John Zachary DeLorean was an American engineer, inventor, and executive in the US automobile industry, widely known for his work at General Motors and as founder of the DeLorean Motor Company.
57 Facts About John DeLorean
2.
John DeLorean was the youngest division chief in General Motors history, then left to start the DeLorean Motor Company in 1973.
3.
John DeLorean was born in Detroit, Michigan, the eldest of four sons of Zachary and Kathryn John DeLorean.
4.
John DeLorean's father, a mill worker, was Romanian, born Zaharia Delorean in Sugag village, Also-Feher County, Austria-Hungary and emigrated to the United States when he was 20.
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John DeLorean spent time in Montana and Gary, Indiana before moving to Michigan.
6.
John DeLorean was employed at the Carboloy Products Division of General Electric throughout much of DeLorean's early life.
7.
John DeLorean took work wherever she could to supplement the family's income.
8.
John DeLorean generally tolerated Zachary's intermittent episodes of erratic behavior; but during several of his more violent periods, she took her sons to live with her sister in Los Angeles, California, where they stayed for a year or so at a time.
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John DeLorean subsequently saw little of his father, who moved into a boarding house and became a solitary and estranged drug addict.
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John DeLorean found it exhilarating and excelled at his studies.
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John DeLorean excelled in the study of industrial engineering and was elected to the school's honor society.
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John DeLorean was drafted for military service and served three years in the US Army.
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John DeLorean received an honorable discharge in 1946, and returned to Detroit to find his mother and siblings in economic difficulty.
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John DeLorean worked as a draftsman for the Public Lighting Commission for a year and a half to improve his family's financial status, then returned to Lawrence to finish his degree.
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John DeLorean graduated in 1948 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering.
16.
John DeLorean developed an analytical system aimed at engineers and sold "about $850,000 worth of policies in ten months".
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John DeLorean stated in his autobiography that he sold life insurance to improve his communication skills.
18.
John DeLorean briefly attended the Detroit College of Law, but did not graduate.
19.
John DeLorean attended night classes at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business to earn credits for his MBA degree, which he completed in 1957.
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John DeLorean quickly gained his new employer's attention with an improvement to the Ultramatic automatic transmission, giving it an improved torque converter and dual-drive ranges; it was relaunched as the Twin-Ultramatic.
21.
When John DeLorean joined Packard, it was experiencing financial difficulties because of the changing postwar automotive market.
22.
In 1956, John DeLorean accepted a salary offer of $16,000 with a bonus program, choosing to work at GM's Pontiac division as an assistant to chief engineer Pete Estes and general manager Semon "Bunkie" Knudsen.
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John DeLorean produced dozens of patented innovations for the company, and in 1961 was promoted to division chief engineer.
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John DeLorean became widely known at Pontiac for the Pontiac GTO, a muscle car named after the Ferrari 250 GTO.
25.
At 40, John DeLorean had broken the record for youngest division head at GM and was determined to continue his string of successes.
26.
John DeLorean believed there was an undue amount of conflict between GM's division heads.
27.
Shortly after the Firebird's introduction, John DeLorean turned his attention to the development of an all-new Grand Prix, the division's personal luxury car based on the full-sized Pontiac line.
28.
John DeLorean knew the Pontiac Division couldn't finance the new car alone, so he went to his former boss Pete Estes and asked him to share the cost of development with Pontiac, having a one-year exclusivity before Chevrolet released the 1970 Monte Carlo.
29.
At a time when business executives were typically conservative, low-key individuals in three-piece suits, John DeLorean wore long sideburns and unbuttoned shirts.
30.
John DeLorean invited Ford president Lee Iacocca to serve as best man at his second wedding.
31.
John DeLorean was a limited partner in a pair of American professional sports franchises.
32.
John DeLorean continued his jet-setting lifestyle and was often seen hanging out in business and entertainment celebrity circles.
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John DeLorean responded to the production problems by delaying the release of the Camaro and simplifying the modifications to the Corvette and Nova.
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John DeLorean used the extra time to streamline Chevrolet's production overhead and reduce assembly costs.
35.
John DeLorean regrouped for the 1973 model year with Vega sales of 395,792.
36.
In 1972, John DeLorean was appointed to the position of vice president of car and truck production for the entire General Motors line, and his eventual rise to president seemed inevitable.
37.
GM gave him a Florida Cadillac franchise as a retirement gift, and DeLorean took over the presidency of The National Alliance of Businessmen, a charitable organization with the mission of employing Americans in need, founded by Lyndon Johnson and Henry Ford II.
38.
John DeLorean was sharply critical of the direction GM had taken by the start of the 1970s, as well as objecting to the idea of using rebates to sell cars:.
39.
John DeLorean left General Motors in 1973 to form his own company, the John DeLorean Motor Company.
40.
The Dunmurry factory eventually turned out around 9,000 cars In 1980, an American Express catalog featured an ad for a John DeLorean plated in 24-karat gold.
41.
Production delays meant the John DeLorean did not reach the consumer market until January 1981, and in the interim, the new car market had slumped considerably due to the 1980 US economic recession.
42.
In January 1982, the British government discovered that John DeLorean had built just 8,500 cars and that the equivalent of 23 million pounds, almost half the funds received in 1974, had been transferred to a Panamanian account under the name of General Product Development Services, the company intended to subsidize Lotus.
43.
John DeLorean agreed to dictate his recollections for Wright, who wrote the book.
44.
On October 19,1982, John DeLorean was charged by the US government with trafficking cocaine following a videotaped sting operation in which he was recorded by undercover federal agents agreeing to bankroll a cocaine smuggling operation.
45.
John DeLorean's call log proved that Hoffman made the initial call.
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John DeLorean was found not guilty on August 16,1984, but by then DMC had already collapsed into bankruptcy and John DeLorean's reputation as a businessman was irrevocably tarnished.
47.
On September 21,1985, John DeLorean was indicted on charges he defrauded investors and committed tax evasion by diverting millions of dollars raised for the company to himself.
48.
On November 1,1994, John DeLorean filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office for a raised monorail transport.
49.
John DeLorean married Elizabeth Higgins on September 3,1954; they divorced in 1969.
50.
John DeLorean married Kelly Harmon on May 31,1969, the sister of actor Mark Harmon and daughter of Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon and actress Elyse Knox; they divorced in 1972.
51.
John DeLorean adopted a son whom he named Zachary Tavio, 14 months old at the time of his marriage to model Cristina Ferrare, who co-adopted Zachary.
52.
John DeLorean appeared in a magazine advertisement for Cutty Sark whisky the year before his arrest and the collapse of his company.
53.
In 1999, John DeLorean declared personal bankruptcy after fighting some 40 legal cases following the collapse of John DeLorean Motor Company.
54.
John DeLorean was forced to sell his 434-acre estate in Bedminster in 2000.
55.
John DeLorean moved to a condominium in Morristown, New Jersey where he lived until his death five years later.
56.
John DeLorean died at Overlook Hospital in Summit, New Jersey, from a stroke, on March 19,2005, at the age of 80.
57.
John DeLorean's ashes are interred at the White Chapel Cemetery, in Troy, Michigan.