer in the automotive industry as he began working more closely with McFarland to the point where no one else made sense for a successor as head of research and development but DeLorean granted there was a pretty big catch to the proposed promotion by the mid-1950s Packard was having real trouble keeping up with the pricing war waged by the Big Three automakers which led Packard President James Nance to agree to a merger with the Studebaker corporation in 1954 it was a move intended to stem the hemorrhaging at Packard but it hardly seemed like a long-term solution who could be sure how much longer Packard would last before the layoffs started coming by this point DeLorean had met a woman by the name of Elizabeth Higgins whom he married on September 3rd 1954 this would be the first of four marriages for DeLorean but it's not as if he knew any of that at the time all he knew was that he now had a wife to support and that added to his uncertainty about sticking with Packard in the wake of the studebaker merger so DeLorean had a decision to make he could either stay in a job whose security was uncertain but whose pay in title carried considerable weight or he could throw in his lot with one of the aforementioned big three after all John didn't really feel like moving Elizabeth from their Michigan home all the way to South Bend Indiana which the merger would have acquired since the newly merged company would have been operating out of Studebakers headquarters so when GM came calling John was all too willing to accept after a chat with GM's vice president of engineering DeLorean was offered a job in any of the five divisions of GM for a starting salary of $16,000 the equivalent of about 144,000 $138 today finally it seemed as though DeLorean had found the thing he was meant to do in the place he was meant to do it of the five GM divisions DeLorean chose to work in the Pontiac division as director of advanced engineering working alongside chief engineer Pete Estes and general manager bunkie Knudsen the son of former GM president William Knudsen for as much of a wunderkind as DeLorean was known to be Knudsen was more than his match graduating MIT with a degree in engineering and becoming the youngest division head in GM history at the age of 42 DeLorean M Knutson became quick friends and John would later credit bunkie as one of his most influential mentors in the automotive business and considering some of the things he achieved during his tenure that's saying a lot in addition to getting in at the ground level on developing the pontiac bonneville DeLorean was also a key figure in the creation of the tempest which would become Pontiacs first compact offering but both of these accomplishments paled in comparison to his greatest triumph the Pontiac GTO the car which some regard as the very first muscle car in a way it was a reaction to GM's ban on racing although maybe the word ban is a bit harsh since it was more an internal directive to focus less on track performance and more on road performance but either way the directive did have the negative effect of undermining some of the company's biggest successes at the time for instance the Bonneville had earned a surprisingly solid reputation as a stock car racer and sales from that car had helped to push Pontiac into the number three spot for much of the 1960s but the idea was not to completely replace one mentality with another but rather to merge the track-focused mentality that got Pontiac to number three with the more pedestrian idea of what a car should be and what a car should be able to do for the modern driving enthusiasts looking to spruce things up it was from this idea that the GTO evolved with John DeLorean working with teammates Bill Collins and Russ key to take the second generation front engine front transmission Pontiac Tempest and transforming it into a LeMans style super tempest or grand tempest option basically this meant a six point four liter v8 engine from the successful Catalina and Bonneville models would end up replacing the 5.3 liter standard v8 the idea was to go after the same demographic Lee Iacocca was targeting with the Mustang on the premise that performance were made accessible to the youths of America it was virtually inconceivable that they wouldn't take a bite at that Apple but even though early buzz was good for the GTO Pontiac sales manager Frank bridge limited the first production run - just five thousand cars on the expectation that the GTO would be a modest success at best if it even managed to find an audience at all of course when the Pontiac GTO actually launched as an option for the tempest in 1964 it became a quick success validating the risks DeLorean had taken in essentially moving a performance-oriented car from the track to the open road finally DeLorean had a success on which he could hang his hat at GM as he received the lion's share of the credit for the GTO success internally leading the rumors that he would be in line for the presidency of GM one day but for now he would have to settle for a promotion to head of the Pontiac division in 1965 breaking the record set by his dear mentor bunkie Knudsen and becoming the youngest division head in GM history at the age of 40 unfortunately the promotion ended up creating a new problem for DeLorean who found that many of the division heads at GM didn't exactly get along creating internal strife over everything from conceptualization to engineering even the marketing for instance you know the tiger campaign from the 6566 model years and while yeah neither do i but i looked into it and it was apparently a fairly popular ad campaign that featured the gto set against a vaguely jungle desk backdrop even though it basically looked like the kind of open area public park we used to film our reviews the commercial would end with the hood of the GTO popping open to reveal a tiger who'd growl at the camera implying that you've got a pretty fierce animal in the form of the engine underneath the hood but the battle to even get the tiger campaign on the air was a struggle although anyone who's seen Mad Men could probably imagine a board room full of men in the 1960s arguing for or against any number of ad campaigns not that Mad Men is a documentary or anything but whatever you get my point namely that none of this marketing bickering was unique to GM but there was still a great deal of infighting anyway case in point meet Edie Cole who'd climbed from general manager of Chevrolet in 1956 to the head of the GM car and truck group in 1961 before climbing again to executive vice president in 1965 and finally to president in 1967 basically he was viewed as a wet blanket of an executive due to some of the ideas he put into place for one he decided to put an end to the long-held practice of multiple carburation within GM this would affect pretty much every model in the fleet except for the Corvair and the Corvette which just happened to be two of Cole's darlings to make matters worse Cole frequently clashed with DeLoreans mentor bunkie Knudsen particularly over the disc brakes that were intended to be equipped with the GTO upon its launch in 1964 Cole had put the kibosh on that as well as on the plans for radial tires among other vetoes and I suppose you could argue whether or not these were good things to a vetoed or bad things or whatever but the long and short of it is that ed Cole was having clashes with his fellow GM executives so later when DeLorean petitioned GM to put a smaller Pontiac Banshee into production in order to compete with the rising Pony car market that was also next by Cole because it would have potentially siphoned sales away from the beloved Corvette for about a decade Cole was someone with whom a lot of the principles in our story would clash of course Cole would eventually retire from GM in 1974 in order to serve as a chairman and CEO of the checker Motors Corporation in addition acting as chairman of the air freight company International Husky presumably due to his general interest in aviation and an overall desire to get into that area of business however it was this fascination with planes that would tragically lead to his demise on May 2nd 1977 has Cole died at the age of 67 when the twin-engine Beagle B 206 series 2 plane he was piloting got caught in a storm and crashed near Kalamazoo Michigan just 50 miles south of his birthplace of Marne Michigan but then that's a bit farther into the future than DeLorean is in our story so let's backtrack a bit as DeLorean turned his attention to the Pontiac Firebird for the 1967 model year as a sort of consolation for not being allowed to redo the Banshee the Firebird was an f' body that shared the unique coke-bottle styling of the Camaro but with a base model that for the Chevrolet 230 cubic inch single overhead cam inline 6 rated at 165 horsepower however the base model was often passed over in favor of one of the three v8 options the 5.3 liter two-barrel carburetor dat 250 horsepower before barrel high output 326 rated at 285 horsepower or the 6.6 liter from the GTO which was rated at 325 horsepower not to get bogged down in the details but needless to say the Firebird was ahead particularly as the 60s rolled over into the 70s sure it was late to the pony car prom but it didn't matter as the Firebird moves some 82,000 units in its first year this comfortable amount of success allowed DeLorean to focus on even more ambitious development plans especially now that he had his pony car alternative out to market his plan to create an entirely new Grand Prix for 1969 with the hopes of lifting Pontiacs fortunes in the personal luxury car market by crafting a 2nd gen model that would offer a new body new drivetrain and a new chassis borrowing heavily from a body mainstays such as The Tempest and a GTO in the process DeLorean in addition to being a savvy engineer was also a shrewd businessman and hoped to hedge his bets by splitting the cost of the Grand Prix's production with the Chevy division so we phoned his friend and former boss Chevy division head Pete st's to secure financing for the new project after some shrewd negotiating the two men came to an agreement and teams were assembled to begin the work of bringing the new Grand Prix to life DeLorean started by taking GM's a body and stretching it out an extra 5 inches and then renaming the whole thing the G body providing not just the longest hood in Pontiac history but a more formidable Grand Prix than the first gen as the new 1969 model had a 118 inch wheelbase a choice of a three-speed automatic transmission or a manual that came in both three-speed and four-speed and 370 base horsepower from a 428 this in addition to styling that was more substantial than the previous generation even if some might call it gauche either way the thing was a smash hit selling more than 112 thousand units nearly four times the amount of the 1968 Grand Prix with this new Grand Prix DeLorean maintained his Midas touch at GM keeping Pontiac profitable even while GM at large was struggling in fact the top executives at GM were so impressed with DeLorean that he was promoted to head of the Chevy division On February 15th 1969 replacing the incumbent his buddy Pete s T's it's at this point that DeLorean story begins to intersect with some other notable figures from past RCR stories you see it was in 1969 that DeLoreans marriage to Elizabeth Higgins fell apart culminating in divorce but another thing that happened by this point The Legend of John DeLorean had kinda started going to his head as his reputation grew within GM DeLorean started to make connections across the automotive world and his status as the golden boy of the company made him something of a rebel in one particularly shocking move to his fellow GM executives DeLorean asked then Ford President Lee Iacocca to serve as the best man at his second wedding - of all people Kelli Harman the sister of actor Mark Harmon yeah that Mark Harmon NCIS Mark Harmon your grandmother's favorite television actor Mark Harmon Kellie Harmon is also the daughter of Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon and actress Elise Knox who notably starred alongside Lon Chaney jr. in the Mummy's tomb an entry in universals legendary mummy franchise not that you know it was legendary from the box office returns of the Tom Cruise version but man whatever DeLorean would also become friends with businessman Kirk Kerkorian who some twenty-five years later would attempt a hostile takeover of Chrysler putting him into direct conflict with DeLoreans best man Lee Iacocca I go into this further in the Chrysler RCR story or maybe it was in the Lee Iacocca one tell if I remember but go check him out I hear they're pretty alright at this point DeLorean was making close to half a million a year between annual salary and bonuses this allowed him to invest in everything from the New York Yankees to the San Diego Chargers which made him more prevalent in the public sphere earning him an even greater number of high-profile friends like Sammy Davis jr. and Johnny Carson and MGM Studios head James T Aubrey the more public appearances DeLorean made bless his fell executives that GM seemed to like him since he didn't fit into their preconception of what an automotive executive should be he was kind of the rebel in the motorcycle jacket and blue jeans rather than the quaffed executive in a tailor-made suit 24 hours a day it didn't matter that ultimately DeLorean delivered when it mattered the optics were bad with the partying and the reckless investments for a time it seemed as though DeLorean wanted to be a celebrity more than he wanted to be an automaker and that gave pause to the executives at GM it certainly didn't help that at the time of his appointment to the top of the Chevy division Chevrolet was in pretty bad shape the new Camaro for the 1970 model year was catastrophic lis behind schedule and the updated plans for the new Corvette and the new Chevy Nova were nowhere near ready Chevy was also in a downward spiral of bad press surrounding the poorly received Corvair and the litany of operational issues that continued to plague the entire fleet between 1965 and 1969 an unfathomable 6.7 million Chevy vehicles were recalled due to motor mount defects among other problems it was just blow after blow to Chevy's bottom line and it was hurting the entire GM brand DeLorean tried to work his magic to set things right delaying the Camaro and streamlining the Corvette and Nova redesigns he also restructured the division in order to reduce production costs it wasn't any sort of reinventing the wheel type strategy but it actually worked as the more streamlined approach to designs and manufacturing put the division back on track that is provided everything passed the design phase went well but well that's where the problems actually started anew DeLorean was placed in charge of overseeing the launch of the Vega by taking control of the Lordstown assembly plant in Lordstown Ohio not long into his new role as overseer for the Vega problems became apparent with the car such as defective axles and Ballou minim engines that would leak like an award season screener these were issues that would inevitably lead to massive unprecedented recalls just two years later with more than half a million Chevy Vega is being recalled at its lowest point but in 1970 DeLorean still felt as though he had the situation well in and implementing further quality control measures such as hiring additional inspectors for each product rolling off the factory line and even utilizing computers on the line to identify any defects that would require immediate repairing this was all well and good except DeLorean also sunk money into promoting a car that frankly wasn't anywhere near ready in August 1970 Motor Trend published an interview with DeLorean in which he claimed that the Vega would surpass almost any European sports car as well as any car in its class in handling acceleration and overall build quality but here I can't really lay the blame on DeLorean in a 1979 interview DeLorean explained that many of the things he said about the car were embellishments forced on him by his superiors at GM well I was convinced that we were doing our best with the car that was given to us I was called upon by the corporation to tout the car far beyond my personal convictions about it the race to get the car off the factory line was contrasted with the mounting cost of simply producing it and ensuring some measure of quality control so GM sought to further cut costs which meant over 800 workers were laid off before long the workers began to sabotage the Vega project by vandalizing the assembly line and working more slowly as a way of sticking it to the bigwigs who cared more about the bottom line than about the people who were doing their best to make chicken salad out of their chicken mokuba's before long Chevy had a lot full of cars that were either incorrectly assembled or malfunctioning they basically had a bunch of cars that wouldn't run because they pissed off enough of the workforce that the workers simply didn't care anymore and they were assembling them incorrectly on purpose as a sort of Fu DeLorean tried to mend the situation by organizing a task force to repo and repair the defective cars but by then the workers were in full revolt organizing a one-month strike that set production back so significantly that dealers simply didn't have enough cars to fill orders for the 1972 model year and while DeLorean managed to get things up and running again for the division in 1973 with sales in excess of some 395 thousand units the entire Vega mess was one big black eye on GM the one positive in it if it could be said that there were any positive was that DeLorean was promoted to GM's vice president of car and truck production which seemed to signal he was all but certain to be next in line for the presidency barring some weird sort of Bob Eaton versus Bob Lutz situation like there was at Chrysler 20 years later where the heir apparent got leapfrog to leapfrog is that how you say that well it was whatever hey what's the past tense of leapfrog DeLorean was burnt out over the whole Vega fiasco to say nothing of the disdain his fellow executives seemed to have for his outsider celebrity status so DeLorean announced on April 2nd 1973 that he would be leaving GM in a statement to the press DeLorean refuted claims he'd been fired although the belief persists to this day that DeLorean was ousted by his fellow executives at GM if nothing else there's evidence in how DeLorean criticized his former employers in the years following his departure both in the media and in his book on a clear day you can see General Motors which he co-authored with Businessweek reporter Patrick right among his criticisms DeLorean went in on GM for the plan to use rebates to incentivize consumers to purchase GM vehicles stating a car should make people's eyes light up when they step into the showroom rebates are merely a way of convincing customers to buy bland cars they're not interested in sure enough DeLorean would set out to craft a car that create just that sense of awe and wonder when stepping into the showroom he would do this by forming his own automotive company after leaving GM in 1973 the DeLorean Motor Company the DeLorean Motor Company was founded in Detroit Michigan on October 24th 1975 the company had been set up through business loans from Bank of America along with investment capital from such aforementioned famous friends as Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis jr. DeLorean also raised money by incentivizing dealerships to offer DeLorean brand vehicles by making them shareholders in the company as part of the bargain adding to DeLoreans business savvy he took advantage of government incentives by constructing the first DMC factory in a place with high unemployment ultimately accepting an offer from the Northern Ireland Industrial Development Board to construct the plant in a suburb of Belfast known as Dunmurry of the two hundred million dollars needed to start the company up the British government put up 120 million viewing the DeLorean Motor Company as an opportunity to curb violence in Northern Ireland through reduced unemployment although the company was formally founded in 1975 all this negotiation and planning took the better part of three years to the point where construction on the manufacturing plant didn't actually start until October of 1978 the plant would take up six buildings measuring roughly six hundred sixty thousand square feet all in all the dumb Murray plant took around 16 months to build which put DeLorean face to face with some of the ghosts of the Chevy Vega in the sense that there were severe budgetary overruns and various other operational delays that push back the actual opening of the assembly lines to 1981 which wouldn't really have been that big of a disaster if not for some other significant setbacks for one not many of the people who were hired for the factories actually knew all that much about the auto industry in fact some of the men they hired had never even had proper full-time jobs before joining DeLorean the build quality on those early DMC vehicles were so bad that the company had to set up several quality assurance centres across its various delivery locations in the United States from California to New Jersey even in DeLoreans home state of Michigan these centres were set up by dick Brown stop laughing one of the men who helped form DMC in the first place by securing early financing through more than 340 dealerships in the United States Brown was absolutely critical to helping DeLorean get his company the ground and its quality assurance centers did a lot to improve overall build after the disastrous first production cycle but again I'm getting a bit ahead of myself so just bear with me in order for his company to really stand out DeLorean needed to offer something that the big three weren't to this end he began work on a two-seat sports car with a stainless steel body and a fiberglass underbody the idea was to create an ethical sports car to help define the emergent DMC brand which would have been an uphill battle even with an experienced work force at the helm much less with the relatively inexperienced factory workers they had and so DeLorean appointed Bill Collins as his chief engineer since they had worked together on the Pontiac GTO he also looked to outside forces for help particularly the triad services group based out of Madison Heights Michigan who helped construct the cosmetic prototype while work continued on the production spec this prototype was known as the DeLorean safety vehicle or the DSV and it not only featured the iconic gullwing doors but the infamous unpainted stainless steel finish for the prototype triad utilized a four-cylinder Citrone engine but DeLorean and Collins had their mind set on a v6 which was merely the first of the many changes the new DeLorean vehicle would go through over the course of its creation for instance initial plans had the car as a mid-engined offering but the production car was changed to a rear-engine vehicle later into the cycle but for now the prototype remained mid-engine with a four-cylinder and a Fiat x19 chassis while the Citroen CX provided the trans axle and parts from the Ford Pinto and Mustang two accounted for the front suspension in a lot of ways it was a visually striking but functionally unsound car not just at an engineering level but logistically as well you see DeLorean ended up sinking a fair bit of money into purchasing the patents to a new technology known as elastic reservoir molding basically the ERM process involved compressing one layer of resin between two layers of foam that would then be compressed from half-inch layers to layers that were just 1/6 of an inch when it was all said and done you'd have a panel that wasn't just light but also strong and fairly rigid as well but the problem was that the process for actually pressing erm materials for an entire car would not only have been insanely time-consuming but so expensive that it begged the question of why they wouldn't just use conventional steel and fiberglass in the first place so DeLorean sought help from another outside company initially he contacted Porsche and then BMW with the hopes of forming an alliance with at least one company who knew something about luxury sports car offerings but neither company was willing to put up the time or money to do it especially factoring in the amount of risk involved so DeLorean turned to Lotus cars in the form of company founder Colin Chapman who was a talented auto engineer in his own right he basically took everything that didn't work about DeLoreans methods and simply applied Lotus tactics to the production process such as ditching the elastic reservoir molding and utilizing a vacuum assisted resin injection process Chapman also implemented a steel backbone chassis that more or less puts this in league with the modern Lotus Esprit however the layout for the dmc-12 was a bit closer to the Porsche 911 considering how far back in the chassis the engine rested with 35% of the weight on the front wheels and 65% on the rear DeLorean and Collins also got their wish with a v6 engine in this case the unique de Varenne fuel-injected v6 developed by Peugeot Renault and Volvo and nicknamed the PRV everything was starting to come together so DeLorean brought in renowned designer Giorgetto Giugiaro who'd worked for a towel design in order to rework his original designs for the dmc-12 the good news gu djaro offered small but crucial changes that would help improve the overall design of the vehicle such as the addition of vents and rear louvers along with redesigned side windows and quarter panels the bad news these redesigns cost a lot of money and cause some uncomfortable delays in production considering how far behind the car already was DeLorean had incorporated his new company in the mid 70s and we were already into 1980 with no release in sight for the dmc-12 despite DeLorean offering reporters a first glimpse at the triad prototype granted he would only let the press sin in it rather than drive it but that didn't stop DeLorean from boasting that the car would get from zero to 60 in under 8 seconds and reach top speeds of 130 miles per hour however unlike with the Vega DeLorean would have no superiors to lay the blame on if he couldn't deliver on his boasts but hey still the press was generous Time magazine needless to say the car was making waves just from appearance alone and although he solicited a ton of help from other companies this is still very much DeLoreans car at least in his own mind and he held on to his image of the ethical sports car with both hands and damn anyone who tried to butt in with any ideas about changing his long-term vision granted there were definitely compromises namely for the sake of timeliness one such compromise which was really more of a lucky break than anything else was a change to the PRV engine DeLorean and Collins had settled on you see by this point Volvo was offering a USDM version of the PRV v6 for the Volvo 260 series and the engine had been federalized into a bigger 2849 CC engine for 1980 so DeLorean basically used elements of the engine for the US Volvo's and hybridized it with elements of the Alpine a310 version allowing the dmc-12 to skip the EPA's federally mandated durability tests since the 260 series had already cleared this hurdle and the dmc-12 was identically tuned but even with this lucky break the production delays mounted to the extent that the dmc-12 didn't even really hit the market until over a half decade after DeLorean formed his company consumers got their hands on the dmc-12 in 1981 and it was bad enough that this was in the midst of a recession but to make matters worse the car didn't exactly receive reviews befitting the insane amounts of hype surrounding it if anything even the positive reviews were sort of just polite about it like Car and Driver who praised the dmc-12 in its first impression review by noting that it at least wasn't some ghastly Corvette clone and that it had come handling and a throaty v6 in addition to impressive styling even if it wasn't as fast or as inexpensive as its GT competitors on this latter point DeLorean couldn't really fight back I mean the v6 being underpowered wouldn't have been nearly as big of a deal if the damn car didn't cost as much as it did with a new dmc-12 costing as much as $26,000 at launch a price that equates to roughly seventy two thousand seven hundred thirty seven dollars today this is more expensive than faster competitors such as the Porsche 924 turbo and two DeLoreans immense disappointment the Corvette the mere existence of which had derailed his plans for that revamped Banshee back when he was still working at GM now for all the investments from guys like Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis jr. and for all the time he spent charming reporters with first look opportunities and for all the weight that DeLoreans name supposedly carried in the mainstream the dmc-12 was an abject failure even after many of the kinks worked out in some ways the failure of the dmc-12 is a lesson in what poor time and financial management will do to any project you hope of ever accomplishing for instance shareholder pressure to get the car finished had become too great a burden this put the kibosh on suggestions Bill Collins had for the dmc-12 such as adding 10 mile-per-hour bumpers and including airbags there simply wasn't enough time and they'd already put more money into the dmc-12 than had ever been planned Collins eventually left DeLorean once Lotus was given free rein but by that point it was hard to imagine DeLorean had much of a choice but to just pick a direction and go with it and he chose lotuses directions since he admired Colin Chapman and frankly he needed the dirty deed done quick but as the production cycle lengthened interminably DeLorean was essentially pressured into releasing an unfinished product with some of the most legendary terrible build quality and contemporary automotives it was so bad that the company had to sink even more money into full-scale rebuilds in the United States sure the workers at the Dunmurry factory would eventually get better and become more experienced as the years went on but you only really get one chance to make a first impression and considering how heavily they were rushed its kind of hard to completely blame the workers for this one it not like they were the ones who planned this rollout or failed to account for the amount of the production time that certain changes to the designs and the layout of the car would cause which brings it all back to the automotive press because even after the build quality was improved it was still hard for some critics to actually recommend the dmc-12 to the buying public even if they liked it in principle because well there were better options what you had with the dmc-12 was a car that could get skittish if you really pushed it to its limits owing possibly to suspension issues or larger problems with the transmission that I don't really know hell the standard 5-speed wasn't even as fast as DeLorean claimed but some testing is zero to 60 time that was just under 10 seconds rather than the sub eight seconds that reporters were told upon first viewing the prototype the idea that it was underpowered and overpriced led to a lack of demand for the dmc-12 DeLorean had sunk a lot of his money into this as well as the money of his investors shareholders and even the British government and they weren't seeing any real returns on that investment to break-even they would need to sell between 10,000 and 12,000 units but the dmc-12 struggled to reach even half that number but not a like Liz Carmichael in the first RCR story about the dáil DeLorean continued to swear that the company would pull out of its downward spiral and start selling dmc-12s like hotcakes with one particularly boastful prediction from DeLorean claiming that the company would sell 30,000 cars a year but it's 1981 neared its close money was tight a proposed DeLorean American Express cross-promotion from the previous holiday season had failed to net any significant profits you see somebody had the genius idea to produce a limited run of 24 karat gold plated dmc-12s to sell for $85,000 available exclusively to Gold Card members adjusted for inflation the cost would be about two hundred thirty-seven thousand seven hundred ninety five dollars today which is expensive as hell don't get me wrong but one would think fees would probably have a better chance of selling today than they did back in 1981 when the stink of the first run was still fresh in the public conscious and there was no back to the future to turn these things into legends either way only to gold-plated DeLoreans were ever so and today only three still exist the two that were actually sold in the promotion and a third produced in the event that one of the two that had been sold were damaged a fourth exist but it was privately assembled by a collector and doesn't have the VIN number of any of the official gold-plated dmc-12s and not that a gold-plated DeLorean wouldn't still impress whoever the person shows it to interestingly enough all but one of the original gold-plated DeLoreans have an automatic transmission which is kind of a strange thing to even think about considering dmc-12s typically came standard with manuals unless you were willing to pay an extra $650 to have an automatic regardless you can check out at least one of them if you live near the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles or the National Automobile Museum in Reno Nevada but I digress in addition of the failed cross promotion the company had sunken some four million dollars into fixing the messes of that first production run between the two point five million dollars in production issues and the one point five million dollars in warranty claims in total that four million dollars would add up to nearly eleven million dollars in today's money and you'd think well for a company with deep pockets like DeLoreans that shouldn't be a problem right but DeLorean also had to reimburse the British government to the tune of one hundred eighty five pounds for each car the company sold in current u.s. dollars that's over seven hundred dollars provided my math isn't terrible which it very likely is because I was a liberal arts major and don't know dick about no numbers still seven hundred dollars and that's per car this is without even getting into the ludicrous salary DeLorean was paying himself which was in excess of half a million dollars in fact DeLorean was so shameless about the lifestyle of excess that he'd been leading that it prompted tabloid stories about DeLorean possibly embezzling company funds bolstering these claims was what some viewed as a shady corporate restructuring centered on what would be known as the DeLorean motors holding company a sort of parent company to DMC which comprised various subsidiaries including DeLorean motorcars of America the DeLorean research partnership and DeLorean Motor Cars Limited DeLorean himself swore that this was all on the up-and-up but the paper trail was to investigators what the puzzles on the back of a children's dinner menu to a housecat he just made no sense the problem with this of course is that the restructuring did nothing to curb DeLoreans excessive spending habits hey the man liked to live large hell after divorcing Kelly Harman in 1972 DeLorean would go on to marry supermodel Cristina Ferrare with whom he would have a daughter in addition to an adopted son and when you have a supermodel wife and several kids along with an itch to be seen living richly it can be hard to imagine ever going back to the sparse living of DeLoreans existence in the years immediately following World War two I mean for crying out loud DeLorean owned property on both coasts including a 430 acre 3.5 million dollar state in Bedminster New Jersey which remains to this day one of the most expensive residential real estate deals ever made in the state of New Jersey the man was going through money like water and spending time hanging out with famous friends like Johnny Carson who was among the few celebrities you might have ever run the risk of actually seeing in a dmc-12 back then when Carson was pulled over in his infamous 1982 drunk driving arrest outside Beverly Hills the car he was driving in at the time totally at dmc-12 not great publicity mind you but it showed that the car could be desirable to a certain subset of the population regardless DeLorean continued to live the lifestyle of a man whose net worth was twice what it actually was all while his company's profits sunk like a hot rock through a three-tier ice cream cake DeLorean solution hire more workers ramp up production on even more DeLoreans even as unsold inventory began to pile up in dealerships across the country like crusted over napkins in the bin by your son's computer it was a hot mess but who knows in a stronger economy with a less moody weather pattern DeLorean might have been able to stir up some interest by convincing the public that the dmc-12 was better than its bad first impressions would have had them believed but as it turns out not only was the country still in a recession the punishing winter of 1982 did a great job of freezing sales pun definitely intended because there's that age-old adage that nobody buys new cars when it's snowing outside as dealers backed out the company was unable to pay its own suppliers prompting DeLorean to pretty much go to the British government hat in hand to ask for roughly 70 million in US dollars but by this point the British government wasn't convinced this was a gamble worth taking considering they'd already plunged 154 million u.s. dollars into this entire fiasco in the first place so Northern Iowa and Secretary of State a man by the name of Jim Pryor ordered an official inquiry to be led by former Northern Ireland development agency chairman Sir Kenneth cork who had since become an insolvency expert for the accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand and with the rise of Sir Kenneth cork came the beginning of the downfall of John DeLorean DeLorean had achieved as much of his success through charm as through hard work and dedication but Sir Kenneth wasn't having any of it his official recommendation was to deny alone to DeLorean without a total restructuring of the company first but DeLorean was dealing with it from his own government as well as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission had serious doubts about the DeLorean Motor Company's future viability forcing the company to cancel all future stock issue in the interim adding to the pressure was the over half a million owed in interest alone to various suppliers who were now threatening legal action to obtain payment On February 19 1982 just one month after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission made its ruling DeLorean Motor Company was put into receivership by the British government essentially locking John DeLorean out of control of his own company unless he to pay off 20 million dollars in debts naturally DeLorean didn't have the money and the receivers of which Sir Kenneth was included made the decision to drastically reduce the number of employees in the dumb Murray Factory workforce in addition to putting a halt on the manufacturing of any new vehicles for the time being granted the workers were still permitted to finish what they had already started but this is like being allowed by the teacher to finish the question they're working on once time runs out on a test you were only half finished with anyway and really the cars were only completed with the idea that they would go towards the future liquidation of DMC assets by this point DeLorean was losing top executives left and right including Eugene Cafiero the former Chrysler president who DeLorean had appointed as president of DMC as well as dick Brown remember him the former vice president and general manager of Mazda who joined DMC and played that key role in securing a line of credit from Bank of America in those early years of the DeLorean Motor Company you know the guy who did the dealership financing that got the company off the ground yeah well Braun had been one of the lorian's closest allies in this entire debacle but their relationship soured when DeLorean ordered 15 cars removed from the Quality Assurance sano Brown had set up in Bridgewater New Jersey but Brown didn't want to comply on the argument that the vehicles were collateral on the credit line issued to the company by Bank of America Brown refused to release the cars from the bridge water quality assurance center and took measures to DeLorean wouldn't go after any of the cars in the California quality assurance center by getting local law enforcement involved to prevent any seizures depending on whom you ask Braun was either fired or resigned in the aftermath but the case was clear DeLorean was losing the people he thought were his sergeants and arms as the spring transition into the summer of 1982 DMC of America could hardly afford to keep the lights on and DeLorean himself was unable to make any money because the receivership had banned him from producing any cars until he paid at least half of the 20 million dollars so DeLorean came up with a proposal he would pay half the debt with his own money and then take out a loan from a private investment firm to the tune of 100 million dollars in order to cover any remaining debts DeLorean would then presumably purchase his company back lock stock and barrel so the British government could finally wash its hands of the entire ordeal but Sir Kenneth cork had serious doubts about DeLoreans ability to actually come through on the loan deal so DeLorean was given a hard deadline of October 20th 1982 to actually get them their money it was a compromise made in good faith sure it was clear DeLorean was just stalling for time but if he had any intention of paying back his debts the receivership wanted to at least give him one last chance to take the figurative noose out from around his neck unfortunately true to the concerns of Sir Kenneth October 20th was a deadline DeLorean would miss in a big way far bigger than just about anyone anticipated what the British government didn't realize at the time they agreed to the deadline extension on DeLoreans debt payments was that the FBI had its eye on the former automotive giant you see John DeLorean had property on both coasts and was generally well-liked on both ends of the country so it was only natural that he would strike up a friendship with his palm a Valley California neighbor a man by the name of James Timothy Hoffman the two first met in the spring of 1978 and they became friends or maybe just friendly acquaintances depending on who's telling the story but four short years later Hoffman had been busted for his illicit operations and had to cut a deal with the government to become a federal informant in exchange for a reduced sentence on his 1981 federal cocaine trafficking charge naturally informants tend to spill what they know so the government was all ears when Hoffman came forward with word that DeLorean had contacted him about setting up a multi-million dollar Colombian cocaine deal in order to save his dying Motor Company as Hoffman would later testify DeLorean allegedly reached out to him in July of 1982 right when the company was at its absolute lowest point he needed Hoffman's help to arrange a drug deal to save the DeLorean Motor Company since presumably he didn't actually have a loan deal with any sort of firm so the deal was arranged and Hoffman put DeLorean into contact with his fellow drug traffickers men by the name of Steven Arrington Morgan Hetrick and two men known only as Vicenza and mr. Benedict now while DeLorean didn't have the money to pay back half the debt he did still have considerable funds of his own stored away he allegedly paid Hoffman a 1.8 million dollar Commission with his own money and the plan was for Arrington and Hetrick to ship the drugs from Colombia while Vicenza would be the distributor and Benedict would launder the ill-gotten money from their transactions DeLorean would pocket the money and Vicenza would be given 50% stake in DMC once DeLorean had bought the company back but that day would never come on October 19th 1982 just one day before the deadline to repay half of his 20 million dollar debt DeLorean was arrested for conspiracy to distribute cocaine how much cocaine you might ask well okay so when he was arrested in a Los Angeles hotel room it was expected that the deal was to distribute some fifty five pounds of the devil's dandruff in a deal that would purportedly net him around twenty four million dollars but when Sir Kenneth cork learned of DeLoreans arrest DMC limited was immediately shut down while DMC of america was forced to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy meanwhile the surplus dmc-12s and the accompanying distribution rights were sold off to consolidated international with some of the cars being given new serial numbers so they could be sold as 1983 models basically regardless of the outcome of the criminal proceedings DeLoreans goose was cooked now the case against the Loreen was pretty substantial for one you had Hoffman's testimony as a relatively trusted federal informant not that hoffman had any chance but to be on the up-and-up with the feds since he was being monitored throughout the raishin you see Hoffman's testimony had corroboration in the form of Hoffman's drug trafficking co-conspirators Vicenza and mr. benedict who weren't actually drug traffickers at all but instead federal agents Vicenza was DEA agent john valestra and mr. benedict was FBI special agent benedict Issa whose nuts were apparently so big he didn't mind using his real name while undercover and yet even without a pain informant and two undercover federal agents bearing witness to DeLoreans downfall the US government still had more for that ass the key piece of evidence against DeLorean was an undercover surveillance tape which showed DeLorean handling a briefcase full of the cocaine which he declared to be as good as gold surely this would be enough to put the warring away for a long long time right well not exactly as it turns out hoffman hadn't been entirely honest with the feds DeLorean had maintained from the start that he had never been the one to contact Hoffman it was Hoffman who had contacted him as it turns out hoffman knew all about DeLoreans financial troubles and naturally so did the federal government in a way DeLorean was a perfect mark Hoffman would arrange a drug deal with DeLorean testified that DeLorean had approached him about the deal first the deal would go down DeLorean would be arrested and Hoffman would have a dramatically shortened sentence for his own cocaine smuggling exploits while the feds would have a major name on their list of gets in the war on drugs whether the government conspired with Hoffman is up for debate but regardless Hoffman was the key to setting the plan in motion whether it was a plan of his own making or not to this end Hoffman called the DMC New York office with an offer to put DeLorean in contact with offshore investors in exchange for a commission of 1.8 million dollars part of DeLoreans defense at trial would be that he wasn't aware that this investment opportunity had anything to do with drugs moreover he claimed hoffman had threatened his wife and children if he so much as thought about backing out of the deal in DeLoreans narrative the 1.8 million dollars he paid as part of the set up for the operation wasn't even his own money but rather funds loaned to him by special agent ISA who presented himself as the shadowy mr. Benedict the supposed banker in return DeLorean would offer Benedict's stock in the new shell company see incorporated at least that's what was alleged suddenly an airtight case against DeLorean was looking more and more like entrapment by the time the case actually went to trial it was the summer of 1984 and the media buzz was twice what it had ever been for the dmc-12 itself this was front-page news all over the world and even though his business career was comprehensively ruined by all this he still at least had the chance of winning his freedom if he could make a strong enough case for entrapment to this end DeLoreans defense team led by Howard Weitzman argued that he'd been conned by a federal informant looking for a lighter sentence and buy a pair of federal agents who were willing to bend the letter of the law to get their man and Weitzman backed up this point by getting the agents to admit in open court that not only were they the ones to bring the cocaine to the hotel room where the infamous good as gold tape was recorded they were the ones who showed the cocaine to DeLorean in the first place with the intended goal of getting him on tape handling it the defense team didn't call a single witness not even John DeLorean himself that's how cut and dry a case of entrapment this was on August 16th 1984 John DeLorean was acquitted on all charges he was a free man not that he was vindicated in the press or at home his reputation was ruined his wife Christina Ferrari filed for divorce and for custody of their children and countless creditors filed suit against DeLorean in the desperate hope of someday recouping all the money they'd sunken into the man and into his vision he'll the criminal proceedings weren't even over yet as DeLorean was later put on trial on fraud charges stemming from funds he'd allegedly misappropriated I read up on this and I'm not entirely sure I understand it if I read into this correctly basically DeLorean was supposed to pay Lotus for their involvement with DMC through a holding company based out of Geneva known as GPD services however an investigation would later find that the money had never actually been paid to Lotus in fact it would show that DeLorean had been the one to receive money from Lotus through GPD rather than the other way around money which he then diverted to outside interests including his own personal bank account ultimately DeLorean was charged with fraud but also with tax evasion and racketeering in 1985 standing trial in Detroit on a case that in theory was stronger than the drug trafficking indictment but as it turns out Lotus founder Colin Chapman had died of a heart attack in 1982 so there was no one to argue against DeLoreans defenses the money was a personal loan from Chapman himself and DeLorean argued that he wasn't aware of any fraud or missing finances this was enough to earn DeLorean his second acquittal in as many years however DeLorean would end up spending the rest of his life in one Court or another all because of the bankruptcy proceedings surrounding DeLorean Motor Company such as the suit against him by Northern Ireland's Department of Enterprise trade and investment the Arthur Andersen accounting firm his former attorney Meyer Morgan Roth and even his own brother Charles DeLorean who as a DMC dealer felt the sting of the dmc-12 failure as much as anybody with skin in the game this is to say nothing of the British government who filed fraud charges against the Lorien but DeLoreans lawyers managed to prevent his extradition had it not been for the licensing checks he got for all the toy DeLoreans that were sold after Back to the Future hit Big John might not have been able to actually afford to fight any of his cases in Cork much less keep a roof over his family's head yet despite the setbacks DeLorean genuinely believed he could rebuild from the wreckage of what had once been his high-rolling life and business he would marry a fourth time to a woman by the name of Sally Baldwin and he would even look to get back into the business of Transportation filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a raised monorail transport in November of 1994 but it was a plan that ultimately fell through as his financial situation grew more dire each year culminating in DeLorean declaring bankruptcy in September of 1999 with many of his assets being auctioned off through the court in a final blow to his dignity the once wealthy auto maker was evicted from his sprawling New Jersey home the same 430 acre estate that had been among the largest residential real estate deals in the history of the state since then the land has been converted into the Trump Bedminster Golf Course one of the many golf courses the 45th President owns and visits in later years DeLorean focused his energy on selling stainless steel watches over the internet with the brand name DeLorean time his goal was to raise the money to get back into the automotive game with plans for a new DMC 2 car he was so confident the watches would kick start the car company that anyone who paid the three thousand four hundred ninety five dollars for a DeLorean time watch would automatically be placed on the waiting list for the eventual DMC - but that never came to pass as DeLorean died of a stroke on March 19th 2005 at the age of 80 according to those who attended his funeral DeLorean was buried in a black motorcycle jacket and a pair of blue jeans because money talks but it don't sing and dance and it can't walk of the roughly 9,000 dmc-12s produced by the DeLorean Motor Company it's estimated that some 6500 survived today thanks in large part to the extensive community surrounding the car as countless businesses were organized to make parts for the icon and yeah Back to the Future has a lot to do with why it's still popular if producer Steven Spielberg hadn't been worried that kids would accidentally lock themselves inside to imitate Marty and Doc Brown he might have stuck with his original plan to use refrigerators as the time machine and the DeLorean would have gone the way of the Scirocco but what we have now is a pretty lively community of DeLorean enthusiasts who still love the car even if they maybe don't love the story of the man behind it so much in many respects John DeLorean served as a sort of cautionary tale for the perils of the American Dream his ambition outstripped his business acumen to such an extent that the hard work and determination that propelled him to the heights of the automotive industry in his youth were no longer enough on their own to keep him at the top of the heap sure DeLorean had a lot of hustle but there's something to be said for biting off more than you can chew this isn't to say that there wasn't a market for the dmc-12 as even Sir Kenneth cork would later admit that it wasn't as though DeLorean had built the car to rip people off like malaise carmichael had with the Dale but the chaotic management practices of the DeLorean Motor Company doomed the production from the start and by the time the dmc-12 finally became a car worth having in the eyes of the public it was too late to pull DeLorean out of the enormous hole into which he dug himself stories are always going to clash over whether or not John DeLorean was a good man but at the end of the day I think he's simpler than that he was just a man and irreducibly complex in that universality I doubt many of us will ever reach the heights DeLorean reached or necessarily even the lows yet it's not entirely impossible to identify it with someone who's in over his head or with a guy who cares about his family but is constantly seduced by the pool of the high life or with a guy who possessed ambition to do more to accomplish more only to come up short granted most people won't stand trial in federal court on a drug trafficking charge or face a trial for fraud but every person is made up of his or her own good and bad and any given person is the sum of all those parts but the people we remember those tend to be the ones who were more than that some for better or worse people remember John DeLorean and people remember the products of his ambition maybe he was a good guy maybe he was a bad guy I don't know legends are hazy mixtures of fact and fiction of modesty and myth making all we can ever really hope for life is that will live on when we're gone that there's more to our story than just how it ended and that the good of our legacy will outweigh our shortcomings you

Channel: RegularCars

Views: 318,735

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews, John DeLorean, DeLorean Motor Company, DeLorean federal case, Delorean Police, Delorean Cocane, Back to the future car, DMC-12, DMC history, Delorean history, Delorean documentary, Delorean story

Id: MCwKEnu5xSk

Length: 67min 24sec (4044 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Demolitions75]

Ayy alright. I love listening to these while i work. Thank you Romanman.

[u/MasterOAction52]

Thanks for making these. They really are so much fun to listen to. I showed these videos to my girlfriend's mom. She really liked the Edsel video.

[u/[deleted]]

Roman I'm so glad you made this. Working on the other video ideas I suggested as well?

[u/EvilGenius007]

I enjoy the RCR stories, I think they do a good job of going into depth on interesting topics.

If you would be open to one suggestion, it would be to let some of the details go. To me it stood out like a sore thumb that your "in today's money" figures were way too specific for the story you were telling. Saying "roughly 72,737 dollars today" rather than "nearly 73,000 dollars today" (and if you want showing the $72,737 figure on screen--along with a date for "today" since these videos might still be around in 10 years) took me out of the narrative flow since that precision didn't convey anything the round figure wouldn't have.

Regardless, I look forward to the next one, thanks for your hard work.

[u/Fucking_Money]

This was fantastic!

[u/Doctor_Squared]

Awesome! Something to listen to on the ride into work tomorrow! Thanks Roman!

[u/teamtestbot]

the next episode is about vantrucks

[u/joe_canadian]

/u/RegularRoman I'm just starting to watch while at work, loved the little simpsons in-joke while you showed Michigan. But wtf.

Still watching so I may edit this post.

Edit 1: loving the info-cards to provide historical context of what occurred during the periods you're mentioning.

Edit 2: Colin Chapman would be a fantastic subject of a story.

[u/faraway_hotel]

Great video, good work, Roman. It's just like you say in the intro, I knew some of the basics of the story, but it's way, way wilder than I thought it would be.

And who remembers the Tiger campaign? These people remember the Tiger campaign!