[DML] John DeLorean dies at 80

["Mike Assad" <mike.assad@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Car Developer John DeLorean Dies at 80
By JEFFREY GOLD, Associated Press

NEWARK, N.J. Mar 20, 2005 ? John Z. DeLorean, an innovative automaker
who left a promising career in Detroit to develop the short-lived
gull-winged sports cars featured as a souped-up time travel machine in
the "Back to the Future" movies, has died. He was 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 was among just a handful of U.S. entrepreneurs who dared
start a car company in the last 75 years. Nearly all faded away, but
his crashed spectacularly amid drug charges.
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A Detroit native, DeLorean "broke the mold" of staid Midwestern auto
executives by "going Hollywood," and pushed 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, fondly dubbed the "Goat" by auto enthusiasts.

DeLorean was a rising if unconventional executive at GM who many
believe was destined for its presidency before he quit in 1973 to
launch the DeLorean Motor Car Co. in Northern Ireland. Eight years
later, the DeLorean DMC-12 hit the streets.

Its hallmarks, such as an unpainted stainless steel skin and the
gull-wing doors, have been ignored by mainstream automakers. The
angular design, however, earned it a cult following, and the car was a
time-traveling vehicle for Michael J. Fox in the popular "Back to the
Future" films of the late 1980s.

Bu the factory produced only about 8,900 cars in three years,
estimated John Truscott, membership director of the DeLorean Owners
Association. That figure is dwarfed by the major automakers, who sell
more than a million vehicles a month.

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 his venture.

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








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