Larger Than Life

John Zachary DeLorean, who died in March of a stroke at age 80, left General Motors Corp. under a cloud in 1973 just as it seemed he was on his way to becoming president.

There were rumblings for two years he might bolt. He'd quietly told associates he wanted to devote his life to social causes or possibly produce his own “ethical” sports car.

But it was a strange parting. For nine months after leaving GM he served as president of the National Alliance of Businessmen, a seemingly mundane post for arguably the auto industry's most flamboyant and hard-driving engineer/executive — a “swinger” in the parlance of the day — who rocketed to prominence by first guiding Pontiac and then Chevrolet to record sales.

When he left he seemed at the top of his game. Even today, his departure from the world's largest auto maker remains mysterious. Some say he was fed up with GM's finance-oriented top management, which constantly tried to rein him in. Others say he went too far in bucking the system and was given the boot.

He wrote the book On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, with J. Patrick Wright, former Business Week bureau chief in Detroit. Wright ended up publishing the book on his own after DeLorean got cold feet while trying to launch his own company. The book turned into a stinging indictment of GM and its rigid corporate culture.

“They should've draped the town in black the day DeLorean left,” says Bob Stevens, a longtime cameraman at WWJ-TV in Detroit who, like most in the automotive press, was a DeLorean fan.

Others who worked with DeLorean at GM suggest the problem-plagued No.1 auto maker could use someone like him today — minus his baggage.

“He was an agent of change, a true visionary,” says John Shettler, a retired GM designer who worked on DeLorean projects at Pontiac, although he concedes the native Detroiter sometimes stretched ethical limits in pushing his agenda.

Says George Stephens, once his public-relations advisor: “GM could use someone with John's talent today, but not his demeanor or the way he operated.”

DeLorean had some strong supporters at GM, including President Edward N. Cole, who promoted him to run Chevrolet in 1969. But he also had adversaries, including his boss, Executive Vice President Roger Kyes, who died in 1971. Kyes reportedly told him after he took over Chevy: “I don't think you can do it. The minute you fall on your ass, I'm going to throw you out.”

DeLorean claimed a string of successful innovations at GM, including hidden windshield wipers (long since an industry standard), wide-track chassis design, radio antennas embedded in windshields and the Pontiac GTO introduced in 1964. The idea of mating a powerful V-8 with an affordable family car proved a sensation with younger buyers.

DeLorean was Pontiac's chief engineer at the time, and the GTO project reportedly was done without top management's approval.

DeLorean rode the GTO's success to the top spot at Pontiac in 1965 and then on to Chevrolet four years later. As his reputation flourished, he also took on trappings that separated him from GM's button-down executives. Tall and handsome, he let his hair grow longer and sprouted sideburns.

He took to wearing custom-made Italian-cut suits and started dating young models and mingling with the Hollywood in-crowd.

Such shenanigans didn't sit well with GM's staid brass back in Detroit, but he was making big money for GM. Charismatic and iconoclastic, he stood out from the crowd and loved the limelight.

DeLorean's marriage to model Kelly Harmon, daughter of football great Tom Harmon, got nationwide media coverage. And he caused quite a stir when he brought his bride to Chevrolet's 1969 press introduction in Detroit: he was 48 and she was in her early 20s, fresh out of UCLA.

On hand that night was another UCLA grad, O.J. Simpson, who happened to be sitting next to me at the preview. O.J. had been drafted by the Buffalo Bills, and I'd heard DeLorean offered him $600,000 to promote Chevy. O.J. just smiled when I asked him to confirm the story, and soon after “The Juice” was smiling in Chevy ads and commercials.

A year after leaving GM, in 1974 DeLorean formed the John Z. DeLorean Corp. and DeLorean Motor Corp. and began planning to produce his own car, subsequently dubbed the DMC-12.

Armed with the lure of 2,500 jobs, he convinced the British government to pony up $125 million to build a new plant in suburban Belfast where unemployment was a disastrous 50%.

The famous DMC-12, which gained notoriety with a new generation of admirers during the 1980s thanks to the Back to the Future movies, was developed by William T. Collins Jr., a former GM colleague and engineer, and it was loaded with innovations marked by an unpainted stainless-steel body and gull wing doors.

He wanted a big V-8, hopefully from GM, but had to settle for a 2.8L V-6 built by a Peugeot-Renault-Volvo combine. The plant opened in 1981.

After producing 10,000 cars, DeLorean ran out of cash, and the plant closed in 1983 with British taxpayers holding the bag.

Many observers were skeptical of the venture from the start. DeLorean visualized 20,000 annual sales, mosly in the U.S., while the country was mired in a recession. Only a few 2-seat sports cars, including GM's solidly entrenched Corvette, sold in those numbers at that time. And DeLorean had pegged the DMC-12's price at several thousand dollars over Corvette.

The next chapter in DeLorean's saga is almost as notorious as the O.J. Simpson trial that would follow more than a decade later.

DeLorean was arrested in 1982 in an FBI sting operation for conspiring to sell $24 million worth of cocaine in a money-laundering scheme. In the media circus that followed, he was tried twice — once for money laundering and again for investor fraud, but was acquitted on all charges.

Ironically, DeLorean survived with much of his personal wealth still intact, despite the British government's efforts to retrieve some of its investment. He managed to live in style for many years, along the way becoming a born-again Christian.

The final hit to his tarnished reputation came in 1999 when he was forced into bankruptcy. Thrice married and long since divorced, when he died he was living in a small co-op apartment in Morristown, NY, reportedly scheming to develop a high-mileage, low-emission small car. He was a “car guy” to the end.