JOHN
DE LOREAN
The Maverick Mogul
Until his spectacular arrest on a drugs charge
in Los Angeles in October 1982, John
Zachary DeLorean had enjoyed astonishing
success. Born into a working class family, he
proved an exemplary student, going on to
become the golden boy of General Motors
who single-handed saved their Pontiac
division and whose marketing wizardry pro-
vided American youth with its muscle cars.
Then, almost at the top of General Motors, De
Lorean suddenly resigned, apparently in
disgust at the immorality of big business.
Applauded by the media, he then set out to
build his own 'ethical car', eventually
deciding to take over a Belfast site and sucess-
fully persuading the British government to
back him to the tune of 97 million dollars,
largely because they foresaw in his success the
promise of new prosperity and peace in
Northern Ireland. Then, suddenly, this
American dream became an incredible night-
mare. First the Belfast company crashed in
ruins; then its glamorous owner was arrested
in possession of a multi-million dollar con-
signment of cocaine. What was the truth
behind this extraordinary eclipse?
In this book Hillel Levin, an
investigative
journalist who first revealed the shady side of
De Lorean a year before his arrest, probes deep
behind that glittering façade to expose the
grubby reality. He explores the court cases
and lawsuits that followed DeLorean's
meteoric rise within General Motors; the
complex of holding companies and paper
corporations that channeled huge sums of
other people's money into his personal
control; and how the British Government
came to pour millions of tax-payers' money
into a venture that collapsed in failure. These
and many other revelations (just who, for
ISBN: 0-85613-561-5
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example, did De Lorean leave General
Motors?) make this a fascinating real-life saga
that involves TV start, multinational
companies, both the British and American
governments, and, at its centre, the flam-
boyant, larger-than-life figure of John De
Lorean himself. Levin's painstaking research
makes this a highly readable cautionary tale of
misapplied genius.
Hillel Levin is a founder and executive editor
of Metropolitan Detroit magazine. As senior
editor of Monthly Detroit, in December 1981,
he wrote the first piece seriously to question
De Lorean's expertise. Before moving to
Detroit he was for several years a reporter for
the New York Magazine.
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