By Joe Cushnan
The Back to the Future films helped to immortalise the DeLorean super-sleek, stainless-steel, time-travelling sports car with its gull-wing doors. It had a fabulous look and its eye-catching appeal is undeniable. It was a major feature in those movies, operated by Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd). However, the fantasy of the films contrasted with the reality of a doomed project.
The car’s history and its association with its inventor, John Zachary DeLorean, is riddled with contrasting dreams of huge commercial success and nightmares of enormous proportions, for DeLorean himself and for Northern Ireland.
In the early 1980s, this flamboyant American entrepreneur, excited investors, including the British government, with high hopes of a much-needed injection of cross-community workforce participation in a divided and very troubled Northern Ireland.
The DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) manufacturing factory was to be established in Dunmurry, County Antrim. This was a big deal.
John DeLorean was born in Detroit, Michigan a hundred years ago. His father was a Romanian labourer and his mother was Hungarian, a one-time employee at General Electric.
Young John studied engineering, leaning towards automobile and industrial technology.
In the Second World War, he spent three years in the army and received an honourable discharge.
His early CV is impressive. He worked at Chrysler, the Packard Motor Company and then General Motors where he proved himself to be a skilled innovator and meticulous engineer. He was a key player in the development of the Pontiac GTO, a “muscle car” favoured by flash US buyers.
He was also heavily involved in the development of Chevrolet models.
As a result of his engineering and executive successes and frequent world travel attending promotional events, a growing number of personal appearances began adding to his celebrity status.
Clearly, from various accounts, he thoroughly enjoyed the limelight. But DeLorean grew tired of the direction General Motors was taking and left in the early 1970s to form the DeLorean Motor Company.
Continue reading in this week’s Ireland’s Own
