Back to the Future

            It was an elegant mess from the beginning, the ultimate dream of a true dreamer who up until the very end managed through sheer will, smoke and mirrors to create a totally different kind of car out of whole cloth. It was a car for the future created by one of Detroit’s true iconic designers.

            John DeLorean was born and raised in Detroit so it wasn’t a huge surprise that he went to school to learn to be an automotive engineer. After a stint in the Army DeLorean earned his MS degree in automotive engineering and took a stint with Chrysler. That lasted barely a year when he was lured away by Packard.

            He worked at Packard for a few years (notable was his improvement on their Ultramatic transmissions) until he was offered a dream job at General Motors. This is where he would really make a name for himself.

            While making a number of innovations for the Pontiac division (including their overhead cam six engine), his most notable achievement came when he took the very practical Tempest, a fairly basic entry level compact car, and turned it into one of the most gut wrenching muscle machines of all time. DeLorean created the Pontiact GTO, a car he would also eventually turn into the LeMans.

            DeLorean followed this by creating Pontiac’s answer to Ford’s wildly successful Mustang, the Firebird. He closed out a very eventful decade of the 1960s by turning his attention to Pontiac’s luxury model, the Grand Prix. This he made sportier while keeping the price below the competition. It, like all of DeLorean’s designs, sold very well.

            By this time DeLorean was essentially a rock star. He was earning a huge salary with even larger bonuses. This led to investments including shares in the San Diego Chargers and New York Yankees. His celebrity status was enhanced by his rubbing elbows with top business leaders as well as famous entertainers such as Sammy Davis, Jr. and Johnny Carson.

            While the powers that be at GM were not crazy about all of this, they turned to him to help rescue Chevrolet which was reeling after the demise of the Corvair and problems with getting re-vamped versions of the Corvette, Nova and Camero out to market. After just a couple of years of DeLorean magic, Chevy’s revenues nearly matched those of the entire Ford Motor Company.

            Though it was the result more of a shakeup within GM and how it took control of assembly lines away from Chevy, the Vega debacle fell under DeLorean’s watch, leading to his resignation in 1973.

            Now free to do his own thing, DeLorean created the DeLorean Motor Company with the intent of making a high performance two seat sports car. Using a stainless steel, gull wing body by Italiadesign’s Giorgetto Giugiaro and a V 6 engine developed by Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo, the DMC-12 spent much of its early life as nothing more than vaporware.

            Never one to accept even the slightest possibility of defeat, DeLorean, always the ultimate salesman, managed to attract prominent investors even when all he had was a drawing and a model. Securing loans from Bank of America and getting high profile investors on board (yes, old pals Johnny Carson, Sammy Davis, Jr. and country and TV star Roy Clark were among them), DeLorean eventually a deal from Northern Ireland to set up a manufacturing facility there.

            While the car was scheduled to begin rolling off the line in 1979, countless delays led to huge budget overruns. Finally, in early 1981, the DMC-12 began rolling off the assembly line. The car received initial mixed reviews. With a sticker price of $25,000 (around $60,000 today) it lacked the type of performance being turned out by other sport GT cars of the time. Add to that a body that split folks who either loved the unique, industrial stainless steel gray look or who hated it and sales were tepid.

            With the below expected sales and all of the cost overruns, DeLorean was seeing his dream slip from between his fingers. He looked everywhere for new investment money, even being refused by the British Government. Though there remains a great deal of dispute over exactly what happened, in Oct., 1982 DeLorean was arrested and charged with smuggling $24 million worth of cocaine. Ultimately DeLorean was found not guilty due to entrapment but the result was that his car company and his dream machine, the DMC-12, were gone.

            But not entirely. In 1985 Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown, used a DMC-12 to build a time machine in the classic movie Back to the Future. The movie and its sequels renewed interest in the car. Today there are a number of regional and national DeLorean car events throughout the country which attract both owners and viewers who literally flock to see this iconic automobile.