A Living Legend
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0919/090.html#1b13189f6299 Forbes.com Sep 19, 2005 Christopher Helman The last DeLorean rolled off the assembly line 23 years ago. But Stephen Wynne can build you one, better than new. John Z. Delorean died in March, 23 years after his sports car venture bit the dust. Yet DeLorean Motor Co. survives today, in ghostly form. This zombie was resurrected by Stephen Wynne, who acquired the name and the spare-parts inventory of the bankrupted company. He has a waiting list of fans eager to pay $40,000 for an overhauled specimen–renowned for its stainless-steel body and gull-wing doors–and a warehouse piled high with enough stuff to build 500 cars from scratch. It’s still a small business. Wynne, 49, earns an estimated $700,000 pretax on sales of $2.5 million. But there’s plenty of room for growth. [su_pullquote align=”right”]Wynne talked a friend into investing, and in 1997 they acquired the entire warehouse and contents, in Columbus, Ohio, for less than $1 million[/su_pullquote] In 1981 DeLorean buyers were drivers sensitive to style but not to price tags (the $27,500 is equivalent to today’s $61,500). Fans these days tend to be geekier types whose first exposure to the car was in the Back to the Future movies. Cool, yes; speedy, no. One way to bring more customers into the fold is to boost horsepower. At 135hp the DeLorean is less peppy than the average family sedan. Wynne now charges an extra $5,300 to soup up a model to 195hp. After a recent meeting with Gildo Pallanca Pastor, race-car driver and owner of a tiny car company in Monaco called Venturi, Wynne will soon be able to move up to a 300hp engine with better turbochargers and a wider exhaust system. That might cost an owner $10,000. “In time,” says Wynne, “we could even do 400hp for somebody who’s psycho enough.” Some might say the same of Wynne. In 1980 he immigrated to Los Angeles from Liverpool in the U.K. to help run a European car repair shop. A year later DeLorean launched his car factory in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland–and problems, like melted electrical systems, quickly emerged. “Because of a lack of competition we were doing good business [servicing DeLoreans],” says Wynne. Even after the motor company went bankrupt in 1982, Wynne and his partner had their hands full. They renamed the shop “DeLorean One” and opened a second garage in Houston in 1987. When the partnership soured eight years later, Wynne went his own way. What to call the new shop? Wynne discovered that while DeLorean Motor was still tied up in Chapter 11, registration of the company name had lapsed. Before grabbing the name and logo, he called John DeLorean, who told him, “I hope that you have better luck with it than I did.” Then he hit the jackpot. Like all DeLorean mechanics, Wynne had been buying replacement parts from Kapac Co., which had acquired the liquidated inventory from the Dunmurry factory. By 1996 Kapac decided to get out of the business, and Wynne started scraping together a bid. With a wealthy brother-in-law like John Hargreaves–who founded British retailer Matalan and taught Wynne how to run a business–Wynne thought he’d have it made. But when Hargreaves didn’t bite, Wynne talked a friend into investing, and in 1997 they acquired the entire warehouse and contents, in Columbus, Ohio, for less than $1 million. The retail value of those parts, Wynne says, is $35 million. He moved all those parts–50 truckloads‘ worth–to Houston three years ago, where they sit in a new 40,000-square-foot warehouse. Financed with family money and cash flow, the move and construction cost Wynne $1.2 million. Even with annual carrying costs of $100,000 a year (including interest payments, property taxes and utilities), every sale of parts is virtually found money. A fully overhauled car that Wynne sells for $40,000 starts with a dilapidated DeLorean, for which he pays maybe $10,000. Then his mechanics install parts that cost Wynne $6,000 or so. Throw in $7,000 in labor costs, plus overhead, and Wynne’s gross profit on a rebuilt model approaches $17,000. He can even make money on junked DeLoreans into which his guys put just enough work to get them running. Price: around $10,000. But you’ve still got to bring in the customers. “Everything we do is geared toward selling more parts,” says Wynne. “Unless you’ve got the marketing to do something with it, it’s a million dollars of trash.” That marketing consists of [their website], a showroom, warehouse tours and a quarterly magazine called DeLoreans, which gives owners step-by-step photographic instructions on how to install various parts themselves. Wynne has also licensed the DeLorean image and logo to Sony for use in the videogame Gran Turismo 4. There will be other markets for all those parts. In March Wynne sold his first DeLorean franchise to a customer in Florida whom he’s known for years. Still, the move initially made him a tad nervous: “It was like letting somebody take your wife out to dinner.”
DeLorean shop steels itself against time
May 22, 2005 | CHICAGO TRIBUNE | by Steven Kurutz, New York Times News Service [su_quote]In the dim half-light of a Long Island garage, a handful of DeLoreans stand in corners or suspended on hydraulic lifts, their gull-wing doors ajar more than two decades after the DeLorean Motor Co. went bust. Visible through a dusty window to the parking lot, perhaps 20 more DeLoreans, lined up and identical, sit waiting. This is P.J. Grady’s, a modest gray automotive garage tucked behind a used-car lot in West Sayville, N.Y. As the sign on its roof—DeLorean Motor Cars—indicates, the shop specializes in the repair and restoration of DeLoreans. It is estimated that around 9,200 DeLoreans were built in the car’s three years of production, 1981-83, and that about 7,000 are left. Of those, a good number have passed through the hands of Rob Grady, P.J. Grady’s owner, who has spent 20 years as one of the world’s few DeLorean experts. DeLorean owners from Maine to Florida send him their cars. For many years, P.J. Grady’s was about as profitable as an Edsel dealership, but that has changed. The teenagers who saw “Back to the Future” 20 years ago and were fascinated by the film’s time-traveling DeLorean are grown and seeking the low-sweeping coupe. At the same time, the car is approaching its 25th birthday. Where once values hovered around $17,000, a restored DeLorean now runs close to $30,000. “In the last five or six years, the values have gone way up,” said James Espey, vice president of the DeLorean Motor Co. in Houston, which bought the rights to the brand and sells restored models. It was long believed that DeLorean parts could not be found, so many cars were garaged, but Espey’s firm bought the DMC parts inventory. Espey estimates that the company has enough gull-wing doors to last 120 years at the current rate of use, and enough interior carpet to cover a football field twice over. The company opened a second branch near Tampa. And two shops near Los Angeles, DeLorean Motor Center and DeLorean One, serve the West Coast as P.J. Grady’s serves the East. Of the handful of DeLorean specialists, P.J. Grady’s is the oldest, going back to 1979, when Grady became one of the original DeLorean dealers. For $25,000 he received the right to sell the DMC-12, and a poster of the car autographed by DeLorean, which still decorates his office. Like many dealers, Grady signed up based on the reputation of DeLorean, who had been an engineering and marketing star at General Motors—in the early 1960s he created the Pontiac GTO. But from the start, his company was besieged with problems, starting with too little capital and the fact that the car, priced at $25,000, made its debut in 1981 in one of the worst economies in recent memory. “The cars were never hot sellers,” Grady said. Topping it off was DeLorean’s arrest in 1982 for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, still a sore spot with DeLorean enthusiasts. (DeLorean was acquitted after claiming entrapment.) When the company filed for bankruptcy protection that year, Grady continued to honor his customers’ warranties. He found himself doing more and more repair work on DeLoreans, until that was all he did. Not surprisingly, he has developed an affection for the car, though it is tempered by years of daily involvement. “It’s a good car,” he said. DeLorean enthusiast Mike Deluca, hovering nearby, said: “Rob is being modest. He’s completely dedicated. I was driving by once, and it was Easter Sunday. It was freezing. Rob was out in the parking lot testing temperature sensors.” In a far corner of the garage, the P.J. Grady’s mechanic, Pat Tomasetti, stood in blue coveralls beneath a DeLorean on a lift, draining oil. Tomasetti has been repairing and restoring DeLoreans at P.J. Grady’s for 13 years and is accustomed to overzealous fans of the car. He laughed as he recalled the time a Japanese man showed up with his family, saying he had flown to America to visit Disney World and P.J. Grady’s. The DeLorean Tomasetti was working on had come from Pennsylvania and was set to have its fender replaced, among other repairs. Another DeLorean, its door crunched, needed extensive body work. Outside, dozens more waited, a daunting workload for two men. –I’d like another mechanic, but it’s hard keeping them,” Grady said. “Most guys don’t like doing restoration work. It’s dirty, and there’s also the repetition.” People who spend time around garages tend to acquire a detailed know-how of car design and mechanics, but DeLorean experts have refined that. Because of its unpainted stainless-steel body, the DMC-12 was available in only one color, silver. Its interior was black leather or gray leather, and the car changed little over its brief production run. So while the Corvette aficionado has a half-century of paint schemes, body types and options to ponder, the DeLorean lover must be content with trivial changes—the radio antenna on the ’81 models is in the windshield, for example, while on the ’82 it is on the left rear quarter. Pointing to a model whose license plate read BK2DFUTR, Grady made the indistinguishable cars distinguishable. “We just got this one out of mothballs,” he said. “It sat for four years. The owner decided to sell it. It only has 11,000 miles.” He continued: “That one over there was in a wreck. Needs a new door.” Then he walked over to a car covered in dust. The passenger window was stuck halfway down, and the seat was given over to orphaned parts. “This is the 530,” he said reverently. “It’s a Legend prototype, Twin Turbo. They only made three of these.” The 530 is going to be restored as his DeLorean, Grady said, just as soon as he finds the time. “Sometimes you get a little burned out,” he mused, reflecting on the vagaries of being a DeLorean expert. “Then something rejuvenates you.”[/su_quote]
John DeLorean Obituary
SeattleTimes.com | by Eric Malnic | Los Angeles Times | March 21, 2005 John DeLorean, 80, automaker John Z. DeLorean, the dashing former General Motors executive whose flamboyant lifestyle faded into obscurity after charges that he tried to use drug money to salvage his own fledgling car company, has died. He was 80. Mr. DeLorean, who created the gull-winged car adapted as Michael J. Fox’s time-traveling vehicle in the “Back to the Future” films, died Saturday at a New Jersey hospital of complications from a recent stroke. The innovative car maker — tall, handsome, charismatic, known for his flashy clothes, his lavish tastes and the beautiful women who accompanied him — was acquitted in 1984 of the drug and conspiracy counts against him, but DeLorean Motor Car was fatally wounded. Despite being videotaped in the act of apparently buying cocaine and pronouncing it “better than gold,” Mr. DeLorean never admitted guilt in the case that led to his arrest in 1982. He claimed instead that he was the victim of a government frame-up by drug agents and prosecutors bent on self-promotion, and the jury apparently agreed with him. But after becoming a self-described born-again Christian while awaiting trial, Mr. DeLorean did concede there were some things he had done wrong. “I think my ultimate sin … was that I had this insatiable pride,” he told journalist Robert Scheer in a Playboy magazine interview about two years after the acquittal. “Looking back at it, I see that I had an arrogance that was beyond that of any other human being alive.” It was a pride based, at least in part, on the remarkable achievements of a man from humble beginnings. Born in Detroit to immigrant parents in January 1925, Mr. DeLorean was reared in a working-class neighborhood about a mile from the Ford Motor plant where his father, an abusive alcoholic, was a foundry worker and a union organizer. After graduating from college, Mr. DeLorean found work as an engineer, first with Packard Motor Car and then with General Motors. It was at GM that Mr. DeLorean’s career — and his reputation for creative thinking and bold marketing — began to soar. In 1961, at age 36, he was named chief engineer at GM’s Pontiac Division, eventually holding more than 100 patents for innovative designs. His introduction of two “muscle cars” that proved enormously popular with young buyers — the GTO and the Firebird — led to his being named head of the division in 1965. Within a few years, he was promoted again, to chief of GM’s truck and car division. Nonetheless, in April 1972, as industry pundits were beginning to talk about him as the next president of GM — the largest corporation in the world — Mr. DeLorean resigned. “I realized I would never be happy in the headquarters environment,” he said later. “I wasn’t a team player.” By the end of 1973, Mr. DeLorean had decided to set up a network of companies to design, manufacture and market a sports car in his own image: sleek, fast and glamorous. It would be called — naturally — the DeLorean. He got the British government to invest more than $140 million to build the car in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The rear-engine, gull-winged, stainless-steel car that emerged in 1981 was well received at first and developed a cult following, which helped propel it into the “Back to the Future” films. But the $25,000 price tag was a bit higher at the time than that of the principal competition, GM’s Corvette. The factory produced only about 8,900 cars in three years, and many of those went unsold. In February 1982, the British government declared DeLorean Motor insolvent and appointed a receiver to take over the firm. Short of cash, Mr. DeLorean turned to James Hoffman, a sometime drug smuggler, convicted perjurer and admitted tax evader who lived near Mr. DeLorean’s sprawling home in rural San Diego County, Calif. Hoffman would become a paid FBI informant. On Oct. 19, 1982, watched by a hidden video camera, Mr. DeLorean was arrested by FBI agents at the Sheraton Plaza La Reina Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport. Agents said he was part of a scheme to shore up the sagging finances of his company by buying — and then reselling, at enormous profit — 220 pounds of cocaine from Colombia. Videotapes made moments before Mr. DeLorean’s arrest show him briefly examining 25 kilograms of cocaine and saying, with a laugh, “It’s better than gold.” Another tape, made at a hotel in Washington, shows a conversation between Mr. DeLorean and Hoffman, during which Mr. DeLorean says, “I’m relying on you saying that there’s no way of connecting me to this thing.” “You’re not going to be handling product,” Hoffman says. During Mr. DeLorean’s trial in 1984, prosecutors relied heavily on the videotapes. Hoffman, the prosecution’s star witness, was on the stand for 18 days, testifying that Mr. DeLorean had suggested a drug deal to save his company. To counter the accusations of the prosecution, defense attorneys contended that Mr. DeLorean had been conned by a lying government informant and enticed by prospects of big investments in his dying company. Weitzman said government agents lied, destroyed crucial notes, backdated documents and withheld important evidence. On Aug. 16, 1984, after 29 hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted him on all counts. Mr. DeLorean retreated to his estate in Somerset County, N.J., and began a futile battle to fend off creditors. In 1999, mounting debts forced him to declare bankruptcy. In January 2000, a federal judge approved the sale of Mr. DeLorean’s estate for $15.25 million. All of the money went to Mr. DeLorean’s creditors. Mr. DeLorean is survived by his fourth wife, Sally Baldwin; son, Zachary; and daughters Kathryn and Sheila.
DeLorean Plans Comeback
Controversial sports car tycoon John DeLorean claimed late January that he was “very near” to finalizing plans to produce another car. He denied that his latest venture revolves around the Firestar 500, the ugly duckling previously linked to his own name. “What I am working on now,” DeLorean told us from his $4 million apartment in New York, “is an entirely different car.” The silver-haired 61-year-old stated that a “well-known” German designer will style a $100,000-plus sports car for him. DeLorean, a “born-again” Christian, who last December was acquitted of major criminal charges for the second time in two and a half years, said, “Interest in investment is incredible. I’m getting letters from everywhere. We have a lot of opportunities.” He read over the telephone one such letter, “just received this morning from one of the wealthiest men in Canada,” offering assistance and production facilities in Alberta. “We have a couple sets of investments available to us,” said DeLorean, “and at the moment, we’re trying to decide which is the better of the two.” He has reportedly raised $20 million. The Firestar 500, trumpeted by one of its backers as “the fastest car in the world” while it was little more than a sketch on a napkin, was to have been based on the DeLorean DMC-12. A New Orleans businessman and self-proclaimed counter-intelligence agent, 48-year-old Gordon Novel, boasted partnership with DeLorean to produce the car. DeLorean told us that he had been introduced to novel by Marvin Katz, an entrepreneur who had bought surplus parts from the failed DMC-12 project, but that he had never agreed to involvement in the Firestar. “I just went along to listen to them,” he said. Novel reassures us, “John and I are still close friends and business associates.” Meantime, about $20 million of DeLorean’s assets have been frozen by court order pending the outcome of bankruptcy proceedings. The British government, as largest creditor in the case, would probably have obstructed any attempt by DeLorean to utilize in a new venture parts or patents belonging to the DMC-12. Motor Trend Magazine : volume 39 number 4 (April 1987) : p22
DeLorean Set To Build ‘Exotic’ Cars
Twice acquitted of criminal offences, former auto maker John DeLorean says he is ready to start over with a new enterprise aimed at people who think of their cars more as toys than as transportation. “I’m looking to bring a high-performance, high-priced sports car into the market — I guess you would have to call it the exotic market — with a cost over $100,000 (U.S.).” Mr. DeLorean said he has raised the $20-million needed to build the new automobile, but he would not name the investors who put up the funds, or the well-known West German designer he said would take part in creating the car. A federal jury in Detroit last week acquitted Mr. DeLorean of charges that he embezzled $8.5-million (U.S.) from investors in his previous enterprise, which built a stainless-steel sports car at a plant in Northern Ireland in 1981 and 1982 before failing. It was his second successful defense against U.S. federal charges. A Los Angeles jury found him innocent in 1984 of trying to sell $24-million worth of cocaine. Mr. DeLorean, who turns 62 on Jan. 6, said he has lowered his ambitions since the collapse of his earlier project. “This is a much more modest venture,” he said, adding the $20-million in startup funds is less than the $27-million profit posted by his Northern Ireland enterprise the first half of 1981. Globe and Mail (Toronto) Newspaper – Metro Edition : December 24, 1986 : pB2
DeLorean Dream Dying
The boom that has hovered over the head of John Z. DeLorean since his cocaine-trafficking trial has finally been lowered by a federal grand jury in Detroit. DeLorean was the only one named in the 15-count indictment that charged him with racketeering, mail and wire fraud, interstate transportation of stolen money, income tax evasion, and causing false income tax returns to be filed. At the heart of the matter is some $17.65 million of DeLorean Motor Company funds that allegedly disappeared in an intricate investment scheme. The indictment comes on the heels of an announcement that DeLorean intends to build a new sports car. Based on the stainless steel-bodied sportster marketed in 1981 and 1982, the new car will use substantially more powerful engine which, says one of its backers, will make it “the fastest car in the world.” Dubbed the Firestar 500, the gullwing’s styling is similar to that of the earlier DeLorean, with wider front and rear fenders and an elevated rear wing not unlike that of a Plymouth Superbird. According to Gordon Novel, a New Orleans businessman and one of the backers in the venture, present plans call for the car to be powered by a 4-valve fuel-injected all-alloy V-8, expected to produce in the neighborhood of 500 hp. By lightening the previous DeLorean up to 500 lb, Novel expects the power-plant to propel the Firestar 500 from 0-60 in less than 4 sec and to a top speed of 220 mph with Boneville-type tires. Motor Trend Magazine : volume 38 number 1 (January 1986) : p17
DeLorean II: The Comeback
Who would bet money on an entrepreneur whose last company went bankrupt, who was tried and acquitted on charges of cocaine trafficking and who is being investigated for embezzlement? “An abundance of people,” says Walt Bratten, chairman of Castle Croup, a Newport Beach, Calif., investment firm. Bratten claims to be arranging financing for a new venture by John DeLorean, 60, the former General Motors executive whose first auto company collapsed in 1982. DeLorean has been working on the new project for about six months. He told the Los Angeles Herald Examiner that it was “inevitable that the company come back.” Tentative plans call for building a new sports car that would be similar to DeLorean’s previous model, a sleek machine with gull-wing doors. The new one would have an improved engine and transmission. Analysts doubt, however, that investors in DeLorean’s comeback attempt will ever see any profits. “I think it would be more fun to just go out and throw your money off the Brooklyn Bridge,” says David Healy, an auto company expert at Drexel Burnham Lambert. DeLorean is still under investigation for allegedly defrauding investors in his last company of millions of dollars. Time Magazine : June 17, 1985 : p63
John DeLorean Vows He’ll Build A New Sports Car At Plant In Ohio
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Automaker John DeLorean, whose venture to make a stainless steel-skinned sports car failed, says he will set up a plant in Ohio to produce a new high-performance car. DeLorean said in an interview he has been working on the new venture for about six months and that the assembly operation may be established soon in Columbus, Ohio. “I want to be involved,” DeLorean said. “It’s inevitable that the company come back.” He told the Los Angeles Hearld-Examiner that it has not been decided what part he might play in the company if it is revived. Sources in Ohio and Northern Ireland said the 60-year-old former General Motors executive hopes to produce a car similar to the DMC-12, which was built by the DeLorean Motor Co. from 1979 until it went bankrupt in 1982, the Detroit Free Press reported Sunday. “I’ve seen the design on the car, and it’s beautiful,” said Marvin Katz, vice-president of Kapac Co., a Columbus-based auto parts distributor. “It’s all done.” Katz, whose company acquired most of DeLorean Motors’ parts inventory after it went bankrupt, told the Free Press he had an agreement to sell parts to DeLorean if the car goes into production. The new car would be “a modified DeLorean with a larger engine and transmission and wheels,” Katz said. DeLorean’s lawyer, Howard Weitznam, said from Los Angeles that he had no direct knowledge of any new car-making plans by DeLorean. DeLorean remains under investigation by a federal grand jury in Detroit. The jury is reported to be looking into allegations by creditors that DeLorean misappropriated millions of dollars from investors and from the British government, which helped finance the Northern Ireland plant. Toronto Star Newspaper : June 4, 1985 : pE9
DELOREAN LAWYERS SEEK A GRAND JURY TRANSCRIPT
By JUDITH CUMMINGS | June 8, 1984 | New York Times [su_quote]LOS ANGELES, June 7— Lawyers for John Z. DeLorean today asked Federal District Judge Robert M. Takasugi to ban prosecutors from discussing testimony with James Timothy Hoffman, the Government’s star witness, before he returned to the witness stand Friday. Judge Takasugi rejected the request. But the judge agreed to consider a defense request for the transcript of the grand jury proceedings leading up to a new indictment of Mr. DeLorean in June 1983 on a charge of conspiracy to import and distribute cocaine. The defense made the request after Mr. Hoffman testified under cross- examination that he talked with the prosecutor, James P. Walsh Jr., as early as January 1983 about several unrecorded telephone calls he had made to Mr. DeLorean in the investigation of the case. Lawyer Challenges Prosecutor Howard L. Weitzman, Mr. DeLorean’s chief lawyer, in talking to reporters, accused the prosecutors of concealing this information from the defense in violation of the law. He said Mr. Walsh had previously said at a hearing before Judge Takasugi in September 1983 that the prosecution, at that time, was learning about the unrecorded calls. Much of the Government’s case has relied on secretly recorded telephone calls and videotapes. Mr. Walsh did not return a telephone call requesting a response to to Mr. Weizman’s charge. However, concerning Mr. Hoffman’s testimony about the unrecorded calls, he told a reporter, ”I don’t recall it that way – there was a good deal of slop in that answer.” This apparently meant he thought Mr. Hoffman’s testimony might not have been accurate. The indictment of Mr. DeLorean on June 29 superseded the original indictment in October 1982 after Mr. DeLorean’s two co-defendants, William Morgan Hetrick and Steven Arrington, both pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges. All three were charged in connection with a scheme to import and distribute 55 pounds of cocaine. Donald M. Re, an attorney for Mr. DeLorean, said outside the court that the defense had asked for the grand jury transcript ”because it appears there were discrepancies in testimony” the defense had just learned about. The unrecorded telephone calls have been a major issue at Mr. DeLorean’s trial. Mr. Hoffman, a Government informer, testified in October 1982 to the grand jury that indicted the 59-year-old Mr. DeLorean that he had recorded all the telephone calls he made to Mr. DeLorean after July 11, 1982. The recordings, he said, were part of the undercover investigation he was conducting against the automobile maker. It was later revealed through telephone toll records turned over to the defense that at least four, and possibly more, telephone talks between Mr. Hoffman and Mr. DeLorean had not been recorded. The defense maintains that Mr. Hoffman used these calls to threatened Mr. DeLorean’s family if he tried to back out of a narcotics transaction. The defense also asserts that Mr. Hoffman was double-dealing Mr. DeLorean, leading the automobile maker to believe he was going to obtain a legitimate investment for the failing DeLorean Motor Company and doing that through unrecorded calls that have not been made part of the record of the investigation. Mr. Hoffman testified that there had been five meetings with Federal investigators at which he had discussed the unrecorded phone calls. He said he discussed them with Mr. Walsh and John Valestra, one of his control agents in the Drug Enforcement Administration, and that the earliest of these discussions was in January 1983 after his testimony to the grand jury.[/su_quote] from http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/08/us/delorean-lawyers-seek-a-grand-jury-transcript.html
DeLorean feared for kids, polygraph tape indicates
November 10, 1983 | by Linda Deutsch | The Associated Press LOS ANGELES — A videotape of John Z. DeLorean taking a lie-detector test, saying he was “scared silly for my children” during events leading to his arrest on drug trafficking charges, was shown in federal court yesterday. DeLorean, 58, denied on the tape that he ever solicited a drug deal, and he told the polygraph examiner he was forced through threats into negotiating with a government informer posing as a drug dealer. “Of course, my only interest was in staying alive and saving the (DeLorean Motor Car) company if there was any way to do that,” DeLorean told the polygraph examiner just before the test, which defense attorneys arranged. DeLorean told the examiner that he tried to back out of the deal, but that the informer threatened his children and told him, “We’re going to deliver your daughter’s head in a shopping bag.” “I was destroyed by it,” DeLorean said. “I was scared silly for my children.” DeLorean was not in court yesterday for the hearing on the admissibility of polygraph results. The maverick automaker, charged in a $24 million cocaine distribution deal, passed the polygraph test shown on the tape, but a month later flunked a test given by the FBI. Defense lawyers, who plan to seek the dismissal of cocaine conspiracy charges against DeLorean, say they want jurors to see the videotape if the case does go to trial. No trial date has been set. Prosecutors oppose admission of any polygraph results, but say if jurors know of the defense test they also should know of the FBI examination. Earlier yesterday, U.S. District Judge Robert Takasugi ruled that the videotape may be shown on television without damaging DeLorean’s right to a fair trial. In the interview, DeLorean recalled how in 1979 he met James Timothy Hoffman, a neighbor in San Diego, and was contacted by him again in 1982 about a possible investment in DeLorean’s company. DeLorean said he tried to back out of the deal after narcotics were mentioned at a September 1982 meeting, and that Hoffman threatened his children. He spoke of reluctantly going to an Oct. 19, 1982, meeting at a Los Angeles hotel, where he was arrested. “They (undercover government agents) whip out a bottle of champagne and I think I’m toasting the fact that funds are available for the company. They indicate we’re toasting a long series of narcotics transactions. “(A government agent) runs to the closet and jumps out with a suitcase full of bags of cocaine. By now, I’m paralyzed and ready to jump out the window,” DeLorean said on the tape. “I’m convinced if I do anything, I’ll never leave that room alive. And of course, 10 minutes later, they arrest me.”