IN MEMORIAM

JOHN DeLOREAN (1925 – 2005) died this week, aged 80.
DeLorean was acknowledged as the maker of the first ever “musclecar” when he in 1964 crammed a V-8 engine into a Pontiac Tempest and called it and GTO.
He quit GM in 1973 to launch the The DeLorean Motor Car Company in Nothern Ireland and eight years later the DMC – 12 hit the streets. The charateristica of this futuristic design was the stainless stell body and the gull-wing doors, and this made cult-status after playing a major part in the “Back to the Future” films starring Michael J. Fox in the late eighties.
However, the DeLorean company collapsed in 1983, a year after DeLorean was arrested in Los Angeles and accused of selling for 24 million dollars worth of cocaine to salvage his venture. He was aquitted on the drug charges in 1984 despite a videotape shown in court in which DeLorean called a suitcase of cocaine “as good as gold”. After the 1984 case he was involved in more than 40 legal cases, and after the his divorce following the drugbust, he said in a interview: “I was an arrogant egomaniac. I needed this, as difficult as it was, to get my perspective back”.
His flamboyant hustler life may become more his legacy than he will be remembered for leaving a powerful imprint in automaking.
Godspeed DeLorean! Godspeed!
http://www.delorean.ch/files/Pictures/DeLorean.jpg