from the moment you sink into it and opening of a Gullwing door

I was a teenager about the time that the delorean came out back in 1981

and it just was so different than anything else out there as there's

always a story to be told about Deloreans

john delorean started his career as an engineer with General Motors

from that point he rose very quickly through GM to be the

youngest vice president and by the early seventies he was in charge

Chevrolet I think john delorean felt hamstrung

a bit within the constraints General Motors he wanted to build a car

was way he thought they should be built and that would last beyond

the regular model cycle of cars lasting two or three years

and then lost in a way. john knew the in order to have his car stand out in the

marketplace

it needed to be different stainless provided a unique solution to that

by obviously not rusting and it also solved the problem with having to put

very expensive paint facilities in a factory

gullwing doors had only been used on a couple other cars prior to that. John

intended for the car to be an extremely safe car and

after working with the car as long as we have here about thirty years yeah, that

is the case. you know they got quite a lot right

the first go around

the first prototypes were completed 76 77

while they're looking for a place to build a factory there very quickly

discovered as soon as they mentioned they were gonna at about 2000 to 2500

jobs

lots of governments came to them saying we'd like you to build a factory here

so John began to shop for the best financial deal cuz he knew that would

take a lot of money

but then the northern ireland development agency came through in 1978

they started with a Greenfield plant of about ninety acres. They're able to build

a factory, design a car, hire people, train people and start production in a span of about

about twenty eight months which is a record that probably still stands today

thirty years later

the first cars were built and they started shipped to dealers in the summer

of 1981.

the auto industry was in a slump nobody knew what was gonna happen and bomb

out comes this car that look like nothing else before. Stainless body

gullwing doors that was a spaceship on wheels. The press was abuzz.

Initial public response was fantastic. Everybody was going nuts for it it was a

show-stopping

pull up and there would be crowds around them. There were some reports of people

paying more than ten thousand dollars over sticker price. Everybody would

be clamoring to see one and touch one which is still the same now everybody

has to touch a Delorean you know

Trouble for the company first really started in late 1981.

In order to improve the stock offering that was planned they needed to be

building a certain number of cars and have a certain number people employed

John to gamble and ordered production of the car doubled.

As far as the economy was concerned interest rates were extremely high.

And we got hit with the worst winter in about 30 years so car sales

pretty much dropped almost to nothing. So

it was extremely difficult to sell anything let alone

an expensive sports car. In fact we kept going building these cars hoping that

the market would turn around

in time by early 82 it was clear that wasn't gonna happen

John lost control in the factory in May 1982. He needed to come up with a

a certain amount of money to regain control the factory.

About this time he was approached by one of his neighbours

and he told John that he could help him get any kind of money he needed.

In the summer of 82 when John realized you know that this was some kind of a

drug deal

he tried to back out. According to his testimony his family was threatened they

threatened to cut off his daughter's head and send it home in a shopping bag

he didn't feel he had any option except to continue to go along with the deal.

Turns out that this was a sting operation.

The DEA at that period wanted to the big bust wanted to make

a name for themselves. In late October of 82 he was arrested.

By the time John Delorean went to trial in 1984

company was gone and filed for bankruptcy the factory

contents have been sold or auctioned off.

The DEA actually set him up and it was entrapment, truth be known as he never

went to jail he was completely acquitted of all the drug charges.

When the factory closed in late 1982

there was literally millions of parts to build cars still in the factory

and is that inventory that which we now have in our facility here. We have a

40,000 square-foot facility full of literally millions

new old stock brand new 30-year-old Delorean parts

Out of the 2800 or so different parts it takes to make up a DeLorean we've got

better than 98 percent parts availability.

One of the other things that we acquired with this inventory of parts was a

complete set of engineering drawings

and all the engineering record for the parts on the car so as we run out of

stuff

we have a network of suppliers and manufacturers all around the world

who we work with to have some of these parts reproduced.

You can't talk about Delorean cars without talking about Back to the Future.

In the earliest versions of the script they had intended to use

a refrigerator as the time machine and quickly realized you know that they

didn't want kids climbing into refrigerators cuz back in the day they

had doors

couldn't open from the inside and they decided it would be easier to use some

kind of an automobile.

Since the company went out of business it's been the

greatest thing to happen to the DeLorean car. Guaranteed

some place in the world right now one of those movies is on TV someplace so

someone new is being exposed to the DeLorean car for the first time.

John left a legacy in the form of

9000 or so cars that bear his name. I think one of the reasons the Delorean remains

sort of timeless because the delorean never went through that

evolutionary process because that didn't

happen Delorean is essentially frozen in time. You know and as

decades ago there are always certain things that stick out

and Delorean is definitely you know an iconic part of the eighties.

Had Delorean had survived

that period in time and continued

there would be a big 4 now there wouldn't be a big three. Delorean

himself he made Delorean

and he also took it down.

As the story goes apparently on the day that he was actually arrested

they actually had an investment bank lined up so they'd actually arranged for

the resurrection of the company

and all he had to do was sign the document and they were looking for him

all day they couldn't find him and then the next thing they had that he was on

the six o'clock news is

have been arrested in Los Angeles Airport and and that was the end of it

the financing went away

you know they just had that one last chance and it didn't happen