Was John DeLorean a visionary genius or a malignant narcissist?
Back to the Future, 1985. Doc Brown unveils his time machine. Marty McFly: “Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me that you built a time machine out of… a DeLorean?” Doc: “The way I see it, if you’re going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?”
There was plenty of style about John DeLorean, the flamboyant car-maker with Hollywood looks and spending habits to match. A brilliant operator who had risen to become the youngest vice president of General Motors, he struck out on his own to build a sports car that bore his name. He based the manufacturing in, of all places, Belfast – bringing thousands of jobs to a blighted area, and bringing Protestants and Catholics together at the height of the Troubles. And then it went bad.
DeLorean: Back From the Future (BBC Two) was an engrossing account of DeLorean’s rise and fall, featuring interviews with everyone that mattered. The man himself died in 2005 but the film made good use of archive material. There was lots of it, because DeLorean was a man who lapped up publicity: at one point he proudly declared that he had a strong sex drive and that “no man who ever accomplished something didn’t have that characteristic”.
But the film peeled back the layers to reveal what lay beneath the glossy image. His grand business plan, which had prompted the British government to hand him tens of millions of pounds, was smoke and mirrors. His commitment to the people of Belfast disappeared in a flash. And when he hatched a plot to raise emergency funds – one that ended with him caught in an FBI sting operation – he looked less like a visionary genius, and more like a criminal.
His model ex-wife, Cristina, called him a “malignant narcissist”, and former associates said he didn’t care about anyone but himself. The way he had constructed his persona was fascinating, down to the plastic surgery to give himself a chiselled jaw. The car was also a handsome beast – thanks to the designer, Bill Collins, who was ruthlessly cut out of the picture when DeLorean hooked up with Lotus founder Colin Chapman – but less impressive when you got up close. Its gull-wing doors frequently failed to open properly.
If the film had a tiny fault, it was that we didn’t hear more about the car: what was it like to drive? Who, if anyone, bought one and what did they think of it? But as a study in hubris, it had everything.
