Meet the DeLorean Owners Who Hate ‘Back to the Future’
From Cracked.com – June 27, 2025 Brian VanHooker Please stop asking them if they have a flux capacitor “Tell me about the time you first got your DeLorean up to 88 miles per hour.” This was the original query I posted on a handful of DeLorean Facebook groups a few weeks ago, hoping to get some fun stories in time for the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future on July 3rd. (For those who need a refresher on the iconic film: 88 mph is the speed necessary to activate the Flux Capacitor in the DeLorean time machine.) But I quickly realized I made two big mistakes: 1) My central idea was really dull. “I went fast” was how most answered the question. One conversation went verbatim like this: DeLorean Owner: I got pulled over.Me: Did you get a ticket?DeLorean Owner: No. And 2) I didn’t read all the terms on the DeLorean owners Facebook group, which clearly stated: “No BTTF or Time Machine Posts.” Because I violated that rule, I was quickly met with scorn. “You’re in the wrong group,” scolded one DeLorean owner, along with a screenshot of the “No BTTF” rule. “That movie is a blight on DeLorean owners and is no longer relevant. Less than 3 minutes of DeLorean on screen. It features more incest than car,” wrote another. That’s when it became crystal clear to me that many DeLorean owners hate Back to the Future. Okay, obviously, not all DeLorean owners hate Back to the Future, but DeLorean Fanatics group member Vincent, who has owned DeLoreans since 2006, says there are essentially two types of DeLorean owners. “There are those who enjoy the car, drive it and use it,” explains Vincent. He puts himself in this category, along with others who appreciate the DeLorean as a unique classic car. “Then there are the people who like the movie,” continues Vincent. “The movie people are the most vocal online, and maybe they’ve owned the car for three or four years and they take it out for ice cream once in a while.” Vincent notes that these movie-obsessed DeLorean owners are also the first people to get rid of their DeLorean, oftentimes after they’ve spent thousands on renovations to make it look like the movie — sometimes even drilling holes in the steel. “The longer you own the car, the more you hate the movies,” Vincent gripes. His fellow group member Angela backs him up, saying, “Honestly, I didn’t mind it when I started out with my car in 2017. I used to have a Back to the Future personalized plate and played along with it for a while. It’s the fandom and their cult following of the movie I grew to hate.” The biggest problem Back to the Future-hating DeLorean owners have is the constant barrage of comments in the form of movie quotes and lame, repetitive jokes. “Most interactions are people telling one of the same three jokes over and over while laughing to themselves,” Angela says. “It’s either ‘Where’s the flux capacitor?’, ‘Can you take me back 20 years?’ or ‘Where’s Doc?’” “I get asked about the stupid flux capacitor so many times, and what really irks me is everyone that asks thinks they’re being original,” says Michael, who has owned his DeLorean for 16 years. “I don’t like when I’m asked where the flux capacitor is 43 times a day — and this number is a real number from a car show,” Viktor, another owner and group member, tells me. The comments from movie fans often come at the least appropriate times, too. “When I got my first one, I was on the side of the road trying to put out an engine fire, and some guy slows down, screams out the window, ‘Check the flux capacitor!’ and then drives off,” recalls Vincent. “Having owned a lot of classic cars, I know that, normally, if somebody catches a photo of it being damaged in an accident, you’ll get sympathy and condolences. But if a DeLorean gets wrecked, it’s just: ‘Go back in time before the accident!’” But it’s not just the comments from Back to the Future fans that Vincent and Angela take issue with. “There’s this incredibly weird thing that — because it’s mostly known for a movie — people feel that at car shows they have a right to go up, sit in it, touch it and take photos sitting on it,” Vincent says. “I’ve owned classic cars my entire life. I’ve had probably a thousand of them, and no other vehicle have people felt so entitled to touch and sit in.” “Back to the Future fans are one of the most obnoxious crowds I’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with,” adds Angela. “They feel entitled to sit in and on your car for photos. If your doors are closed at a show, they will try to open them. I even had one weirdo I’d never met before say we were dating — creepy. The movie draws in nerdy geeks who don’t take women who like the car seriously.” Both Angela and Vincent are convinced that the creepiness of the fandom stems straight from the movie itself. “There’s about seven minutes of screen time dedicated to the weird incest relationship between mom and son and about three minutes of the car. That’s literally one of my favorite facts,” says Vincent. Similarly, Angela takes issue with how the movie glosses over sexual assault, referring to the car scene with Biff and Lorraine. But if owning a DeLorean makes you a magnet for creepy, relentless movie quoters and amateur comedians, why hold onto the car at all? Vincent has an easy answer to this question. “DeLoreans aren’t without charm,” he explains. “You sit in them, and they feel well put together and well composed. There’s no other car like it, which is why, despite the fact that many of us hate the movies, we stick around and stay with the cars.”
The DeLorean office in Coventry
by Enda Mullen-BPCoventry Live – November 29, 2019 Look: Coventry connection with Back to the Future iconic sports car by Steve ChiltonCoventry Live – October 21, 2015 It is the world’s most famous time machine with its trademark gullwing doors atop a stainless steel-clad body. The DeLorean DMC-12 sports car is instantly recognisable to even the most clueless car enthusiast after becoming the iconic star of the Back to the Future movie trilogy. And now its creators are gearing up to celebrate a milestone anniversary for one of the best loved cars of all time – which is one of Coventry’s lesser known motoring success stories. This year will marks the 35th anniversary of the construction and first public showing of the production version of the vehicle in 1980 – the ‘Visioneering Show Car’. But what many people don’t realise is that the star of the science fiction comedy which transported Marty McFly back to 1955 life in the fictional California town Hill Valley has strong Coventry connections. The Belfast company’s British headquarters and procurement office was based in Christchurch House in Coventry city centre from 1979 to 1982. Staff were hired to set up new supply deals in the UK and the DeLorean even underwent endurance testing at the city’s head office. And next year the remarkable creation of John Zachary DeLorean will be celebrated with a reunion of former employees based in Northern Ireland and Coventry. Organised by the firm’s previous director of purchasing, Barrie Wills and financial controller David Adams, the reunion has been arranged for next year’s May Bank Holiday weekend at The Culloden Hotel at Cultra, near Holywood, County Down. Mr Wills said: “We are hoping that staff and shopfloor workers alike from Dunmurry, Coventry and the Adelaide Industrial Estate plant of CP Trim will attend the reunion. “We have also arranged a conducted tour on Tuesday 5 May of part of the former Dunmurry plant, now utilised by the French automotive foundry group, Montupet.” The story of the iconic car started in April 1973 when John left General Motors where he was vice president of car and truck production, to follow his dream of creating his own company and building a car that GM would never make. With help from Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, who worked on the new car’s styling, and Lotus Cars, which undertook the engineering of the car, the first running prototype was quickly completed. Its groundbreaking technology took the media by storm and the company set up a greenfield production site in Dunmurry, near Belfast, before John then focused on the UK and opened the Coventry headquarters. When the DeLorean rolled off production lines it received promising reviews but when the recession hit, the expected sales failed to materialise and unsold vehicles started to mount up. In February 1982, the receivers were called in and a rescue bid was devised. However when the FBI arrested John in a Los Angeles hotel room for ‘narcotics violations’ the DeLorean dream ended. Despite its brief time in the city, the two former company executives believe the anniversary is a good reason for a long-overdue reunion of its former employees. Those interested in attending the reunion should contact barriewills42@gmail.com for more information.
People in the News
SAN DIEGO (AP) – John Z. DeLorean, better known for living in lavish homes than for painting them, took brush in hand to help spruce up a house for the homeless, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. The former automaker, who was found innocent last August of charges that he bankrolled a $24 million cocaine shipment to aid his failing car company, appeared at a painting party this week for the New Start in Life Center in San Diego. ″I’m here because I believe in New Start and (its director) Rev. Johnny Carter and because I feel it’s one of the outstanding facilities of its type anywhere,″ said De Lorean, who said during his trial that he had become a born-again Christian. DeLorean, 60, who is divorced from model Cristina Ferrare, lives in Los Angeles. He recently signed over an estate valued at about $2 million to his attorney to cover legal fees, and said he is exploring business opportunities and writing a book about his trial. He also has reportedly signed a deal for a movie about his life. ″Hey, it’s been difficult, but life goes on,″ said DeLorean. ″I feel very strong. Certainly with the spiritual strength I draw from people like this, I can’t imagine how anyone can ever touch me.″ ″The last few months have been very tough,″ he said. ″But as my daughter says, anything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.″ from People in the News | April 25, 1985
DeLorean project unfairly maligned
September 20, 2018 | Belfast Telegraph / PressReader The Venice Film Festival review in the Belfast Telegraph September 15 (Cocaine, Catastrophes, and Crazy Cars: the battle to make the John DeLorean biopic Driven) is disappointing. It appears to overdose as a critique of the DeLorean car, manufactured in Dunmurry in the ’80s, in preference to focusing on the movie itself. Better the story itself than the facts, it appears, following in the wake of Bruce Gardyne’s statement in the House of Commons, under the protection of parliamentary privilege, that John DeLorean was a “conman”. As many of your readers, who were former employees, know, 6,500 cars of the total manufactured of 9,080, shipped almost exclusively to the USA, remain in use 36 years later – across the world from the west coast of North America to New Zealand. That is a remarkable statistic which is testament to John DeLorean’s aim to develop the ethical car. Whilst my 2015 book, John Z, the DeLorean & Me – Tales from an Insider, sets out to correct the many myths, it is critical of my former chairman. It does, however, lay the blame for the bad press towards the DeLorean project in the UK fairly and squarely on the seeds sown by Bruce Gardyne. BARRIE WILLS Former CEO of DeLorean Motor Cars Ltd Warwick
THE DE LOREAN. LIVE THE DREAM
Your eyes skim the sleek, sensuous stainless steel body, and all your senses tell you, “I’ve got to have it!” The counterbalanced gull-wing doors rise effortlessly, beckoning you inside. The soft leather seat in the cockpit fits you like it was made for your body. You turn the key. The light alloy V-6 comes to life instantly. The De Lorean. Surely one of the most awaited automobiles in automotive history. It all began with one man’s vision of the perfect personal luxury car. Built for long life, it employs the latest space-age materials. Of course, everyone stares as you drive by. Sure, they’re a little envious. That’s expected. After all, you’re the one Living The Dream. Start living it today at a dealer near you. A dealer commitment as unique as the car itself. There are 345 De Lorean dealers located throughout the United States. Each one is a stockholder in the De Lorean Motor Company. This commitment results in a unique relationship which will provide De Lorean owners with a superb standard of service. For the dealer nearest you, call toll free 800-447-4700, in Ill., 800-322-4400.
Uber’s San Francisco DeLorean rides
In 2013 Uber hired DeLoreans to give free rides to a few lucky Uberites… here’s the reprinted page from Uber… DeLorean Time Machines in San Francisco September 6, 2013 | Posted by Tess Uber hasn’t introduced a time travel option yet, but you might see shades of 1985 when you open your app today. For this weekend only, Uber has partnered with GE to bring DeLoreans to the streets of San Francisco. GE’s Brilliant Machines campaign uses real-world examples to demonstrate how GE’s advanced hardware and analytical software can revolutionize the way cities are powered. In other words, the GE technology in your DeLorean might predict and meet an entire city’s power needs someday (but don’t worry — these cars won’t be hitting 88 miles per hour on Market Street). How to snag a free ride: Open the Uber app anytime from noon to 9 p.m. on Friday or 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday Supply will be very limited, but if your timing is right, you’ll see the DeLorean option Maximum of 15 minutes per trip and one person per vehicle Brilliant Machines are transforming the way we work, and Uber is transforming the way we ride. History is gonna change!
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 John DeLorean, 80, automaker [su_quote]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.[/su_quote]
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