Son of Romanian and Hungarian immigrants, John Zachary DeLorean lived the American Dream for 30 years until things went bad in the early 1980s. Prior to that decade, he could do no wrong. Maker of the infamous DMC-12 gullwing sports car of the early 1980s, the DeLorean name will forever be associated with failure and scandal. Which is a shame, because prior to getting caught in an FBI drug sting, John DeLorean had been a shining light in the US automotive industry. Seems ironic that the car named for the man, became famous as the only thing that might’ve saved him - a time machine.
DeLorean passed away in 2005 at the age of 80, sadly mired in financial troubles to the end. Before all that, John Z DeLorean was a man going places. A man with extraordinary drive, charisma, and talent.
DeLorean poses with a DMC-12 prototype circa 1975
Completing an engineering degree before the outbreak of World War Two, DeLorean then served three years in the US Army. After the war he became a highly successful insurance salesman, but soon grew bored and wanted a new challenge. Entering a post-graduate program at the Chrysler Institute of Engineering, John Z got his start in the Detroit automotive industry. After a stint as head of R&D at Packard, DeLorean moved to Pontiac in 1956 as director of advanced engineering at the age of 31. He would make an immediate impact.
Pontiac wunderkind John DeLorean - the brains behind the first factory-packaged muscle car - the legendary Pontiac GTO
DeLorean oversaw development of a number of vehicles throughout his career, including the legendary Pontiac GTO. The car was such an outstanding success that laurels were placed at the feet of the young DeLorean, who received credit for conceptualizing, engineering, and marketing the famous ‘Goat’. Almost overnight John Z become the golden boy at Pontiac. Rewarded with promotion to head of Pontiac division in 1965, DeLorean was also a key decision maker in production of other successful Pontiacs – the Firebird pony car and Grand Prix personal luxury car to name just two.
John DeLorean - General Manager of Pontiac Division from 1965, poses alongside a new 1967 Firebird convertible
With Pontiac having jumped to third on the sales charts, in 1969 DeLorean was again promoted, this time to General Manager of General Motor’s biggest division - Chevrolet. By 1971, Chevrolet was experiencing record sales in excess of 3 million vehicles. Delorean was at the helm of a division that almost matched the entire output of the Ford Motor Company. Another promotion followed - this time as a Vice President of General Motors. Like we said – he could seemingly do no wrong.
DeLorean regularly featured on the cover of the big US business periodicals - initially for the right reasons…
Quoting Paul Ingrassia, former Detroit bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, in his book, Engines of Change: DeLorean started dating Ursula Andress, Raquel Welch, and other Hollywood starlets. He appeared in gossip tabloids as often as car magazines. On Thursday nights he would commandeer a General Motors jet from Detroit to Los Angeles, where a GM junior executive would meet him with keys to a company car and hotel room in Beverly Hills or Bel Air, He would party through the weekend and fly back to Detroit Monday nights, showing up in the office on Tuesday morning. On Thursday nights, it was back out to Hollywood again.
1969 - DeLorean poses with glamorous new young wife, actress Kelly Harmon. They divorced two years later leaving DeLorean free to live the life of a high flying bachelor. (Kelly is the sister of well known actor Mark Harmon)
Always a maverick, DeLorean left General Motors in 1973 to form his own automobile company. A two-seat sports car prototype was shown in the mid-1970s called the DeLorean Safety Vehicle (DSV), with stainless steel bodywork and gullwing doors. Designed by Italdesign’s Giorgetto Giugiaro, a backbone chassis was developed by Lotus and largely copied the design of the diminutive Lotus Elite sports car. Powered by the ‘Douvrin’ V6 engine developed by Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo, in Euro-spec the DMC-12 had respectable performance but was hardly a supercar. With additional emission equipment required for sale in the USA, the DMC-12 was positively underpowered.
A DMC-12 prototype publicity shot from 1976 - note the sliding side windows that would be changed before production commenced in 1980
Click here for more images of the amazing DeLorean DMC-12
The DMC-12 was manufactured in a new plant in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland – not exactly renowned for automobile production. The factory was largely built with financial incentives from the Northern Ireland Development Agency of around £100 million. Renault of France was contracted to build the DeLorean factory that employed over 2,000 workers.
DeLorean Motor Corporation factory floor - Dunmurry, Northern Ireland
Numerous delays meant the DeLorean did not become available to consumers until January 1981. In the interim the car market had slumped considerably due to a 1980 US recession. This was compounded by lukewarm reviews from motoring press that had grown tired of years of expectations and broken promises related to the DMC-12. The general consensus being the DeLorean's gullwing doors and rakish styling did not compensate for high price and low horsepower (relative to equivalent-priced sports cars on the market).
While interest in the DeLorean quickly dwindled, competing models with lower price tags and more powerful engines such as the Chevy Corvette sold in record numbers in spite of the ongoing recession. By February 1982, more than half of the roughly 7,000 DeLoreans produced remained unsold.
DMC-12’s waiting for buyers after the DeLorean Motor Corporation went into receivership in 1982
After going into receivership in February 1982, DMC produced another 2,000 cars until John DeLorean's arrest in late October, at which point liquidation proceedings were undertaken and the factory was seized by the British government. DMC had failed to recoup the $175 million in investments, leading the Dunmurry factory to be placed in receivership.
Hundreds of cars remained unsold, and the parts for hundreds more were left lying dormant.
In October 1982, DeLorean was charged with cocaine trafficking after FBI informant James Hoffman solicited him as financier in a scheme to sell 100 kg of cocaine worth some $24 million. DMC was insolvent at the time and in debt for $17 million. Hoffman had approached DeLorean, a man he didn’t know, with no prior criminal record.
Time magazine cover from 1982
DeLorean successfully defended himself at trial under the procedural defense of police entrapment. The trial ended in a not guilty verdict in August 1984, by which time DMC had declared bankruptcy and shut down. John Z DeLorean made attempts to revive the company, but found that the British government had seized the expensive DMC-12 body dyes and dumped them in the North Sea!
DMC-12 body presses about to be tipped into the ocean off Northern Ireland circa 1984
Then along came Back To The Future in 1985 to revive the DeLorean name. Chosen by the movie production team as the perfect futuristic looking car to make a time machine out of – Back To The Future gave the DMC-12 something John Z DeLorean had always hoped for – good, rather than bad publicity. Though several years too late to save the company, thanks to the movie franchise the DMC-12 remains a cult car with a devoted worldwide following to this day.
Promotional artwork of a proposed turbo version of the DMC-12 that never eventuated.
The smash box office hit of 1985, Back to the Future features Emmett Lathrop ‘Doc’ Brown (Ph.D) played by actor Christopher Lloyd, and Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly. Doc Brown is the inventor of the flux capacitor that powers the DeLorean time machine (with OUTATIME license plates). When Marty McFly sees the DeLorean for the first time he asks "Are you telling me you built a time machine...out of a DeLorean!?" Doc Brown explains to Marty “The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” At the end of the movie a ‘Mr Fusion’ home reactor can be seen after Doc Brown returns from a trip to 2015. Mr Fusion allows the DeLorean time machine to generate the required 1.21 gigawatts needed to travel to any point in time.
Modifications to the Back to the Future DeLorean were based on sketches by designer Andrew Probert
Marty McFly joins Doc Brown on an insane time travel rollercoaster back to 1955, before returning to 1985 to find a different world – all thanks to that DeLorean. The car had to hit 88mph to achieve time travel (something a DeLorean may, or may not have been able to achieve with the standard Renault V6). The DeLorean appeared in all three movies in the trilogy – though not always the same physical car.
Christopher Lloyd publicity shot reprising his role as Doc Brown - at the wheel of a replica of the DeLorean time machine from the Back to the Future trilogy
As a side note, Doc Brown’s daily driver in the Back To The Future movies is a 1949 Packard Super-Deluxe convertible. Which may, or may not be a nod from the movie-makers to the fact John DeLorean had been an engineer at Packard in 1955 - the same year Marty and Doc go back to in the first and most successful of the trilogy.
Doc Brown’s Packard convertible was auctioned by Hemmings in 2017
Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis worked together on the script, with Zemeckis directing all three movies. Original drafts of the Back to the Future script had the time machine built from an antique refrigerator, which Doc would cart around on the bed of a pickup truck. Only after the movie had been approved for production did Zemeckis decide a car might make a better time machine than a fridge. During pre-production John DeLorean was on trial for the FBI cocaine bust - big news all over the US. “Why don’t we make it a DeLorean!?” Zemeckis suggested to co-writer Gale, who fortunately agreed.
What better car to make a time machine out of than a futuristic, stainless steel bodied, gull-wing doored Delorean DMC-12?
As an interesting aside, the studio’s product placement team went to Zemeckis and Gale saying they could get a $75,000 product placement deal if the film would use a new Mustang rather than the DeLorean. “Doc Brown doesn’t drive a Mustang!” was Gale’s response. The rest, as they say, is history. Now if only John Zachary DeLorean had a real life flux capacitor to go back in time and re-invent his future. But then, we might never had seen the DMC-12 and that would’ve been a shame.
Bob Gale agrees: "One of the nicest fan letters we ever received was from John DeLorean. He wrote a letter that said simply, 'thank you for keeping my dream alive.’” Vale John Z. DeLorean - visionary, dreamer, engineer and maverick.
About the author
Raph Tripp is a passionate classic car enthusiast and writer, and founder of TunnelRam.net. If you wish to publish this article in part or in whole, please credit Raph Tripp and tunnelram.net . This is an original Tunnel Ram production ©2022 Tunnel Ram. All images remain the property of the original copyright holders.