Car Developer John DeLorean Dies at 80

AP (via Yahoo) ^ | 3/20/05 | JEFFREY GOLD, Associated Press Writer

[Mr. Mojo]

NEWARK, N.J. - John Z. DeLorean, the innovative automaker who left a promising career in Detroit to develop the stainless steel-skinned, gull-winged sports car bearing his name and was acquitted of charges he planned to sell $24 million worth of cocaine to support the venture, has died at the age of 80.

DeLorean died Saturday at Overlook Hospital in Summit, N.J., of complications from a recent stroke, said Paul Connell, an owner of A.J. Desmond & Sons Funeral Directors in Royal Oak, Mich., which was handling arrangements.

DeLorean, whose namesake car was turned into a time machine in the "Back to the Future" movies, was among just a handful of U.S. entrepreneurs who dared start a car company in the last 75 years.

DeLorean "broke the mold" of staid Midwestern auto executives by pushing General Motors Corp. to offer smaller models, auto historians said.

While at GM, he created what some consider the first "muscle car" in 1964 by cramming a V-8 engine into a Pontiac Tempest and calling it the GTO.

Although he was a rising if unconventional executive at GM, and was believed by many to be destined for its presidency, he quit in 1973 to launch the DeLorean Motor Car Co. in Northern Ireland.

Eight years later, the DeLorean DMC-12 hit the streets with its unpainted stainless steel skin and gull-wing doors.

Its angular design earned it a cult following, and the car was a time-traveling vehicle for Michael J. Fox in the "Back to the Future" films of the late 1980s.

However, the factory produced only about 8,900 cars in three years, estimated John Truscott, membership director of the DeLorean Owners Association.

DeLorean's company collapsed in 1983, a year after he was arrested in Los Angeles, accused in a sting of conspiring to sell $24 million of cocaine to salvage the company.

DeLorean used an entrapment defense to win acquittal on the drug charges in 1984, despite a surveillance videotape in which he was shown calling a suitcase full of cocaine "good as gold."

He was later cleared of defrauding his investors, but continuing legal entanglements kept him on the sidelines of the automotive world. He declared bankruptcy in 1999.

[RockinRight]

That bugs me too, and I'm only 27 (the AC/DC Muzak thing I mean).

[RockinRight]

Dr. Emmett Brown:

I'm sure in 1985, plutonium is available at every corner drugstore, but in 1955 it's a little hard to come by.

[tet68]

Not at every corner drugstore but maybe at every
Dairy Queen?

[RockinRight]

[Doohickey]

Car DeveloperCoke Dealer John DeLorean Dies at 80

[processing please hold]

Damn - Time is passing. Had no idea he was that old. I guess I have no idea I'M this old!

Ain't that the truth. Our medicine cabinet now looks like the medicine cabinets of our parents whom we used to snicker at and say.....'They're old'.

I guess the whole circle of life thing is at play, and it sucks. But it beats the alternative.

[OldFriend]

The man was a deadbeat in the end.

[kennedy]

The car was a piece of junk, always in the shop.

I wondered about that. I did a quick internet search and there are several DeLoreans for sale with under 10,000 miles.

[OldFriend]

A neighbor had one......it was forever in the shop.

Not being a car person, I can say that my Ford was also always in the shop in those years.

As was our Alfa Romeo......

Now we're old and have a faithful Subaru!!!

[processing please hold]

I only remember the controversy over him vaguely. I wasn't much of a concerned citizen in the '80's. I had a teenage daughter that I was thinking about killing at the time. Just about the time she grew that dreaded second head that girls at their age grow.....lol

[Clemenza]

One of my childhood heroes. I remember being seven years old and seeing Delorean on TV talking about his new models. He really seemed like a really cool guy and I loved the side hatch doors. He made the rather unsexy automobile industry (which my father worked in) look cool.

A few months later, he was on TV snorting coke.

[OldFriend]

DeLorean's daughter Catherine was in my daughter's high school.........AAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

After his acquittal he did not pay his attorneys.

Now that is funny.

[processing please hold]

Was his daughter snooty?

I remember a pretty woman on his arm sometimes, I guess that was his wife, the model/actress.

[Clemenza]

Its hard to believe that the meth and coke addicted creep that we saw in the earlier picture was the same suave, debonair guy who impressed me at a young age. He went from being James Bond to Crackhead Bob.

[OldFriend]

Uh oh, I suspect the pictures are of the murderer of Jessica Lundford.

[OldFriend]

Spoiled rotten.

[processing please hold]

Figures.

[Clemenza]

Whoops, my bad. I've been hanging out in the San Juan Islands and haven't had much time to get a good look at Lunford's murderer.

The good news is that Florida will give him the needle. In New York or New Jersey, he would be sitting in Attica or Rahway while his lawyers filed appeal after appeal at taxpayers expense.

[OldFriend]

Last time I saw John DeLorean he was tall, thin, beautiful silver hair, and quite handsome.

He has had a stroke and it's been years since I saw him out and about.