John DeLorean

Biography

John Zachary DeLorean was born in Detroit on 6 January 1925. He served three years in the US Army. He then earned an industrial engineering degree at the Lawrence Institute of Technology in 1948 and a master's in automotive engineering at the Chrysler Institute in 1952. He moved to Packard in 1953 and joined GM's Pontiac division in 1956, the year he also completed an MBA at the University of Michigan.

DeLorean became Pontiac's chief engineer in 1961. The GTO arrived in 1964 as an option package for the Tempest and LeMans. In 1965 he was put in charge of the division, which introduced the Firebird for 1967. On 15 February 1969 he was promoted to head Chevrolet, and in 1972 he became GM vice president for car and truck production.

On 2 April 1973 he announced that he was leaving GM, and he set up the DeLorean Motor Company. Its factory at Dunmurry in Northern Ireland was built with about £100 million in incentives. The car went on sale in January 1981, but sales were weak and the company went into receivership in February 1982. That October he was charged with cocaine trafficking after an FBI sting; his defence argued entrapment, and on 16 August 1984 he was found not guilty. DeLorean died in Summit, New Jersey, on 19 March 2005.