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Let's Talk About John DeLorean · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: there's Chuck Jerry's here, and this is stuff you should broom.
0:20
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know. Everybody calmed out. Stuff you should
0:23
Speaker 1: know about his specific car Carmaker a legend and uh
0:29
Speaker 1: possibly a real jackass. Who did this for us? Was
0:34
Speaker 1: this Olivia? Yeah? Olivia helps us with this one? Can
0:38
Speaker 1: we read that? How she titled it? Sure? John Delorian
0:42
Speaker 1: Colin celebrity weirdo Carmaker. She pretty much nailed it in
0:48
Speaker 1: the title. It's true like he was a celebrity. It
0:52
Speaker 1: was very weird, and he was a car maker as
0:54
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, that's where he started to get
0:56
Speaker 1: his celebrity was in car making. But she likens it
0:59
Speaker 1: um and I think quite correctly, to the rise of
1:05
Speaker 1: or he he prefigured the rise of the worshiped tech
1:08
Speaker 1: god like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberger. These people who
1:12
Speaker 1: have been held up um to these amazing standards and
1:17
Speaker 1: like you just think they can do anything. They're doing
1:19
Speaker 1: all this amazing stuff when it really turns out that
1:21
Speaker 1: there you know, they just want to party with some starlets,
1:24
Speaker 1: you know, and that's that's a lot what John Delorrian's
1:28
Speaker 1: life was like. He was like, Okay, I got here,
1:30
Speaker 1: and now I want to do everything that's fun and
1:34
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with how I got here, and
1:37
Speaker 1: that inevitably leads to the downfall or as I saw
1:40
Speaker 1: it really aptly put in one of the articles, um,
1:43
Speaker 1: he succumbed to that most American of maladies. He believed
1:49
Speaker 1: in his own myth. You never want to do that, everybody.
1:53
Speaker 1: Have you seen either one of the documentaries I haven't
1:56
Speaker 1: yet know. Okay, there's two. There's one I watched couple
2:00
Speaker 1: of years ago called Framing John de Lorean, which is
2:03
Speaker 1: a sort of a weird mix of documentary and narrative film,
2:07
Speaker 1: and that they do these very like high quality like
2:11
Speaker 1: it's a movie recrease recreations for those of you not
2:14
Speaker 1: in the viz, with Alec Baldwin as John de Lorian.
2:19
Speaker 1: And then there was another one that there's a three
2:21
Speaker 1: part on Netflix called Myth and Mogul John DeLorean. I
2:27
Speaker 1: think it's I don't know why they split these up,
2:29
Speaker 1: because it ends up being like two hours and fifteen
2:31
Speaker 1: minutes long with the three parts put together. But they're
2:34
Speaker 1: both really good and I watch both of them before
2:39
Speaker 1: this was even an idea because I was a little
2:43
Speaker 1: fascinated with a guy because I'm a child of the
2:46
Speaker 1: eighties and I remember, as you probably do, on the
2:51
Speaker 1: rare occasion when you would see a DeLorean or be
2:55
Speaker 1: in a neighborhood where the kids like, there's a DeLorean
2:58
Speaker 1: in our neighborhood, like and So's dad has one. Uh.
3:02
Speaker 1: They were that rare, that cool, that different. Uh. And
3:06
Speaker 1: I also lived in Bernardsville, New Jersey after college, which
3:09
Speaker 1: was just about three or four miles from where John
3:13
Speaker 1: Delian lived, and I remember when I moved there and
3:15
Speaker 1: they're like, yeah, John de Lorian lives like right down
3:17
Speaker 1: the road. Was that when he lived in as a
3:19
Speaker 1: state or a condo? Yeah, that was when he lived
3:22
Speaker 1: in Bedminster And we'll get to the history there and
3:25
Speaker 1: whose hands that ended up in. But uh do Lorian
3:28
Speaker 1: was just a person who really I was at the
3:30
Speaker 1: right age I think when it all came crumbling down
3:33
Speaker 1: and of course back to the future. Like, he was
3:36
Speaker 1: just someone I was fascinated with and I loved watching
3:39
Speaker 1: these ducks and I loved like doing this research. Well,
3:42
Speaker 1: I mean, he isn't an astoundingly fascinating person. Yeah, I'm
3:47
Speaker 1: saying I hold him up to some like great human
3:49
Speaker 1: but just fascinated by him. Like you said, there there
3:52
Speaker 1: are people out there who do who consider him a
3:54
Speaker 1: visionary and he was image he was, sure, but he
3:58
Speaker 1: was also like a straight up grifter and a con
4:02
Speaker 1: man and a lot of really really important ways. He
4:06
Speaker 1: was also what I would call a proto douche as
4:08
Speaker 1: it will become a parent later on. Sure, but he
4:13
Speaker 1: was all these things and more. He was also a
4:15
Speaker 1: great self promoter. But what's amazing about it is if
4:18
Speaker 1: you step back and look at his background and where
4:20
Speaker 1: he came from and how he became famous, it was
4:23
Speaker 1: through his own smarts. It was through his own uh
4:27
Speaker 1: great education that his parents made sure he got. It
4:30
Speaker 1: was he was an engineer. He was a car engineer,
4:33
Speaker 1: and that's how he made his name by doing really good,
4:36
Speaker 1: amazing work. And then eventually he kind of Peter principals
4:40
Speaker 1: himself out of that work and into that's when he
4:43
Speaker 1: started to get into trouble. Yeah. I think when I
4:45
Speaker 1: was younger, when I was a teenager and knew that
4:47
Speaker 1: sort of the lore, I thought that he was just
4:50
Speaker 1: some rich guy who had this vanity project of a
4:54
Speaker 1: car company. Um. I did not know until much much
4:57
Speaker 1: later that he was a really great, sort of brilliant
5:01
Speaker 1: engineer and like put so many great cars on the
5:05
Speaker 1: map at GM as a as a young executive, and
5:09
Speaker 1: I think I appreciated him a lot more. It's like, Okay,
5:11
Speaker 1: this guy like he knew what he was doing. He uh,
5:14
Speaker 1: he had certainly tons of faults, like you said, but
5:17
Speaker 1: he wasn't. I just thought he was a rich guy
5:19
Speaker 1: who's like, I want to a cool different car. No. No,
5:23
Speaker 1: he definitely knew what he was talking about. And apparently
5:25
Speaker 1: when he was coming up with the Delirian d m
5:28
Speaker 1: C twelve, the Dolrian the only model he ever came
5:31
Speaker 1: out with. Um, god, I hope that's correct, because they're
5:35
Speaker 1: gonna get so many emails if it's not. But there
5:38
Speaker 1: are a few versions of that one, okay, but they
5:40
Speaker 1: were all d m C twelves, Right God, I think so, now, okay,
5:44
Speaker 1: we're just gonna move forward. Chocolate's just soldier on right. Um.
5:48
Speaker 1: He wanted that to be like a valuable car. It
5:50
Speaker 1: was named the d m C twelve because he wanted
5:53
Speaker 1: to to the starting price to be twelve thousand dollars
5:56
Speaker 1: an affordable, you know, at the time, expensive but still
5:59
Speaker 1: not out of the reach of somebody who wanted to
6:02
Speaker 1: really get one of these. It wasn't just for the
6:04
Speaker 1: rich and wealthy and famous. He wanted to be reliable.
6:08
Speaker 1: The prototype had air bags, it had an onboard computer,
6:12
Speaker 1: it had anti theft system. This is like in the
6:15
Speaker 1: early eighties. This is long before anybody was doing stuff
6:19
Speaker 1: like that, and so he really did want to make
6:22
Speaker 1: a really good car. It just didn't quite work out
6:24
Speaker 1: that way because he got into his own way. I
6:27
Speaker 1: would say he had a emergency handbrake on the left
6:31
Speaker 1: of the driver so some angry friend in the passenger
6:36
Speaker 1: seat couldn't yank it up and kill you. Is that true. Well,
6:39
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's why I did it, but
6:41
Speaker 1: it makes sense put it on the left so no
6:42
Speaker 1: one else can. That makes sense. I wonder if it's
6:46
Speaker 1: because most people are right handed, or more people are
6:49
Speaker 1: right handed. I don't know. I say we can start
6:51
Speaker 1: back at the beginning, chuck, because we're getting in our
6:53
Speaker 1: own way now, that's right. He was born John Zachary
6:56
Speaker 1: do Lorian in Detroit, No surprise, in ninety Uh. He
7:02
Speaker 1: was born to not a lot of money. Um. In
7:04
Speaker 1: one of the documentaries they described his neighborhood is fairly
7:08
Speaker 1: run down. His parents were immigrants. His dad was from
7:12
Speaker 1: He was Romanian and his mom was Hungarian. She was
7:16
Speaker 1: a line worker at GE and his dad was UM,
7:21
Speaker 1: a foundry worker and a union guy, union organizer, but
7:25
Speaker 1: not a good dude. Um drank a lot, was abusive
7:28
Speaker 1: and he did not see him again after his about
7:33
Speaker 1: sixteenth or seventeenth birthday. I think when his mom divorced him. Right, Um.
7:37
Speaker 1: And like I said, he was he got a really
7:39
Speaker 1: good education, but he was also a really great student. UM.
7:43
Speaker 1: And he went to technical school. He went to cast
7:46
Speaker 1: Technical High School, he went to Lawrence Institute of Technology,
7:49
Speaker 1: and he was basically set up to become a car
7:53
Speaker 1: engineer from a very early age. UM. He fought in
7:57
Speaker 1: the army during World War Two and then came back
8:00
Speaker 1: can got a degree from the Chrysler Institute, and then
8:02
Speaker 1: finally in nineteen fifty six, became a full fledged auto engineer,
8:07
Speaker 1: starting with Packard and then he moved to General Motors.
8:09
Speaker 1: And with General Motors that's where he would um start
8:14
Speaker 1: to make his name. Yeah, he was married a few times,
8:17
Speaker 1: and we'll kind of touch on the various wives. It
8:20
Speaker 1: sounds like he wasn't the best husband in the world. UM,
8:24
Speaker 1: but I don't think he well, I don't know. I
8:27
Speaker 1: don't want to go there, because when you're not in
8:28
Speaker 1: a marriage, how can you comment and how it really is,
8:31
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. In nineteen fifty four, though, he married
8:34
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Higgins, who was his first wife. Uh. They were
8:37
Speaker 1: married for about a decade, never had kids. UM. And
8:40
Speaker 1: that's when he like kind of first got his career
8:43
Speaker 1: going at GM with Pontiac, and he I think in
8:48
Speaker 1: this documentary described himself um early on at least as
8:52
Speaker 1: the squarest guy at General Motors UM, which is just
8:56
Speaker 1: noteworthy because of what he became, which was certain not
9:00
Speaker 1: a square guy at all. Right. He also had a
9:03
Speaker 1: bunch of patents to his name, like the recessed windshield wiper,
9:08
Speaker 1: the hidden radio antenna's stacked headlights, I mean, stuff that
9:13
Speaker 1: you still see on cars today, where it certainly did
9:16
Speaker 1: for many many years after he invented him UM, and
9:20
Speaker 1: he he ran into a problem really quickly. Though. He
9:24
Speaker 1: had a really good eye for design, and he also
9:27
Speaker 1: realized that youth culture was starting to become a thing,
9:31
Speaker 1: like teenagers were suddenly invented, and teenagers liked cars. But
9:37
Speaker 1: the problem was Detroit was putting out a certain type
9:39
Speaker 1: of car, and that was a big giant boat. Um
9:43
Speaker 1: that you you couldn't even feel any movement whatsoever, and
9:47
Speaker 1: you were just floating down the road. And that's what
9:50
Speaker 1: GM thought everyone would want, because that's what the old
9:53
Speaker 1: execs that GM wanted. Uh and and DeLorean saw very
9:58
Speaker 1: early on that this is wrong. There's a whole sector
10:01
Speaker 1: out there that we're not even touching, and he really
10:03
Speaker 1: kind of focused on that. Yeah, and this was also
10:06
Speaker 1: a time too. I want to point out that, um,
10:09
Speaker 1: the car industry. If you're a certain age, you might
10:13
Speaker 1: remember this a little bit, but if you're younger, you know,
10:17
Speaker 1: you know, foreign cars, imported cars, there's all kind of
10:19
Speaker 1: cars out there in American cars. Sure, some are fine,
10:23
Speaker 1: but it's just the American car industry. Back then, the
10:26
Speaker 1: American car industry was These were the biggest corporations in
10:30
Speaker 1: the world and they were rock stars. We talked a
10:34
Speaker 1: little bit about it in the Pinto episode, I guess,
10:38
Speaker 1: but these were huge, huge corporations and they were the biggest,
10:43
Speaker 1: baddest executives in the world worked for these car companies
10:48
Speaker 1: in Detroit, so, like you said, they sort of like
10:51
Speaker 1: the big boats. He came along said, let's make cars
10:54
Speaker 1: that are cooler. I think there were some people in
10:58
Speaker 1: the management that we're um. You know a lot of
11:01
Speaker 1: them weren't on board, but somewhere on board because they
11:03
Speaker 1: were taking these kind of cooler prototypes out apparently in
11:07
Speaker 1: the evenings and like drag racing in Detroit against teenagers. Yeah,
11:11
Speaker 1: he went to work specifically for Bunkie Knudson, who made
11:14
Speaker 1: an appearance in the Pinto app I believe, I think
11:17
Speaker 1: so Ya and Bunky Knudson was running Pontiac at the time,
11:21
Speaker 1: and back then Pontiac was just considered the lamest um
11:25
Speaker 1: old person's um medallion. That there wasn't any car company
11:30
Speaker 1: at all, not just in GM. Pontiac was just a snooze.
11:34
Speaker 1: And so the idea that Bunky Knudson and um John
11:39
Speaker 1: DeLorean were kind of tapped into the same vibe that
11:41
Speaker 1: wait a minute, whether there's a there's younger kids that
11:44
Speaker 1: that want cars and we're not making them for him.
11:47
Speaker 1: Bunky Knutson apparently said, um, you can never sell a
11:50
Speaker 1: young man in old band's car, but you can always
11:53
Speaker 1: sell an old man a young man's car. And they
11:56
Speaker 1: actually changed the car industry based on that premise. And um,
12:01
Speaker 1: the way that Dolorean did it was by taking the
12:05
Speaker 1: Pontiac Tempest, which was a pretty cool looking mid sized
12:08
Speaker 1: Pontiac and putting a Bonneville engine, which was a large
12:12
Speaker 1: sized Pontiac, a Bonneville engine into the Tempest and making
12:16
Speaker 1: it go room really fast, which the teenagers just loved. Yeah,
12:20
Speaker 1: it was a huge hit. Apparently GM even had a
12:24
Speaker 1: rule that said you can't put that big of an
12:26
Speaker 1: engine in a car this size, but they did it
12:29
Speaker 1: anyway as a special option on the sixty four Tempest,
12:33
Speaker 1: and Delirian named this, of course, the g t O.
12:37
Speaker 1: It was the g t O package initially UH and
12:39
Speaker 1: he named it after the UH. It was a Ferrari,
12:42
Speaker 1: but there were sort of road racing cars in Italy
12:45
Speaker 1: were Grand treism I'm sorry and Tarismos very nice, and
12:51
Speaker 1: that's where GTO comes from. And it was a huge
12:56
Speaker 1: hit out of the gate. UH and Pontiac. All of
12:58
Speaker 1: a sudden it from snooze too. Boy, I wish I
13:02
Speaker 1: had something that rhymed that wasn't lose cruise. Yeah, towards
13:08
Speaker 1: the top. Oh boy, that was perfect stuff. You should
13:14
Speaker 1: know material that was the best I could come up with. No,
13:17
Speaker 1: that's right. Pontiac was just hottest fire all of a sudden. Yeah,
13:21
Speaker 1: So Delrian created the first muscle car. The g t
13:24
Speaker 1: O is widely considered the first muscle car, and it
13:26
Speaker 1: kicked off this huge trend of muscle cars and you
13:29
Speaker 1: can thank John Delrian for that. Um. The g t
13:32
Speaker 1: O also was hugely successful because DeLorean and Knudson and
13:37
Speaker 1: the Pantiac gang um figured out that you really wanted
13:41
Speaker 1: to market these things a certain way too, so they
13:44
Speaker 1: marketed the g t O specifically towards young people. I
13:47
Speaker 1: think one of their ads said, the Pontiac GTO by
13:51
Speaker 1: one before you're too old to understand. I'm not kidding
13:55
Speaker 1: like that was that was an advertisement. There was g
13:57
Speaker 1: t O cologne. Tom McCann came out with some GTO
14:00
Speaker 1: driving shoes and the soul was Yeah. This the soul
14:05
Speaker 1: was designed to fit right into the pedal of a
14:09
Speaker 1: g t O so you could push the pedal to
14:11
Speaker 1: the metal faster and go balls out. Oh that's right.
14:15
Speaker 1: This all reminded me of my dad, who, even though
14:20
Speaker 1: he was an elementary school principal, um went out without
14:23
Speaker 1: asking my mom at all and he bought a Porsche
14:26
Speaker 1: nine eleven, which we could not afford. And he immediately
14:31
Speaker 1: had the Porsche sunglasses, the Porsche jacket, the Porsche hat,
14:37
Speaker 1: baseball cap, and I think, like one other Porsche thing.
14:40
Speaker 1: He was not to be disturbed. He's eating his Porsche
14:43
Speaker 1: breakfast cereal. At the time, I thought, you know, you know,
14:47
Speaker 1: your dad brings some a portion nine eleven. It was
14:49
Speaker 1: beautiful and he had all this stuff, and I was like,
14:51
Speaker 1: how cool. And then I got a little older and
14:53
Speaker 1: I was like, what a what a terrible thing to
14:55
Speaker 1: do in a here, I know, without asking, good lutle
14:59
Speaker 1: if I nancial stress it caused. And then all this
15:02
Speaker 1: do she side stuff he was wearing. I was scanning him.
15:06
Speaker 1: We'll get in all that. So back to back to
15:10
Speaker 1: John DeLorean. Because of that G t O thing, Um,
15:14
Speaker 1: he was promoted to the head of Pontiac. I'm not
15:17
Speaker 1: sure where Bunky Newtson went. Maybe this is when Newson
15:19
Speaker 1: went over to Ford to work with the Pinto. But
15:22
Speaker 1: he was forty at the time and there was a
15:25
Speaker 1: great article on this if it's the longest long form ever.
15:28
Speaker 1: It's called Demon Underneath was by Alex Popademus. It's on
15:32
Speaker 1: the outline, and he basically says that UM that Dolrian
15:37
Speaker 1: was the youngest general manager at GM. He was forty
15:40
Speaker 1: and that at the time that made him basically pre
15:43
Speaker 1: pubescent by Detroit standards, being forty, So it was a
15:46
Speaker 1: really big deal that he was made general manager of
15:49
Speaker 1: Pontiac UH. That that's how big of a breakthrough the
15:52
Speaker 1: g t O was. And then as if that weren't enough,
15:54
Speaker 1: he followed it up with the Firebird and then the
15:57
Speaker 1: Grand Prix. So in three three years he invented no
16:04
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, In about five years he invented the g
16:08
Speaker 1: t O of the Firebird in the Grand Prix. I
16:10
Speaker 1: mean legend man, total legend. He could have retired then
16:13
Speaker 1: and made his name in car history and not for
16:16
Speaker 1: a bad cocaine deal execut He didn't though. He decided
16:22
Speaker 1: to go a different way. And I saw it explained
16:25
Speaker 1: as such, Chuck. I don't remember who said it like this,
16:28
Speaker 1: but I think one of his UM, one of his
16:31
Speaker 1: UH fellow travelers from the time and in that circle.
16:35
Speaker 1: So that had he come up in sales, he would
16:38
Speaker 1: have known very quickly that partying with Hollywood types is
16:42
Speaker 1: kind of a snooze, that they're not actually good people.
16:44
Speaker 1: They're not that much fun to be around. It's kind
16:46
Speaker 1: of high stress. But he wasn't exposed to that until
16:50
Speaker 1: much later on when he became an executive. But he
16:54
Speaker 1: didn't come up from the sales side. He came up
16:55
Speaker 1: from the engineering side, so he had no point of
16:57
Speaker 1: reference for that. So to him, partying with Hall What
17:00
Speaker 1: Stars was the coolest thing you could do, and it
17:02
Speaker 1: was the first thing he started doing the first chance
17:04
Speaker 1: he got. All right, I think it's a great cliffhanger
17:08
Speaker 1: for our first break. Okay, Chuck, now we've reached the
17:30
Speaker 1: point where John Delorian transforms into Dan Ackroyd as a
17:35
Speaker 1: wild and crazy guy. I thought you canna see Dr
17:39
Speaker 1: Detroit for a second. That kind of works too, But
17:42
Speaker 1: I think I think wild and crazy guys even more accurate. Yeah,
17:45
Speaker 1: very much, he um. And you know, this is sort
17:48
Speaker 1: of evidence of the fact that these were the biggest
17:51
Speaker 1: corporations in the world, because ask any American like who
17:55
Speaker 1: the top executives for GM are today and you unless
18:00
Speaker 1: you're in you know, in the know or like a
18:02
Speaker 1: big gear head. You probably and even then you might
18:04
Speaker 1: not even know. But back then, like he was, he
18:08
Speaker 1: made himself into a celebrity. He started dyeing his hair,
18:12
Speaker 1: he went gray pretty early, and was a admittedly very
18:16
Speaker 1: handsome man, but he he just was sort of this
18:20
Speaker 1: idealized in the Magnum p I era of of this
18:25
Speaker 1: is kind of pre Magnum, but just sort of that
18:27
Speaker 1: era of that mackeismo. He was tall, and he had
18:30
Speaker 1: this hair coming out of his shirt, like this hairy chest,
18:33
Speaker 1: and he had a button his shirt and he had
18:35
Speaker 1: this cool hair, and he you know, he he made
18:39
Speaker 1: himself the like he said he were, Like I said,
18:43
Speaker 1: he said he was a squarest guy, and I think
18:45
Speaker 1: he just really wanted to change that. So all of
18:47
Speaker 1: a sudden, he's dating, like literally dating Roquel Welch and Urson,
18:51
Speaker 1: La Andrews and these you know, bombshell Hollywood actresses, and
18:57
Speaker 1: of course divorces his first wife in eight uh and
19:01
Speaker 1: we should mention that she sued him for cruelty. Uh
19:04
Speaker 1: So he probably wasn't a great husband. But he immediately
19:08
Speaker 1: gets married. This is sort of his m O is, like,
19:10
Speaker 1: let me marry someone about half my age. He married
19:13
Speaker 1: it's twenty year old named Kelly Harmon when he was
19:15
Speaker 1: forty years old, and uh, they adopted their son, Zachary. Um.
19:20
Speaker 1: Do you remember those weird tic tech ads from the
19:23
Speaker 1: eighties where it was a real close up of a
19:25
Speaker 1: blonde lady like talking about how much she enjoys just
19:28
Speaker 1: one tic tech. Sure that's Kelly Harmon. Was that her? Yeah?
19:32
Speaker 1: And it's Mark Harmon's sister, by the way. Oh. Another
19:36
Speaker 1: fun thing from the documentary is um this came from
19:39
Speaker 1: his own mouth. He was talking about his sex drive
19:42
Speaker 1: and how like, you know, he has a pretty substantial
19:44
Speaker 1: sex drive. And he said, you know what, what man
19:47
Speaker 1: in history, No man in history has ever accomplished anything
19:51
Speaker 1: that didn't have that trade. So I was like, oh wait,
19:55
Speaker 1: old podcasting comes around, my friend, now old it, Chuck
20:01
Speaker 1: think about that though, he's the guy. He's the kind
20:04
Speaker 1: of guy who would say that to a reporter and
20:07
Speaker 1: then hope that the reporter kept that in the interview
20:10
Speaker 1: when it was published. It's kind of Ron Burgundy esque, yeah,
20:14
Speaker 1: but way more self aware, way more self aware Ron
20:19
Speaker 1: Burgundy was or still is. I guess he's he has
20:22
Speaker 1: a podcast himself. It just kind of aloof about himself.
20:27
Speaker 1: John Delian was very tuned into himself. He just thought
20:32
Speaker 1: that what he was doing was the coolest thing ever
20:34
Speaker 1: and didn't realize that it actually wasn't super cool at all. Yeah,
20:39
Speaker 1: he got facial reconstructive surgery. Uh and not throwing shade
20:44
Speaker 1: of people want to do that kind of thing. But
20:46
Speaker 1: he he went through a big midlife crisis. Is how
20:49
Speaker 1: this one woman in the documentary who wrote a book, Um,
20:53
Speaker 1: not about him, but she interviewed him for the book,
20:55
Speaker 1: and I think he even kind of admitted it. When
20:57
Speaker 1: he hit his forties, he lost a bunch of weight,
21:00
Speaker 1: grew out of sideburns, started dyeing his hair, got chin
21:04
Speaker 1: and jawline implants to make him look more masculine and rugged,
21:09
Speaker 1: and started dressing. I think it was that guy that
21:12
Speaker 1: wrote the article of Papa Demus said, Uh, he starts
21:15
Speaker 1: showing up to manage a division of the most conservative
21:17
Speaker 1: corporation in America, like he manages the Partridge family just
21:22
Speaker 1: like Ruben Kincaid. Yeah so he um he but he
21:26
Speaker 1: kept like bringing the goods, like even while he's having
21:30
Speaker 1: this really embarrassing midlife crisis, Um, he's still he's still
21:36
Speaker 1: creating like great cars, like he came out with them
21:40
Speaker 1: the Monte Carlo. In nineteen sixty nine, he was the
21:44
Speaker 1: head of the ship. He became head of Chevy, so
21:46
Speaker 1: he moved from head of Pontiac the head of Chevy.
21:48
Speaker 1: That's a big deal at that time. Um. And then
21:51
Speaker 1: he even advanced all the way up to what they
21:54
Speaker 1: called the fourteenth floor at GM. So even from Pontiac
21:57
Speaker 1: to Chevy to now he's one of the main executives
22:01
Speaker 1: running one of the biggest corporations in the country. And
22:05
Speaker 1: he's walking around with like his chest hair sticking out,
22:08
Speaker 1: making like finger guns at people, like like on his
22:13
Speaker 1: way to meeting. But the thing is he did not
22:17
Speaker 1: fit into that world at all. He did not. He
22:19
Speaker 1: he bristled at that kind of stuff, and they didn't
22:22
Speaker 1: like him anymore than he liked them. Yeah, he um.
22:26
Speaker 1: I think in seventy two he was the chief of
22:28
Speaker 1: GM's truck and car division, which he said was about
22:33
Speaker 1: of what they produced. And this was the first I
22:36
Speaker 1: think he was rumored to be in line for president.
22:39
Speaker 1: And this was when over these couple of years in
22:42
Speaker 1: the early seventies, was when the first whispers of like
22:46
Speaker 1: how is this guy, like he makes good money, but
22:48
Speaker 1: how is he living this kind of lifestyle and is
22:51
Speaker 1: he grifting the company at all? And there were rumors
22:53
Speaker 1: that he was taking kickbacks from parts people like suppliers,
22:58
Speaker 1: and you know, the sort of rumors of impropriety started
23:02
Speaker 1: cropping up around this time. What's crazy is this would
23:05
Speaker 1: plague him for the rest of his life basically, and
23:08
Speaker 1: yet any time like like something was formally done to
23:13
Speaker 1: investigate him, to bring him up on charges, it just
23:16
Speaker 1: it wouldn't stick. They just wouldn't stick. They could They
23:19
Speaker 1: never got him on anything that he did, and he
23:23
Speaker 1: did plenty of it. Some of the stuff he probably
23:25
Speaker 1: didn't do. But he had that kind of reputation that
23:28
Speaker 1: was so bad that that you know, somebody might still
23:31
Speaker 1: try to sue you based on how bad your reputation is.
23:34
Speaker 1: And yet none of them were successful as far as
23:36
Speaker 1: I could tell. Yeah, I didn't see anything that stuck. Uh.
23:40
Speaker 1: I think it was followed seventy two, um was when
23:43
Speaker 1: he finally departed. There was a text of a speech
23:47
Speaker 1: about quality control that he was going to give to
23:49
Speaker 1: a private audience at GM and it got leaked out
23:53
Speaker 1: to the press. Rumors he did it himself and leaked it. Uh.
23:56
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of negative press. Uh. And
23:59
Speaker 1: these these companies not only were there huge, they were
24:01
Speaker 1: very private and you didn't hear rumors and leaks in
24:05
Speaker 1: the press. Uh. He didn't talk about one another in
24:08
Speaker 1: the press. It was all very just sort of tightly controlled.
24:12
Speaker 1: And and they were of course super ticked off about it.
24:16
Speaker 1: And in April of seventy three, depending on who you asked,
24:19
Speaker 1: he quit working there, either by resignation or by being fired.
24:23
Speaker 1: But GM just kept mute about the departure between the two,
24:29
Speaker 1: and so um Delirian was able to say I'm the
24:32
Speaker 1: man who fired GM because he he was in charge
24:36
Speaker 1: of the If GM wasn't speaking up, Delirian could say
24:39
Speaker 1: basically whatever he wanted, and so he portrayed it. As
24:42
Speaker 1: he got tired of GM, he said something like, even
24:45
Speaker 1: if you're making six fifty grand a year, if you
24:48
Speaker 1: hate the job, it's just not worth it, which I mean,
24:51
Speaker 1: on the one hand, that's absolutely true, and I get
24:53
Speaker 1: the impression that he really felt that way. On the
24:56
Speaker 1: other hand, it's probably true that GM fired him into
25:00
Speaker 1: kept mom about it. Yeah, Well, it's that whole like
25:03
Speaker 1: keeping it quiet thing, which he didn't care about at
25:05
Speaker 1: that point. No, but he had been living chuck largely
25:09
Speaker 1: on GM's dimes. He expensed everything he could, including stuff
25:13
Speaker 1: that never should have even been remotely expensed, but he
25:16
Speaker 1: was living on GM. And suddenly he wasn't able to
25:21
Speaker 1: expense everything. He's still got his I think his bonuses.
25:24
Speaker 1: It was part of his his departure package, but he
25:27
Speaker 1: wasn't able to expense anything. And now all of a sudden,
25:29
Speaker 1: his lavish lifestyle is not being underwritten by anybody. Yeah.
25:34
Speaker 1: He um, after this separation from GM, he gets, uh, divorce.
25:40
Speaker 1: I guess he looked at Harmon and said, you know,
25:44
Speaker 1: enough of the tic TACs. You're you're getting a little
25:47
Speaker 1: long in the tooth. Uh. And so he started dating
25:50
Speaker 1: a twenty two year old when he was forty eight
25:53
Speaker 1: named Christina Ferrar and she was a very uh, you know,
25:58
Speaker 1: sort of semi famous model. I guess he was pretty
26:00
Speaker 1: famous because I remember like seeing pictures o her at
26:03
Speaker 1: the time even and saying like, I'll know who that is. Uh.
26:06
Speaker 1: And they had four homes. They had the apartment in
26:10
Speaker 1: Manhattan and the aforementioned mansion on four and thirty four
26:15
Speaker 1: acres in Bedminster, New Jersey, which is right down the
26:19
Speaker 1: street from where I lived. And they had a daughter
26:22
Speaker 1: in seventy seven named Katherine. Yeah. So, by all accounts
26:27
Speaker 1: and in all appearances, he suddenly was in a new
26:31
Speaker 1: phase of life, free from the shackles of GM's button
26:35
Speaker 1: down corporate culture. New wife, new baby, new house, new houses,
26:41
Speaker 1: and uh, it's time for him to reinvent himself even further.
26:45
Speaker 1: And he's going to do that, he decides by coming
26:47
Speaker 1: up with the most amazing car America has ever seen. Right,
26:52
Speaker 1: But he had a noncompete and GM was like, hey,
26:56
Speaker 1: part of the severance package, if you want to keep
26:57
Speaker 1: this money coming your way, you can't just jump over
27:00
Speaker 1: and start working for another car company. So he sort
27:05
Speaker 1: of on the download started working on the Dolrian car
27:08
Speaker 1: or the Dolrian Motor Company. And I think he thought,
27:14
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think he definitely thought, well, this
27:17
Speaker 1: little sort of um small production run of this weird
27:21
Speaker 1: sports car, I'm not working with another car company, so
27:25
Speaker 1: that probably is okay with GM. And then once he
27:29
Speaker 1: started working, because you know, he couldn't do it all
27:32
Speaker 1: by himself, so he had to kind of contract out
27:34
Speaker 1: and work with other car companies and they said, all right,
27:37
Speaker 1: you're now cut off. But that's also pretty rich that
27:40
Speaker 1: he's like, oh, we're just too dinky to be considered
27:43
Speaker 1: a competitor. And one of the one of the reasons
27:46
Speaker 1: he wanted to found Delian Motor Company was to show Detroit,
27:49
Speaker 1: to stick it in their eye, to show them how
27:51
Speaker 1: to make it a real car, in very much the
27:53
Speaker 1: same way that Ellen Musk saw it to show Detroit
27:58
Speaker 1: how to make an electric car and was actually successful
28:00
Speaker 1: in that sense. You can say what you want about him,
28:03
Speaker 1: but he's basically single handedly the reason why we have
28:07
Speaker 1: electric cars now. Um. Delirian tried to do kind of
28:10
Speaker 1: the same thing to make a really cool, um, really reliable,
28:15
Speaker 1: really um responsive car. Yeah he talking about the car. Yeah, yeah,
28:20
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about it, because it is a very
28:22
Speaker 1: cool car by by any standard. Uh. He came along
28:25
Speaker 1: when gas mileage started to become literally for the first
28:30
Speaker 1: time sort of on Americans minds, sort of the beginning
28:33
Speaker 1: of the gas crunch. So he was like, I wanted
28:35
Speaker 1: to get to be fuel efficient. Uh. I certainly wanted
28:38
Speaker 1: to be cool, but like you said, sort of affordable, Uh,
28:42
Speaker 1: something that was reliable, which is pretty funny considering how
28:45
Speaker 1: the Delirian turned out. I think it was most known
28:48
Speaker 1: for being completely unreliable. And the thing I remember most
28:52
Speaker 1: about it. Uh. I know you love those gull wing doors,
28:56
Speaker 1: But the thing I remembered most was the fact that
28:58
Speaker 1: it was stainless steel. Sure. Uh. And I remember being
29:02
Speaker 1: a kid and going he made a stainless steel car
29:05
Speaker 1: so it would never rust. That's genius. Yeah. It never
29:09
Speaker 1: occurred to me that it would never rust. I just
29:11
Speaker 1: thought it was to look cool. No, that's why he
29:13
Speaker 1: did it. I knew that when I was twelve. I
29:15
Speaker 1: don't know how. I was a very dumb kid. Well
29:18
Speaker 1: you were younger, so um. One of the things about
29:22
Speaker 1: the car is that if you if you look at
29:23
Speaker 1: it's just a very striking design. And that's because Um
29:26
Speaker 1: DeLorean hired like one of the premier car designers in
29:30
Speaker 1: the world, Georgetto. H'm sorry, Chuck, please take it, uh,
29:35
Speaker 1: Georgetto Geo Giaio very nice. Yeah, he's the guy who
29:41
Speaker 1: who designed the underwater car in The Spy who loved
29:44
Speaker 1: me that James Bond drove. He also designed the Lotus
29:48
Speaker 1: of Spree, which was what the car was. I think
29:50
Speaker 1: it was a lotus of Spree that James Bond car,
29:54
Speaker 1: and then he basically redesigned the lotus of Spree for
29:58
Speaker 1: the d M to you twelve. Yeah, they look alike
30:02
Speaker 1: very much so, but um Delorean's goal was to create
30:08
Speaker 1: an American car that Americans had never seen before. So
30:11
Speaker 1: it's still kind of help water. Sure. Absolutely, he needed
30:16
Speaker 1: a lot of money to do it, and so he said,
30:19
Speaker 1: all right, I think I can get this thing up
30:21
Speaker 1: and run in for ninety million bucks, which is close
30:24
Speaker 1: to four million today. And he set up a deal
30:28
Speaker 1: with Puerto Rico uh to manufacture there and exchange uh
30:34
Speaker 1: in exchange for sixty million bucks and guaranteed loans. And
30:38
Speaker 1: then Britain stepped in and said, oh no, no, no,
30:42
Speaker 1: said my tea. Yeah, we'll give you. Oh that was good. Uh,
30:47
Speaker 1: we'll give you a lot more money than that, my friend.
30:50
Speaker 1: If we have some troubles going on, are we here
30:53
Speaker 1: so much so that they're literally called the troubles. I
30:56
Speaker 1: don't know if you've heard about all the bad things
30:59
Speaker 1: going down here between Catholics in the Protestants, uh, And
31:03
Speaker 1: there's a lot of turmoil, and we've talked about the
31:04
Speaker 1: stuff on our podcast They didn't say that because they
31:07
Speaker 1: didn't have a podcast. They said, if you bring your
31:09
Speaker 1: factory to Belfast, of all places, we'll give you, will
31:13
Speaker 1: guarantee you a hundred and six million dollars in investments
31:16
Speaker 1: and loans and grants. Yeah, and anyone who listened to
31:18
Speaker 1: our Bobby Sands episode will remember that Belfast was like
31:23
Speaker 1: kind of ground zero for the troubles of Northern Ireland.
31:27
Speaker 1: And this spot that they selected, an old cow pasture,
31:31
Speaker 1: was actually right between a Protestant housing development and a
31:35
Speaker 1: Catholic housing development, and they wanted to build the factory
31:38
Speaker 1: right between them. And they're lower at least the eighty
31:42
Speaker 1: percent unemployment in the area. Eighty percent. Eight people out
31:47
Speaker 1: of ten in this area were unemployed at the time.
31:51
Speaker 1: And John Delory was going to come in build the
31:53
Speaker 1: state of the art factory and higher thousands of these
31:56
Speaker 1: people um Protestant and Catholic. And he was sensible. They
32:00
Speaker 1: built separate entrances for each group for real um nuts.
32:05
Speaker 1: But he came to town and in a lot of ways,
32:07
Speaker 1: and it created this sense of pride that had been
32:10
Speaker 1: missing among the workers that he hired. Yeah, he uh,
32:15
Speaker 1: certainly the money was the biggest part of it. I'm
32:17
Speaker 1: sure Britain was like, this is great, we can put
32:19
Speaker 1: these folks to work. But he just wanted that hundred
32:21
Speaker 1: and six mil. I think he got another thirty one
32:24
Speaker 1: million from investments in the US private investment, including Johnny Carson.
32:30
Speaker 1: I think he went in for half a million bucks,
32:32
Speaker 1: a ton of money, especially back then. And our old
32:36
Speaker 1: friends Sammy Davis Jr. How did he accept? He said,
32:41
Speaker 1: where I really dick those doors. I'm in. I'm in
32:45
Speaker 1: for one fifty. So he invested as well, and he's
32:50
Speaker 1: got his money, he's got his separate entrances. And on
32:55
Speaker 1: October two they broke ground on the plant to great protest. Yeah,
33:02
Speaker 1: there were plenty of protests. Again, there are a lot
33:04
Speaker 1: of people who are like, this is awesome. We're gonna
33:06
Speaker 1: have good jobs. These are highly skilled technical jobs that
33:09
Speaker 1: were that are being created out of thin air here.
33:12
Speaker 1: But there are plenty of people who are like, this
33:13
Speaker 1: is a British project that they're building in Belfast. Brits
33:16
Speaker 1: go home, Yanks go home. UM. So not everybody was
33:20
Speaker 1: on board. And as as a matter of fact, throughout
33:22
Speaker 1: the time that the Belfast um factory was operating, DeLorean
33:26
Speaker 1: spent as little time there as possible because he was
33:29
Speaker 1: really worried about being murdered or kidnapped. UM, so he
33:33
Speaker 1: did not hang around there um and probably rightfully so.
33:36
Speaker 1: I'm sure he would have been a pretty good target
33:38
Speaker 1: for UM I RA or the Ulster Liberation Force. Yeah, um,
33:44
Speaker 1: who knows. And I'm sure anybody would have liked to
33:46
Speaker 1: have kidnapped him at the time. He was extremely famous
33:49
Speaker 1: and well known to be super rich. Um. But there
33:52
Speaker 1: was another um kind of bad sign aside from the
33:55
Speaker 1: protesters that some people still to this day say, is
34:00
Speaker 1: what cursed Delirian Motor Company and maybe even John Delorrian himself.
34:04
Speaker 1: Was this the ferry tree? Yes? Yeah, there was a
34:07
Speaker 1: special plant there on the place where they were going
34:11
Speaker 1: to build this factory. It was it was a Hawthorne
34:13
Speaker 1: bush and they they called it like a ferry tree.
34:18
Speaker 1: That these workers there said, We're not gonna cut this
34:20
Speaker 1: thing down. I'm not gonna do my bad Irish accent
34:23
Speaker 1: and try and say it that way. But they did.
34:26
Speaker 1: Eventually someone removed it. And some people say, like that
34:29
Speaker 1: was you know the the ferry tree that was Scottish. Yeah,
34:34
Speaker 1: it was pretty Scottish. It was depending on where you
34:36
Speaker 1: are in Ireland though that that can pass. It sounds
34:39
Speaker 1: like groundskeeper Willie. Yeah it did so. Um the factory
34:43
Speaker 1: did open um and again Delirian wasn't there very often.
34:47
Speaker 1: He spent his time in Park Avenue UM. But his
34:51
Speaker 1: cars were suddenly being assembled. The thing is um. During
34:55
Speaker 1: the design phase he hired Lotus um to to build
34:59
Speaker 1: these cars. Lotus was making cars that were assembled by hand.
35:03
Speaker 1: Now Delirian was asking them to build cars on an
35:05
Speaker 1: assembly line, and Lotus is like, Okay, we're gonna have
35:08
Speaker 1: to make some compromises here, and so little by little,
35:11
Speaker 1: the Delirian DMC twelve, the production version, became less and
35:15
Speaker 1: less like the dream version, the prototype that Delirian had
35:18
Speaker 1: come up with, and some of the compromises he made
35:21
Speaker 1: basically sunk the car. Like it wasn't just Delirian and
35:25
Speaker 1: his coke deal that will get to in a minute,
35:26
Speaker 1: that sunk the company. The company was already sinking because
35:29
Speaker 1: it was making pretty bad cars that were really cool,
35:32
Speaker 1: but they did not go very well. No, it was
35:35
Speaker 1: a bit of a disaster from the beginning. Uh. And
35:38
Speaker 1: these documentaries really kind of dive into just the problems
35:42
Speaker 1: with the car. Um. The first thing is it more
35:45
Speaker 1: than doubled in the cost that he wanted to sell
35:47
Speaker 1: it at. He wanted to sell it for twelve It
35:49
Speaker 1: cost grand which a Corvette at the time, a brand
35:53
Speaker 1: new Corvette was about sixteen. So all of a sudden,
35:56
Speaker 1: the Delirian is a super luxury or not luxury, but
36:02
Speaker 1: just a sports car for super rich people. Uh. It
36:06
Speaker 1: weighed nine thousand pounds more than they thought it was
36:10
Speaker 1: gonna weigh, not nine thousand pounds, nine thousand extra pounds. Uh.
36:15
Speaker 1: It had trouble meeting the mileage requirements. It was supposed
36:18
Speaker 1: to be super fuel efficient. It was very famously clunky,
36:24
Speaker 1: hard to drive slow, and this is sports supposed to
36:27
Speaker 1: be a sports car because it was. It was super
36:30
Speaker 1: heavy at this rear mounted Renault engine that was a
36:34
Speaker 1: V six, and it just it drove more like a
36:38
Speaker 1: a bad stick shift station wagon than anything sporty. Yeah.
36:42
Speaker 1: How how long did it take to go from zero
36:44
Speaker 1: to sixty? It took And I don't know anything about
36:47
Speaker 1: fast cars, but ten seconds seems like a long time
36:49
Speaker 1: to me. It's a really long time. I think some
36:53
Speaker 1: Teslas and some Ferraris and cars like that UM are
36:56
Speaker 1: in like the three and a half second range. This
36:59
Speaker 1: is ten seconds, like a minivan can probably get from
37:02
Speaker 1: zero to sixty in in ten seconds and not even
37:05
Speaker 1: a new one. So that was not good at all.
37:08
Speaker 1: And then they also had some really bad publicity problems too,
37:10
Speaker 1: like the windows stuck apparently the dye they used for them.
37:15
Speaker 1: The floor mats didn't hold fast and it would run
37:17
Speaker 1: and stay in your shoes, even your your Tomcca and
37:20
Speaker 1: g t O shoes that you're wearing. Uh. And the
37:24
Speaker 1: goal wing doors would get stuck and just would not open,
37:27
Speaker 1: and very embarrassingly that happened at the Cleveland Auto Show.
37:31
Speaker 1: Somebody who was looking at the car got stuck inside
37:34
Speaker 1: for an hour because they could not get the doors open. Yeah.
37:37
Speaker 1: I watched uh YouTube today of a Delirian drive like
37:42
Speaker 1: road test and these two guys, you know it's a
37:45
Speaker 1: modern you know sort of thing because they're wearing cargo shorts. Um.
37:49
Speaker 1: But one of the guys says, Delirian lets his friend
37:51
Speaker 1: drive it and they have a camera in there, and
37:53
Speaker 1: you know, it just looked like it was hard to drive.
37:56
Speaker 1: It didn't break super well. The reverse was this uh.
38:00
Speaker 1: And I had an early VW batle where he had
38:02
Speaker 1: to push down on the thing and then left and back.
38:05
Speaker 1: But this you had to pull the stick shift up
38:07
Speaker 1: and kind of over and up, and he had trouble
38:10
Speaker 1: kind of doing that, but he finally got the hang
38:12
Speaker 1: of it. But it it He described it as fast.
38:15
Speaker 1: I think he said it had a lot of torque.
38:17
Speaker 1: But when he like got it, I think starting in
38:19
Speaker 1: like second gear, it seemed like, UM was when it
38:23
Speaker 1: picked up because he was like, oh man, this thing
38:24
Speaker 1: has got some real speed. UM. But I don't think
38:28
Speaker 1: like off the line it was that fast. Is maybe
38:30
Speaker 1: the deal I got you? Yeah, not if it took
38:33
Speaker 1: ten seconds to get to sixty for sure. So there
38:37
Speaker 1: was another thing that was going on at the time,
38:39
Speaker 1: like like John Dolorian was earnestly trying to make these cars,
38:43
Speaker 1: but at the same time he was also robbing his
38:45
Speaker 1: own company blind. The first thing he did with that
38:49
Speaker 1: um British investment money of I think about a hundred
38:53
Speaker 1: and thirty million dollars was to set up a Swiss
38:55
Speaker 1: bank accounts that he transferred the money through and then
38:59
Speaker 1: apparent and I don't believe this has ever been proven,
39:02
Speaker 1: but it's basically like just open your eyes people, UM,
39:06
Speaker 1: a lot, if not most of that money made its
39:09
Speaker 1: way from Switzerland to his personal accounts to finance his life.
39:13
Speaker 1: So basically, he said, thanks for all the money, Brits,
39:16
Speaker 1: your chumps, I'm stealing this for my own personal gain.
39:20
Speaker 1: And that's what he did right out of the gate.
39:22
Speaker 1: And that's why I say he was a genuine grifter.
39:24
Speaker 1: He grifted the British government, he grifted some guy who
39:27
Speaker 1: owned a Wichita Cadillac um uh dealership, like, he grifted
39:32
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And and in addition to all
39:35
Speaker 1: of the amazing stuff that he did, he also became
39:38
Speaker 1: like a genuine serious died in the wool grifter. He
39:42
Speaker 1: grifted Sammy Davis Jr. Yeah, I mean for that alone,
39:46
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty infamous if you ask me. All Right,
39:49
Speaker 1: it just occurred to me, we haven't taken our second break,
39:51
Speaker 1: so let's take a late break. Well, par went out
39:55
Speaker 1: for Shammy's hundred and fifty and we'll be right back. Okay.
40:20
Speaker 1: So where we left off was John delian is kind
40:23
Speaker 1: of siphoning money to fund his lavish lifestyle, which it
40:27
Speaker 1: sounds like he kind of always did at GM as well.
40:31
Speaker 1: And he got about a hundred and fifty million bucks,
40:35
Speaker 1: which is about four and sixty two million dollars out
40:39
Speaker 1: of the British government. Um, saying like you know, he
40:42
Speaker 1: kind of kept it going, seeing he was gonna shut
40:44
Speaker 1: down production, which would be bad news, you know for
40:46
Speaker 1: everyone concerned. But eventually someone, the Iron Lady would come around,
40:51
Speaker 1: uh in two and as we all know Thatcher didn't
40:55
Speaker 1: take any s from anyone, and she was like enough enough, Um,
41:00
Speaker 1: I'm getting conned by this American. We are getting conned
41:04
Speaker 1: and basically said, you know what, We're not gonna be
41:07
Speaker 1: your bank account anymore. They had to lay off about uh,
41:11
Speaker 1: not quite half of about eleven hundred of their twenty
41:14
Speaker 1: six workers in Belfast and DeLorean DMC went into receivership,
41:21
Speaker 1: uh pretty quickly. Um. They planned to sell about thirty
41:24
Speaker 1: thousand cars every year. They they didn't sell quite nine
41:29
Speaker 1: thousand cars total. And he needed to get about seventeen
41:34
Speaker 1: million dollars really fast if he wanted to keep this
41:39
Speaker 1: insolvency from happening. So his back was up against the wall.
41:43
Speaker 1: He needed seventeen million fast, and where else can you
41:46
Speaker 1: do that but in the drug trade. Right. What's interesting
41:51
Speaker 1: is his plight and his travails were so famous that
41:56
Speaker 1: he was approached with an idea to sell drugs to
42:00
Speaker 1: get money to to save his company. Like everybody knew
42:04
Speaker 1: that this was going on, right, That's how bad oppressed
42:07
Speaker 1: the d m C twelve got, And so he was approached.
42:10
Speaker 1: There was a coke dealer named James Hoffman who'd been
42:14
Speaker 1: smuggling drugs for Pablo Escobar's medine cartel for years. He
42:19
Speaker 1: was also a paid informant for the FBI. And apparently, uh,
42:24
Speaker 1: some people say that that James Hoffman said I'm going
42:28
Speaker 1: to deliver uh John DeLorean to you guys just watch,
42:32
Speaker 1: and that he was the one who's hatched this whole
42:34
Speaker 1: scheme to basically entrap John Delorrian into selling a bunch
42:38
Speaker 1: of cocaine in order to save delrian Motor company. That's right. Uh.
42:42
Speaker 1: The deal was specifically almost sixty pounds of coke for
42:46
Speaker 1: six and a half million bucks that Dolrian or you know,
42:50
Speaker 1: through his channels with then quickly turn around and sell
42:55
Speaker 1: for twenty four million dollars, which would um in theory
42:59
Speaker 1: I guess, solve his financial problem with shutting the company down,
43:03
Speaker 1: or at least that's how he saw it. But like
43:06
Speaker 1: you said, he was a paid in Hoffman was a
43:08
Speaker 1: paid informant. There was another guy on the scene who
43:11
Speaker 1: was a real undercover FBI agent named John Ballestra, who
43:14
Speaker 1: DeLorean thought was a mob guy. And these famous videos
43:20
Speaker 1: came out. If you grew up in that era, you
43:22
Speaker 1: saw these videos with your own eyeballs. Um, we'll get
43:26
Speaker 1: to the twist on how that happened in a minute,
43:28
Speaker 1: But uh, there were these famous videos of this deal
43:32
Speaker 1: that went down in I think it was like a
43:33
Speaker 1: hotel room where it's all very clearly laid out. And
43:38
Speaker 1: Hoffman even gives Delrian a chance to back out, and
43:41
Speaker 1: Delirian says, I want to proceed. He tries to coke.
43:45
Speaker 1: He says, this stuff is like better than gold. Um.
43:48
Speaker 1: But what it came down to, and we'll get to
43:49
Speaker 1: the court case in a minute, is whether or not
43:53
Speaker 1: they entrapped Delirian and came to him with this idea,
43:57
Speaker 1: or whether or not he hatched the idea, and whether
44:01
Speaker 1: or not DeLorean you know, was right in saying that, like, hey,
44:04
Speaker 1: this guy was threatening my family. Uh. He said, I'm
44:07
Speaker 1: gonna send your baby's daughter's head home in a shopping
44:09
Speaker 1: bag and that's kind of where everything hinged in the trial, right,
44:16
Speaker 1: And it would turn out that the jury basically said, like, yes, dude,
44:20
Speaker 1: this guy was totally set up, ensnared, entrapped, um if
44:24
Speaker 1: you want to just look at it. Most basically, John
44:27
Speaker 1: DeLorean wasn't the one who came up with this drug scheme.
44:30
Speaker 1: He was approached by an FBI informant to to who
44:34
Speaker 1: proposed the drug scheme DeLorean. That in and of itself
44:37
Speaker 1: is entrapment. But there was also mauthfeasance by the FBI
44:41
Speaker 1: agents working the case. They would backdate like reports and
44:45
Speaker 1: stuff like that and alter reports like it was just
44:48
Speaker 1: shady from the get go. And and James Hoffman didn't
44:51
Speaker 1: come off as a particularly trustworthy person on the stand either.
44:55
Speaker 1: So in typical John DeLorean fashion, the jury acquitted him
44:59
Speaker 1: on all counts in August. So he went from being
45:03
Speaker 1: caught with twenty four kilos of cocaine to walking on
45:09
Speaker 1: all counts. Um. And And that's just John Deloran. That's
45:13
Speaker 1: the John Delorrian story. With the press covering this breathlessly
45:16
Speaker 1: every step of the way. Yeah, and here's a couple
45:19
Speaker 1: of addendums, one of which and I don't know if
45:22
Speaker 1: this is true, but there are rumors that the British
45:25
Speaker 1: government held off on closing down that plant in cahoots
45:30
Speaker 1: with the American government long enough to get him set
45:34
Speaker 1: up and captured. So what's funny is apparently Delirian was
45:39
Speaker 1: working on his own grift where he was supposed to
45:43
Speaker 1: put up two million dollars of the money to buy
45:45
Speaker 1: this cocaine initially, and he didn't have it. So he said,
45:48
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna give you guys, controlling stakes
45:51
Speaker 1: of my company. And what he did was give these
45:54
Speaker 1: people that he thought were mobsters in bed with Pablo
45:58
Speaker 1: Escobar control of a shell company that had his name
46:03
Speaker 1: on it, that was dormant, that didn't have any assets whatsoever,
46:07
Speaker 1: that was now owned by the British government. So he
46:09
Speaker 1: was going to handcuff mobsters to the British government and
46:12
Speaker 1: take their money, uh in the form of the cocaine
46:15
Speaker 1: profits that he was going to share and walk away
46:18
Speaker 1: with it. About that part, that's why he was planning
46:20
Speaker 1: on doing. Uh. The little twist that I mentioned about
46:24
Speaker 1: how America saw this video so readily was that Larry
46:28
Speaker 1: flint Um, publisher of Hustler magazine, Um he got ahold
46:34
Speaker 1: of those tapes, and he's the one that handed them
46:36
Speaker 1: up for two bbs. And that's why everyone got to
46:39
Speaker 1: see it, and they had a hard time getting a
46:41
Speaker 1: trial off the ground because it was, you know, on
46:43
Speaker 1: the evening news and like I was a teenager and
46:47
Speaker 1: I saw this stuff, right, so like everybody saw it.
46:50
Speaker 1: So eventually, you know, like like you said that they
46:53
Speaker 1: managed to scrape a jury together that said, uh, I
46:57
Speaker 1: think some of the quotes where they thought he was
46:59
Speaker 1: a shabby or no, Hoffman was a shabby creep and
47:02
Speaker 1: was not believable at all. But they also thought a
47:06
Speaker 1: Dorians not innocent here, but it was entrapped meant so
47:09
Speaker 1: we have to say not guilty, right, and they did
47:12
Speaker 1: again he walked. But the thing is is like he's
47:15
Speaker 1: like his finances are a mess, Like he's stolen tens,
47:21
Speaker 1: if not hundreds of millions of dollars from the British government. Um.
47:25
Speaker 1: His I don't know what he was doing with the
47:27
Speaker 1: money because he wasn't paying the mortgage on his a
47:29
Speaker 1: state in New Jersey. UM. So he ends up losing that. Um.
47:34
Speaker 1: There's another frog case that was brought against him in Detroit. UM.
47:39
Speaker 1: And he he was accused of stealing seventeen and a
47:41
Speaker 1: half million dollars in regards to the to Dolirian Motor
47:46
Speaker 1: Company and it's funding, and he managed to get away
47:49
Speaker 1: with that one too, and his his UM attorney, Howard Whitzman,
47:53
Speaker 1: later said that he he was unfairly accused and entrapped
47:56
Speaker 1: in the cocaine case, but that the acquittalent of Troit
48:00
Speaker 1: was a miracle, Like he was totally guilty and he
48:04
Speaker 1: still got off um. But although he wasn't ever put
48:08
Speaker 1: in prison, his life was just becoming more and more
48:11
Speaker 1: ruined because he liked to live a certain way, but
48:13
Speaker 1: he had less and less money to pay for it,
48:16
Speaker 1: and fewer and fewer people he could scam. Yeah, his
48:19
Speaker 1: that same attorney also said, and this is kind of
48:21
Speaker 1: nails it on the head. I think he said, I've
48:23
Speaker 1: represented many people over the years, but John de Lorean
48:26
Speaker 1: had one of the most warped views of right and
48:28
Speaker 1: wrong and uh. In the documentaries with the footage, you
48:32
Speaker 1: can really get a sense that he really justified a
48:35
Speaker 1: lot of what he did. Um, you know, do you
48:38
Speaker 1: keep the car company going to keep that plan open?
48:40
Speaker 1: And that those are the things that people who have
48:43
Speaker 1: been drifting and are and are entitled, like you'll often
48:46
Speaker 1: hear someone describing them as not really having an understanding
48:50
Speaker 1: of what's truly right and wrong. That Bedminster estate eventually
48:55
Speaker 1: would wind up being sold to Donald Trump. Uh, and
49:00
Speaker 1: that's when you hear about the Bedminster golf Club. That's
49:02
Speaker 1: the one they're talking about. That was Delorean's estate. Yeah,
49:06
Speaker 1: the one that you lived by, the one that the
49:09
Speaker 1: other reason. Uh. He got divorced to for Our just
49:14
Speaker 1: a couple of months after the verdict. And although like
49:18
Speaker 1: modern day for Our really kind of gushes about him.
49:20
Speaker 1: She was like, oh, John was just the best and
49:22
Speaker 1: we had so much fun, and but she got the
49:24
Speaker 1: heck out of Dodge. He got married to Sally Baldwin
49:28
Speaker 1: in two thousand two. They had a daughter. He had
49:31
Speaker 1: plans to hatch a new car company. I think for
49:35
Speaker 1: a while he wanted to make a watch, um that
49:38
Speaker 1: was gonna be powered by your movement, which I think
49:41
Speaker 1: is a real thing now, right. I not that one,
49:44
Speaker 1: but they there are watches that are powered by that
49:47
Speaker 1: your movement, right. I I went to look up and
49:50
Speaker 1: see if any of these watches were ever made, and
49:52
Speaker 1: when I stumbled upon was a very limited edition watch.
49:57
Speaker 1: There were four and fifty of them. This is not company,
50:00
Speaker 1: but someone got ahold of his original Dolorean and made
50:03
Speaker 1: watches out of them. And I'm not a watch guy,
50:07
Speaker 1: but I saw this watch and I was like, oh, man,
50:09
Speaker 1: I think it's a nice looking Oh yeah, but it's
50:11
Speaker 1: two grands. So watch guy, that's not happening. Speaking of
50:16
Speaker 1: collector stuff, apparently in the nine American Express Christmas catalog
50:21
Speaker 1: they were offering gold twenty four gold plated Doloreans and
50:27
Speaker 1: two of them sold. So two gold plated Dolorians exist
50:30
Speaker 1: in the world. One of them is at like Peterson
50:33
Speaker 1: Auto Museum in Los Angeles, I think, but for a
50:36
Speaker 1: while it was in the lobby of Snyder National Bank
50:39
Speaker 1: of Snyder, Texas. Some Snyder oil man, I'm sure, scraped
50:43
Speaker 1: up one of the two from the American Express Christmas
50:47
Speaker 1: pocket in the lobby, and I want I don't know
50:51
Speaker 1: about that one either. I don't want something to go
50:55
Speaker 1: by unmarked. He had a daughter, another like you said,
50:58
Speaker 1: another daughter, Sheila. He was seventy seven at the time.
51:03
Speaker 1: He died three years later. After he had a daughter.
51:07
Speaker 1: He died three years later at a j d And
51:09
Speaker 1: that nuts. Yeah, he died of a stroke. But how
51:12
Speaker 1: was he buried. He was buried in a black motorcycle jacket, jeans,
51:18
Speaker 1: denim shirt, and sunglasses tucked into the jacket. Yeah, probably
51:23
Speaker 1: de Lorian sunglasses, I would guess probably. And there's ae. Yeah,
51:28
Speaker 1: it's got a d M C twelve with the doors open. Yeah,
51:32
Speaker 1: I looked it up. I'm probably gonna get the same thing. Yeah,
51:37
Speaker 1: the same headstone. Yeah, I'll be like, I just make
51:40
Speaker 1: his again, but put my name on. Uh. So we
51:43
Speaker 1: can't not talk about back to the Future a little
51:45
Speaker 1: bit here at the end um Obviously, that's where the
51:49
Speaker 1: car got so much notoriety was from that huge, huge
51:52
Speaker 1: movie that was turned into a time machine, and it
51:57
Speaker 1: was supposed to be a Mustang. They had a deal
51:58
Speaker 1: with the producers with Mustang where they were gonna, you know,
52:02
Speaker 1: it's a product placement thing, and apparently Bob Gayle, who
52:06
Speaker 1: had been working on the script with Zamka, said, uh,
52:09
Speaker 1: Doc doesn't drive effing Mustang. Even though I never I
52:14
Speaker 1: know this is nipicky, but I never thought the DeLorean
52:17
Speaker 1: was Doc's car. I figured he just sourced it for
52:19
Speaker 1: this project, right, Yeah, I never gave it that much
52:23
Speaker 1: thought either. But I mean Bob Gales like the he's
52:26
Speaker 1: like the writer of the script, you know, of course,
52:29
Speaker 1: But because the Dolorean was very undependable, much like Bruce
52:33
Speaker 1: the Shark and Jaws, this car did not work well
52:36
Speaker 1: at all, and the apparently the prop guys and the
52:40
Speaker 1: FX guys were always being called on set just to
52:43
Speaker 1: get this thing like running, and they had a really
52:45
Speaker 1: hard time filming that sequence in the parking lot. Yeah,
52:49
Speaker 1: I mean, like the car broke down. That's how bad
52:52
Speaker 1: those things were. And this was just a couple of
52:55
Speaker 1: years after it was built. This wasn't like years and
52:57
Speaker 1: years later, like this car should have been running just fine.
52:59
Speaker 1: So I find that hilarious. But there's one other thing
53:02
Speaker 1: about that movie too, to those of us to to
53:06
Speaker 1: like my my cohort and beyond, that movie completely rehabilitated
53:12
Speaker 1: and changed the opinion of the DeLorean and John Delorian himself.
53:17
Speaker 1: Had that movie not come along, he would have been
53:19
Speaker 1: known as like a coke dealer who got off, a grifter,
53:22
Speaker 1: a scam artist, and somehow being associated with Back to
53:26
Speaker 1: the Future in his car being chosen as a time
53:28
Speaker 1: machine just changed the way that people see him. I
53:31
Speaker 1: think in history. Yeah, I mean if you've gotta I
53:34
Speaker 1: don't know how much they are, but if you've got
53:35
Speaker 1: a lot of money, you can get one of those
53:38
Speaker 1: tricked out like uh like Doc Brown's that that dude
53:42
Speaker 1: from uh that wrote Ready Player one has got one
53:46
Speaker 1: famously with the you know, the little rocket boosters on
53:51
Speaker 1: the back and all that fun stuff that flex capacitor.
53:53
Speaker 1: So he's got like the time machine version while oh yeah,
53:56
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. You can you can buy those
53:58
Speaker 1: like fully kidded out, look like the Back to the
54:00
Speaker 1: Future car. That's pretty cool. I want to drive one
54:04
Speaker 1: one day. If someone's got one, I'll fly to you
54:08
Speaker 1: and have dinner with you and your family if you'll
54:10
Speaker 1: let me drive it. You should look at George. Look
54:14
Speaker 1: up George rr Martin. He has one and he's in
54:17
Speaker 1: New Merco, which you love now, so go visit him.
54:20
Speaker 1: All the all the famous rich geeks have him. So
54:26
Speaker 1: that's it hunh forre Delrian. Yeah, that's a fun one
54:28
Speaker 1: that I love these episodes. Good story, good story, Good job, Chuck. Uh.
54:33
Speaker 1: And since Chuck said good story, I said, good job.
54:36
Speaker 1: You put those two together. Carry the one you've got.
54:39
Speaker 1: Listener mail uh, oh boy, I should read this one,
54:44
Speaker 1: but it's super long, so we'll save that. Our old
54:47
Speaker 1: friend put together a best tangents list again from the
54:50
Speaker 1: year great. But well, we'll read that one later because
54:53
Speaker 1: this one. I'm gonna call this Chuck's a vacation. Hey, guys.
54:58
Speaker 1: Over the New Year's holiday, my husband, kids, errands of
55:00
Speaker 1: my sister's family rented a big condo in northern Michigan.
55:04
Speaker 1: The first morning, over breakfast, I asked my sister how
55:06
Speaker 1: she slept. Actually, pretty terrible. We must be right over
55:09
Speaker 1: the furnace. It was really loud, kept banging on and
55:11
Speaker 1: off all night. Maybe I need some white noise. And
55:14
Speaker 1: I said, you know, Charles W. Chuck Bryant prefers brown noise,
55:18
Speaker 1: and I have to say I agree with them and
55:19
Speaker 1: find brown noise superior to white noise. And yes, I
55:23
Speaker 1: said the full name, mimicking Josh introducing him. You put
55:27
Speaker 1: you play a part two. Chuck likes brown noise. I've
55:31
Speaker 1: never heard of that. Then we promptly went through the
55:33
Speaker 1: various noises and the colors, and all of us found brown,
55:36
Speaker 1: all of us to be the most soothing. The backstory
55:40
Speaker 1: here is my sister is the one who introduced me
55:41
Speaker 1: to your show. You both love it. We all love
55:43
Speaker 1: the random topics. Thank you too are a hoot. When
55:47
Speaker 1: we're wrapping up a phone call or text exchange, are
55:49
Speaker 1: running jokes. Is to say, we're really busy because we
55:51
Speaker 1: need to listen to an episode now if excuse me,
55:55
Speaker 1: I need to get back to understanding how circus families work.
55:58
Speaker 1: That's a good one. That is a good one. Then
56:00
Speaker 1: half the time we start talking about what we found
56:02
Speaker 1: fascinating about the last episode. Circling back, my sister tried
56:06
Speaker 1: the brown noise, slept like a baby for the rest
56:08
Speaker 1: of the vacation, and so Chuck really saved the day.
56:11
Speaker 1: And that is from Hillary. Are uh ved? NL And
56:16
Speaker 1: uh she didn't mention her sister's name, which is really selfish.
56:20
Speaker 1: Well thanks a lot, Hillary, Uh and you're unnamed sister.
56:25
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, of course, no, of course. Um. If you
56:28
Speaker 1: want to be like Hillary and not be selfish, you
56:31
Speaker 1: can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart
56:34
Speaker 1: radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production
56:40
Speaker 1: of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
56:43
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56:46
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