Transcription
The DMC DeLorean, a rear engine two-passenger sports car with unusual gullwing doors, would likely have been completely forgotten to history were it not intimately associated with the Hollywood blockbuster Back to the Future. The car was the only vehicle ever released by the DeLorean Motor Company and was only on the market for two years from 1981 to 1983, developing a negative reputation for low quality and an unsatisfactory driving experience, not to mention a total inability to travel through time.
Today, we're looking at the rise and fall of the DMC DeLorean. But first, we'd be much obliged if you would subscribe to the Weird History channel. After that, leave us a comment, letting us know what other iconic vehicles you would like to hear about next. OK, time to fire up the flux capacitor and burn rubber back to the 1980s.
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Our story starts with John Z. DeLorean, who demonstrated a gift for science and engineering from an early age. DeLorean grew up in Detroit, Michigan. After serving in World War II, he earned master's degrees in automotive engineering and business administration and accepted jobs with Chrysler and then the Packard Motor Car Company right out of school.
In 1956, DeLorean took a job with General Motors. And by 1961, he was the chief engineer of the entire Pontiac division. DeLorean's work at GM mostly centered around making Pontiacs more powerful, earning them a newfound reputation as fast-driving muscle cars. In 1963, he introduced the GTO, essentially a Pontiac Tempest with a larger engine. The initials stand for the Italian phrase "Gran Turismo Omologato," a reference to the grand touring cars originally designed by sports car icon, Enzo Ferrari.
Much of GM's upper management was opposed to the idea of putting a large, powerful engine into a small automotive frame. So DeLorean had designed the GTO in part as a scheme to get around this policy. This will not be the last time you hear "DeLorean" and "scheme" in the same sentence. Rather than designing a new small car with a souped-up engine, they'd simply offer an upgrade to the pre-existing Pontiac Tempest. The first Pontiac Tempest GTOs were sold as relatively inexpensive upgrades to the standard 1964 Tempest model. Despite its humble, secretive beginnings, the GTO helped to solidify DeLorean's reputation as an outside-the-box thinker. And he became the youngest general manager in GM's history in 1965 at age 40. By 1972, he was running the company's entire North American operation.
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Around this time, DeLorean also started developing a reputation in the automotive industry, both for his flashy and attention-grabbing personal style, and his aggressive, rebellious personality. While he had started his career playing the traditional role of a '60s automotive executive, a Don Draper-esque family man who wore suits and ties to work every day, DeLorean's public persona changed as he climbed the ranks at GM. He grew out his sideburns, befriended celebrities like Sammy Davis, Jr. and Johnny Carson, and started working out more and wearing his shirts unbuttoned down to the torso, like an accountant with a cigarette boat and a felony drug conviction.
Embracing a midlife crisis, DeLorean divorced his first wife Elizabeth Higgins in 1968 and began a string of high-profile romances with several women, including singer Tina Sinatra, actress Ursula Andress, and model Kelly Harmon, to whom DeLorean was briefly married before he left her for another model, Christina Ferrare. Making himself the public face of Pontiac and GM's successes made DeLorean famous. But this behavior wasn't earning him many friends behind the scenes. That may have been his intent all along, although his madness frequently outweighed his method. More on that later.
At a 1973 GM executive conference in West Virginia, DeLorean prepared an aggressive speech, laying out his personal vision for the future, advocating for smaller cars with better fuel efficiency and criticizing many at GM for being out of touch with modern consumers. And he was not exactly diplomatic in his approach. Though he toned down the speech before presenting it, an unedited version of DeLorean's fiery remarks were leaked to The Detroit News, further alienating him from his colleagues. To this day, many continue to suspect that DeLorean leaked them himself.
DeLorean exited GM later on that same year. Although, whether he quit or was escorted out is unclear. He later told the New York Times that he didn't regret leaving GM because he hated having to sit through meetings all day. You can almost hear him adjusting his sunglasses and cracking open a Coors Light.
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DeLorean started his own car company in 1975, the DeLorean Motor Company, with a logo that looked suspiciously like the GMC logo. And that wasn't the only thing he borrowed from his ex-employers. In '77, DeLorean brought in Bill Collins, a former collaborator from GM, and Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, a veteran of Alfa Romeo, with the goal of creating what DeLorean dubbed the first ethical sports car. Presumably, that meant the car would automatically break for pedestrians and not cheat on its taxes. In addition to guzzling less gas, he also vowed that the cars would be assembled in a factory without spray booths and paint ovens in order to protect his employees from potentially hazardous fumes, and definitely not to cut corners on production costs.
Collins was quickly replaced by Lotus Motors founder and engineer Colin Chapman. But nonetheless, the first DMC-12 prototype was unveiled less than one year later, so named for its planned sticker price of around $12,000, or $50,000 in today's money. It feels a little strange to include the car's price in its name. That might give people the wrong idea about the Mazda 626. The DMC-12 was lighter than other sports cars in its category, weighing in at just 2,200 pounds, which improved gas mileage. Despite a smaller engine, the car could reportedly still go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in under 8 seconds. DeLorean opted for a distinctive all-steel exterior because it reflected the color of the sky and changed color depending on the weather, while also being resistant to rust. The DMC-12 signature gullwing doors had been selected because they aren't jarred open as easily as conventional doors, as well as for sex appeal, because nothing is sexier than a set of huge impractical doors on a sports car that looks vaguely like Robocop.
The US government made DeLorean a lucrative offer to build a factory for his cars in Puerto Rico. But he ended up taking the business to the UK and constructing a plant near Belfast in Northern Ireland instead. In exchange for bringing 2,500 jobs to the area, the UK rewarded DeLorean with around $77 million in funding. The deal was struck in 1978. And the first DMC-12s came off the assembly line three years later.
Now, you may be thinking, wasn't a significantly violent conflict going on in Northern Ireland in the late 1970s? And you would be absolutely correct. Protestants and Catholics had most recently been clashing in Ireland since the 1960s in a period known as The Troubles that would last until the late 1990s. But it wasn't exactly a religious war. The fight was also largely about whether Northern Ireland should remain part of the United Kingdom. The conflict essentially pitted mostly Protestants, who wanted to remain in the UK, against mostly Catholics, who wanted to leave and join an independent Ireland. Because of this, Protestant and Catholic workers at DeLorean's factory were mostly kept separated, even coming into work through different entrances. This had more to do with the state of affairs in Northern Ireland than any specific decision by the DeLorean Motor Company, although DeLorean himself was concerned about being kidnapped by a group like the Irish Republican Army, possibly because he had just made a very public multimillion deal with the British government.
Despite DeLorean's flashy personality and plenty of support from the government, major corporations, and the media alike, things started going wrong for the DeLorean Motor Company almost immediately. The company had all but run through its funding entirely by the time the first DMC-12s were coming off the assembly line. DeLorean attempted to smooth-talk the British government to give them some more wiggle room, or more room to open those goofily awesome doors. But Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had never been a fan of the car company and suspected that DeLorean had been stealing money from investors. Yes, she wasn't amused.
Around this same time, DeLorean came to the attention of investigative journalist, John Lisners. In 1981, he published an expose on a shady plan to take the company public that would personally enrich DeLorean while cutting out his investors and the British government. Sounds like the Iron Lady was on to something.
All of this may have been survivable had the DMC-12 lived up to DeLorean's promises. But it held up about as well as it did at the end of Back to the Future III. While Car and Driver magazine had written a glowingly positive review of the DMC-12, by the time the publication got its hands on an actual vehicle, they found it abysmally short of any commercial standard of acceptability. So not quite a four-star review. DeLorean's flagship car had a number of flat out embarrassing problems, including loose switches, parts that just fell off, various concerning rattles and squeaks, doors that were jammed shut, doors that refused to latch, and windows that came loose out of their tracks.
Even when fully operational, the cars didn't function as DeLorean had promised. They weren't capable of reaching their advertised top speeds and retailed at around $25,000, over twice as much as the proposed $12,000 sticker price that gave the DMC-12 its name. DeLorean's pal, Johnny Carson, had invested $500,000 in the company and pre-ordered one of the first DMC-12s. Unfortunately, it broke down after he'd driven it just a few miles from the lot. A rescue car sent to retrieve Carson reportedly also broke down. Then in November of 1981, the company was forced to issue a recall due to faulty suspensions. In short, the average lawn tractor was a more reliable vehicle than the overhyped DeLorean.
All that negative buzz devastated sales like a rear-end collision with a manure truck. Only about 6,000 DeLoreans found their way onto US roads by 1982. An attempt to boost visibility and gain some attention, the company released a 24 karat gold-plated version of the car for $85,000, which was an interesting strategy. The only thing people want less than a car that doesn't work is to pay three times the sticker price to smelt it in gold. Though the plan was to produce 100 solid gold DeLoreans, only two were ever sold, which is still a shockingly high number, to be honest.
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With their first car releasing to a deafening thud, and the company hemorrhaging money at a shocking rate, the future of the DeLorean Motor Company was looking extremely bleak. In mid-1982, the British government put the company in receivership, shut down the Belfast factory, and laid off all 2,500 workers. U2 probably wrote a song about it.
Desperate for cash, John DeLorean cooked up a scheme to purchase around 220 pounds of cocaine from a neighbor, which may be the least surprising thing we've told you about him. He actually traded company stock for some of the cocaine, which is the second least surprising thing we may have told you about him. DeLorean's plan was to turn around and sell the narcotics for a massive profit. Unfortunately, for the auto magnate, a neighbor turned out to be an FBI informant. And the feds caught the entire transaction on tape.
Following a very public trial, DeLorean was ultimately acquitted of all charges in 1984. But the case destroyed what remained of his reputation. DeLorean's third wife, Christina Ferrare, filed for divorce in 1985. And that same year, he was indicted on federal fraud charges for bilking investors out of more than $12.5 million.
Of course, something else happened in 1985. The blockbuster sci-fi comedy Back to the Future was released, featuring a time-traveling DMC-12 that quickly became one of the most iconic vehicles in pop culture history. DeLorean was never able to personally profit from the movie or its sequels and spent the rest of his life fending off civil litigation. By the time he passed away in 2005, he was living in a one-room apartment in New Jersey. Man, that's heavy.
So what do you think? Would you have bought a DeLorean? Let us in the comments below. And while you're at it, check out some of these other videos from our Weird History.