Today’s DeLorean review reminded me that I saw the documentary “Framing John DeLorean” earlier this year. There were the inevitable historical automotive mistakes early on, and some of the meta scenes with Alec Baldwin moving in and out of character didn’t do much for me. But I did get increasingly engrossed, and found it to be quite good in achieving the nigh-near impossible goal of trying to “frame” or pin down the chimeric and highly fluid personality of John DeLorean.
The result of that effort is not exactly pretty. Although legally exonerated, there’s no doubt that DeLorean played it fast and loose once his ego was hyper-inflamed from his success with the Pontiac GTO. I like to give him credit for his early engineering work at Packard and Pontiac, but once he went all-in indulging his ego, he increasingly lost me. Yes, he saw and called out GM management for what it was. But that’s not to say he could have actually done a whole lot better either. The DMC saga makes that painfully clear.
That was doomed from the get-go. I watched it play out in real time, and was a skeptic. Too much over-promising and hype. The final product was half-baked and seriously compromised. It never had a chance of genuine success on the market.
The whole thing was just a giant ruse to hype investors, and the funds were blatantly misused by DeLorean and Chapman, another sleaze ball. DeLorean’s later years are just sad…but he got what was coming. Karma.
If it hadn’t been for “Back To The Future”, the DeLorean would be near-forgotten, a slightly slicker Bricklin.
It appears to be available currently on Netflix.
I also sat through this, a while back. I scrolled past it in the Netflix cue several times, taking note because of the subject matter, but not all that interested in what I perceived to be an Alec Baldwin vanity project (art imitating life imitating art, or something like that?). I finally gave in one rainy afternoon. It did manage to vaporize the fantastical hype surrounding the man and his successes, and present DeLorean and his trajectory for the rather minimal substance that was reality. Not a particularly fascinating production, but honest, I think.
The “greater” the man, the greater his flaws (often ego-driven). I felt bad for Bill Collins after I watched this, but he can’t be too bitter anymore – he still owns a DeLorean.
There was another automotive-related documentary serial by HBO called The Lady and the Dale. I ended up watching the entire fast-pacing serial in one go and pondering how to make the sense of the whole bizarre thing with Elizabeth Carmichael and her ill-gotten attempt to establish the three-wheeled Dale cars.
https://www.hbo.com/the-lady-and-the-dale
What happened to John DeLorean after he left GM is a story I’ve seen before. Big executive with hordes of loyal followers leaves the big company and decides to strike out on his own. He had the knowledge and experience to succeed, what he lacked was the big staff to detail his plans and perform all the necessary work that he couldn’t possibly do on his own. Short of staff, short of required funding to do it right, the results are predictable.
Once had some dealings with a small company run by a former president of Bendix. At the start of work meeting after they signed the contract, the president showed us his well organized files and plans to build the transmissions. A true executive in charge, but his followers weren’t so willing. They actually built a few transmissions, but when they couldn’t pass the first article testing, they hired a fancy Washington DC law firm to claim that our tech data was defective. Why spend any effort to fix something that they didn’t build right in the first place when you can put the burden back on the customer. Contract was cancelled and the said executive went on to buy the assets of a bankrupt steel company to use their tax losses against his gains. A true financial engineer.
83 LeBaron – I think you have nailed it. Business School graduates who have always worked in management positions in large corporations develop a particular world view that doesn’t translate well to small companies. The job in a large corporation is to be a visionary, a motivator, and to remove or reduce (intra-corporation) political obstacles. The practical and material details are handled two or three levels below him, and he never really delves into them; they just happen, as far as he is concerned.
DeLorean did a good job in setting up his company from his viewpoint; he did the things he knew how to do, very well: he visualized a sexy and fashionable car with appropriate gimmicks for his intended market (mid-engine, gull wing doors, stainless steel skin); then he got financing, convinced a government to build him a factory, got engineers to design a chassis for him, and a major automaker to provide engines. In his experience, the job was done at that point, and there was nothing more to do (except some final testing and detail refinements) but to wait for the cars to appear, and sell them (somehow – having dealerships that made sales was another thing that just always took care of itself in his world).
It never occurred to him that he would need to buy door handles, seats, mirrors, horns, and wipers, among the thousand other tiny parts needed any pay COD for them. Further, when he did his costing and scheduling, he assumed volume in-house pricing and a volume in-house supply chain. A small business guy could have told him that nailing down your suppliers to be on-time, on price, and on quality is a huge battle, not to mention getting them to accept 90 day terms for payment.
As for his later financial shenanigans, I think that must be viewed from the same perspective: fast wheeling and dealing about costs and payment inside a major corporation are just a sort of stylized kabuki theater – money lost isn’t -real money- just a little minus mark in front of a figure on a spreadsheet – a loss just means some guy in Accounting grumbles, your boss gently scolds you, and you go on to the next project. In small business, the parts stop showing up and you have to raise some cash or halt production. Thrust into that scenario, DeLorean had little idea what to do… so he started doing desperate things.
I suppose I should note in closing that understanding why he did things a certain way is different than excusing them.
+1!
I too watched this a few weeks ago, and found it interesting – of course I knew the broad strokes but they do delve into the history of the vehicle and the key players so that was highly interesting along with the factory footage too. It was a good way to have the whole saga sort of condensed into an easily manageable chunk of time and come away feeling generally fairly informed as to the whole.
DeLorean doesn’t come off looking particularly good, neither does Chapman. Bill Collins probably evoked the most sympathy but serves as a reminder that even or especially if you’re friends, a proper legal contract is a good idea to get ironed out. DeLorean’s kids perhaps could have used more therapy than what they may have received.
DeLorean was a talented, ambitious, charismatic individual who figured out (with adman Jim Wangers) how effective marketing can really sell a so-so product (GTO). He soared while at Pontiac in the go-go sixties with not only the GTO, but the intermediate-sized PLC Grand Prix.
Things didn’t go so well for DeLorean at Chevrolet (saddled with the Vega), then even worse when he got to the 14th floor (GM corporate). Those ultra-conservative guys followed the rules and didn’t tolerate DeLorean’s free-wheeling ways, especially since he had started believing his own legend and could do anything he wanted. He conveniently claimed that he’d resigned but, in reality, he was fired.
So, he just ‘had’ to have gimmicks to sell his own car (stainless-steel body, gull-wing doors) which didn’t help, considering the engineering for the rest of the car wasn’t ‘good’ (an understatement).
I always thought it was interesting to compare DeLorean with that other auto industry, larger-than-life personality Lee Iacocca, another talented huckster with a huge ego, but who was still able to keep it in enough check to not get into any real trouble (at least not legal trouble). DeLorean was just flawed in a way that Iacocca was not.
One of the more interesting anecdotes in a biography of DeLorean I read years ago was how, after he ‘resigned’ from GM, was offered the CEO of AMC. I can’t remember the name of the person (Roy Chapin?) but he was willing to let DeLorean do anything he wanted, include building his sports car.
But DeLorean had never dealt with someone in that position before, someone whose word was their bond, and when DeLorean tried to ‘squeeze’ the guy for more, the whole thing was dropped. DeLorean, through an intermediary, tried to rescind his counter-offer and take the original offer, but it was too late, and the wealthy guy simply chalked it up to “well, at least we learned the kind of guy he was before we hired him”.
It’s still fascinating to think what DeLorean might have done had he headed AMC in the seventies. He might have gotten there soon enough to head-off the Pacer debacle and worked his magic with another game-changer (maybe his sports car as an AMC product).
According to the book “grand delusions,” Chapin was retiring and diners club founder Alfred Bloomingdale had a large chunk of AMC stock. Bloomingdale wanted to the replace the retiring Chapin with JZD, and at the last minute he said he wanted double. Thanks for reminding me of that story- it’s a great one.
That’s it! I was racking my brain trying to remember who it was and ‘thought’ it was Alfred Bloomingdale, but I could never find anything connecting him with AMC (other than that one anecdote in the book).
Only place I could find it too, at least at a first glance. Glad I could help 🙂
The whole DeLorean saga was happening when I was a kid and I was very excited by all the hype but even as a teenager, I was stumped as to why the hades would he want a rear engine? By 1978 there was only Porsche making rear engine cars and then not in great numbers.
As more details came to light, I was again stumped as to why he’d use a PRV V-6, one of the worst engine designs ever. DeLorean was from GM, which made the Corvette. To me, anyway, it would be no-brainer for DeLorean to try to do something like the Corvette. If he didn’t want to use GM engines, a Ford 302 with appropriate upgrades would have probably been no heavier the the horrid PRV.
I also think DeLorean was doomed from the outset. Starting car companies from scratch and making money doing it has until Tesla been the impossible dream. DeLorean was doomed from the outset. Tesla shipped 200,000+ cars in Q2 2021 and there is no way DeLorean was ever going to get this kind of volume with his sports car and I wonder if anyone ever calculated their break even point. Tesla could do it because they have a radically new, class leading, product. The DMC12 was hardly that.
Back in 1985 or so my girlfriend at the time worked at the Pathmark supermarket in Union at the small appliance counter. He came in and bought a toaster! Paid with a credit card!
Agree with Paul 100% about Back to the Future. It gave the Delorean a mystique (and a second life) that it did not merit. But for that movie, the car would be a cautionary tale of the times and the remaining examples pretty much worthless.
I checked Hagerty to see what a nice Bricklin SV-1 goes for, since I feel like it is comparable to a DeLorean DMC-12 in some significant ways. Driver quality cars are about $16K while a concours example can reach $42K. The DMC-12 is worth about 75% more for any given condition, and there are four times as many DMC-12s in circulation as there are SV-1s. I suspect you’re right about the movies’ impact on values.
In 1981, when I was 18, a friend with a mutual interest in not just cars, but in the business and engineering of them, gave me “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors”. I had never heard of John DeLorean, but the book engrossed me. Afterwards, my friend asked my take on it. I thought it was very illuminating, but overall, I felt JD was a little full of himself, and their was no rebuttal from GM regarding his criticisms. My friend stated, rightfully so, “Do you think they would have commented, even if asked?” He had a point.
Now that I knew who he was, and he was becoming a darling of the “in-crowd”, what with his Curry Sark ads and all; not to mention the hype on DMC.I mentioned to my uncle, why doesn’t he start with something reasonable, that the average person could buy? My uncle said he runs in different circles than average people, he’s building cars for his contemporaries,
Then it all came crashing down. One of the engineers where I worked then, said he felt bad, the guy was just trying to save his company. Of course the specifics of that failure weren’t widely known yet.
However, when the next book came out (I forget the title), I of course had to read it. I went to the bookstore, but before I checked out, I read JD’s preface. In it he describes the night he was busted, how he had a foreboding of something going wrong, especially since he was ripping off the mafia. Wwwwwhat? That’s all I had to read. I put the book back, and to be honest, have never read it yet. How could I read something so flagrantly full of crap? Rip off the mafia? Sure. Right. Bullshit.
I realized the that despite all his successes, JD was at heart a huckster. No more, no less.
Gonna get a lot of flak for saying this but JD reminds me of Elon Musk. Huge ego, talented marketer, inventor, started a new car company, got government incentives (carbon offsets), got investigated by the government (SEC), got in trouble for drugs (in Musk’s case it was smoking pot on video).
If JD was born in Musk’s time would he have been more successful? The DeLorean would probably be electrically powered, he would have gotten the same US gov incentives as Tesla, instead of Northern Ireland ones. A lot of his flaws would have been overlooked since the culture of tech CEO worship was not yet a thing in JD’s time. Maybe he would have been successful?
Musk, like DeLorean, is very skilled and talented, but he has also been very, very lucky. In fact, I’m not sure that, to this day, Tesla is profitable, and has only been able to stay in business thanks to selling very expensive carbon credits to other auto manufacturers.
OTOH, it seems Tesla reacted very quickly to the recent computer chip shortage by switching to microcontrollers. That, in and of itself, speaks to how well that compnay is able to adapt to adverse market conditions, something that DeLorean (and legions of others) weren’t able to do.
Regardless, a better modern comparison might be to Henrik Fisker, who managed to turn out less than 2,500 cars (to DeLorean’s 7,500) before serious issues shut down his battery supplier and stopped everything in its tracks.
It’s also worth mentioning Malcolm Bricklin, but that guy is a consumate hustler with a skill-set that allows him to get out of his businesses well before they collapse (or, in the case of Subaru, becoming rousing successes).
“and has only been able to stay in business thanks to selling very expensive carbon credits to other auto manufacturers.”
I don’t really think that’s the case at all, it’s an interesting side hustle though. Musk hasn’t had problems getting recapitalized when needed and the stock price can easily afford to take a hit by issuing more shares. Like Amazon, Tesla just reinvests the sales money back into the business.
The delicious irony, were it true though, is two-fold: 1) the other manufacturers are the ones capitalizing Tesla. and 2) So are all of the people that purport to hate electrics and everything Tesla stands for, and keep buying gas guzzlers that force the other manufacturers to buy offsets which by their simple cost, raises the prices on those other vehicles.
I was probably over-simplying things a bit. Carbon-credit sales are likely only a part of how Tesla manages to stay in business. There’s no denying that they’ve sold (and continue to sell) an awful lot of product.
And, yeah, the EV-haters are quite amusing since, in the end, their love of gas-guzzlers are a big reason for the existance of EVs in the first place. Every single-digit fuel mileage, jacked-up, loud-exhaust bro-dozer I see on the street seems to amplify that sentiment.