The Man Behind The Legend
John DeLorean’s namesake car earned legendary status in Back to the Future, but nostalgia for this feel-good movie has long hidden DeLorean’s most bitter sins. From his scandalous personal life to his bombshell court case, DeLorean was a genius with a truly dark side.
1. His Family Was Messed Up
John DeLorean was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1925 to immigrant parents—and while cars were in his blood, so was turmoil. His father, Zachary, worked for Ford Motors as a union organizer, but his mother Kathryn often carted John and his siblings off to escape their father’s violent moods. Then, when the pair finally divorced in 1942, Zachary became estranged from his family and fell into addiction.
It didn’t stop John from following in his father’s footsteps, and in more ways than one.
Cass Technical High School Yearbook Staff, Wikimedia Commons
2. He Was Painfully Poor
DeLorean grew up dirt poor; his brother described how he and John would wear “clothes that my mother made out of sacks”. Nonetheless, he seemed determined to get out of these dire straits as fast as possible. After studying industrial engineering and serving in WWII, he worked his way up the ladder at Chrysler and then Packard.
Then he got the call that changed his life.
Chevrolet pre-1978, Wikimedia Commons
3. He Was An Innovator
DeLorean’s time at Packard wasn’t spent idly; he helped create its “Twin-Ultramatic” automatic transmission. Soon, however, he felt he was at a crossroads with the company, which is when he received a big break. Around 1956, the vice president of engineering at General Motors called him up and, based on his stellar performance at Packard, offered him the choice of a job in any of General Motors’ departments.
John DeLorean was about to make a name for himself.
Bernard Gotfryd, Wikimedia Commons
4. He Created A Famous Muscle Car
DeLorean chose the Pontiac division at General Motors—and came utterly alive as an engineer. He began churning out innovations, particularly on the Pontiac GTO, and was soon the brain to beat when it came to performance muscle cars.
It’s no wonder, then, that less than a decade after coming to General Motors, DeLorean was the head of Pontiac. Indeed, at 40, he was the youngest division head in the company’s history. But other things were changing too.
Greg Gjerdingen from Willmar, USA, Wikimedia Commons
5. He Had A Model Marriage
When DeLorean was just getting started in the automotive world, he married Elizabeth Higgins on September 3, 1594. On the outside, it seemed to be a stable, steady life, and the pair managed to stay together throughout DeLorean’s meteoric rise at General Motors. Yet soon after he became the head of Pontiac, his personal life began to unspool.
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6. He Hated His Colleagues
DeLorean was unlike many of the people he worked with and for, and he didn’t take a typical “executive” approach to his work. According to his brother, DeLorean once described the executive floor of General Motors as “the most boring…thing in the world”. Besides, instead of making decisions on high, DeLorean lived by the theory that “no one knows more about the broom than the janitor,” and often ceded authority to those with hands-on know-how.
It soon presented problems.
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7. He Was A Rebel
As one of the top executives at General Motors, DeLorean was expected to present a respectable, buttoned-up image that radiated trust and responsibility. DeLorean’s response was a slap in the face. Uncomfortable with conformity, he honed a devil-may-care attitude and an outrageous fashion sense that included many scarves, open shirts, and flared pants. That wasn’t all.
8. He Got Plastic Surgery
DeLorean may have been flouting General Motors’ prevalent culture, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t obsessively image conscious—and self-conscious. Around this time, in addition to growing large, rock-star-like sideburns, he also underwent surgery on his chin to augment his jawline.
He was leaving respectability in his dust, and his old life went with it.
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9. He Married A Teenager
By 1969, DeLorean and his wife Elizabeth had called it quits. His next move was more scandalous than any divorce. With the ink barely dry on his papers, the much-older DeLorean married 19-year-old Kelly Harmon, an actress and model most famous for appearing in Tic Tac commercials.
It was the beginning of a pattern…and a destructive one at that.
10. He Was A Celebrity
Around the same time as his divorce and second marriage, DeLorean moved over to the Chevrolet division at General Motors. The switchover made him lose none of his flair: He now jet-setted around the world to make public appearances, and was friends with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr and Tonight Show host Johnny Carson. But he was about to hit some turbulence.
11. He Walked The Walk
With many at General Motors still annoyed at DeLorean’s outsized personality, the car maverick worked twice as hard to deliver results. He succeeded spectacularly…at least at first. By reorganizing production schedules and streamlining labor on Chevrolet’s products, DeLorean pulled up the slumping division to record sales, with the Chevrolet division alone matching the sales of the entire Ford Motor Company.
Then disaster struck.
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12. He Launched A New Car
Starting in the 1970s, DeLorean met his nemesis. The Chevrolet Vega was supposed to be, according to DeLorean, “the highest quality product ever built by Chevrolet”. DeLorean tried to make good on his promise, ordering extra inspectors and road-testing thousands of cars. But not even John DeLorean could control everything, and he could certainly never avoid catastrophe.
Chevrolet pre-1978, Wikimedia Commons
13. His Workers Turned On Him
In 1972, General Motors altered production details and laid off more than 800 workers, including many of the inspectors DeLorean had hired for the Vega. The consequences were brutal. Workers began vandalizing the assembly line in retaliation, usually by leaving off parts or installing others improperly. Shortly after, they went on a one-month strike, with non-functioning Vegas now littering the factory lot.
The fallout left a spreading stain on DeLorean’s legacy.
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14. He Averted Disaster
The 1972 Chevy Vega is one of the most maligned cars in history, due in no small part to the internal dramas John Delorean oversaw at General Motors. That year, thanks to the assembly-line issues and the strike, dealers got far fewer cars than could meet the demand, and customers looked likely to turn on the company.
But there was a twist: DeLorean wasn’t a department head for nothing, and actually righted the Vega sales by the next year. He more than earned his reward.
dave_7 from Lethbridge, Canada, Wikimedia Commons
15. He Got A Boost
The same year as the Chevy Vega debacle, DeLorean got his biggest promotion yet when he became the vice president of car and truck production—for all General Motors lines. There was even more to this. People began to whisper around the office halls that he was a shoo-in for president of the entire company.
Those gossips must have been stunned at the next development.
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16. He Quit While He Was On Top
In April 1973, John Delorean held a press conference and made a jaw-dropping statement: He was leaving General Motors entirely. As he told the room, “I want to do things in the social area. I have to do them, and unfortunately the nature of our business just didn't permit me to do as much as I wanted”.
For DeLorean, then, it was a positive move. But once more, the gossips had something else to say.
17. He May Have Been Kicked Out
John DeLorean had been a star at General Motors, but the executive branch of the company continued to despise and fear him in equal measure. As such, some people in-the-know claimed that DeLorean had been fired before he could ever become president. Certainly, there was no love lost between DeLorean and General Motors, and DeLorean would consistently criticize the “bland” cars they made after his tenure.
DeLorean was now in his “free agent” era…and he certainly knew what to do with it.
18. He Dated Starlets
Around the time of his exit from General Motors, DeLorean also exited his second marriage to Kelly Harmon, divorcing her in 1972. He quickly went wild. Never one to shy away from the high life, he publicly dated actress Ursula Andress and Tina Sinatra.
When he did finally choose to settle down, even this was unorthodox.
Silver Screen Collection, Getty Images
19. He Had A May–December Romance
While he was single, DeLorean decided he wanted to have a child, and adopted a boy, Zachary, as a baby. Then, when Zachary was just 14 months old, the 48-year-old DeLorean jumped into his third marriage to 22-year-old model Cristina Ferrare. Ferrare took on Zachary as her own, and they also had a daughter, Kathryn, together.
In many ways, DeLorean had met his match.
20. He Was New Money
From his humble beginnings, DeLorean had now gotten very used to luxury. As it happened, this was compatible with Ferrare, who also came from a working class family before making it to Hollywood as a teenager. The pair continued a glamorous lifestyle together; as one of Ferrare’s pillows stated in needlepoint, “Nouveau is better than not Riche at all”.
But when Ferrare took DeLorean for better or for worse, she couldn’t have known she was getting “worse”.
![Gettyimages - 50680710, John Z. Delorean [& Family];Cristina Ferrare [& Family] Auto designer John Z. DeLorean (1925 - 2005) walking his dogs with his wife, Max Factor model Cristina Ferrare, and their son, Zachary.](https://www.factinate.com/storage/app/media/factinate/2025/8/7/17.jpg)
21. He Convinced A Government To Back Him
DeLorean left General Motors with a plan: He was going to do it his way, and no one would be able to tell him otherwise. Using his significant business savvy and his excellent sales skills, he drummed up the money—much of it through the British government—to found his own company, the DeLorean Motor company.
The results were…something.
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22. He Made A Car Unlike Any Other
DeLorean seemed physically incapable of doing things like anyone else, and the DMC DeLorean he entered into production in the mid 1970s was an ambitious, alien car. Sold as an “ethical” machine, it combined a distinct stainless steel body with gull-wing doors, and was powered by a “Douvrin” V6 engine.
It also immediately gave DeLorean massive headaches.
Artyom Svetlov, Wikimedia Commons
23. He Sold Gold DeLoreans
Some of the DeLorean’s problems lay in its creator’s near-limitless ambitions. In 1980, John placed an ad in an American Express catalog for a 24-karat gold-plated DeLorean, which was to have a limited production of only 100 and go for an eye-popping $85,000. It was the epitome of luxury, but the result was embarrassing. In the end, only four models were sold.
Still, that was the least of his problems.
24. He Was Way Behind Schedule
Amid his design worries, John DeLorean experienced a slew of production delays; as it turns out, starting your own car company from scratch may not be as easy as it looks. As a result, the DeLorean car didn’t even get to market until almost a decade after John founded his company. DeLorean would find out just how bad this timing was.
25. He Hit The Market At The Wrong Time
When DeLorean started his great venture, car sales were steady, even rising. But in 1980, an economic recession hit America, and cars were now standing, empty, undriven and unpurchased, in car lots around the country. When the daring DeLorean hit the road in January 1981, it faced an uphill climb for customers.
But it wasn’t just the recession that threatened the car.
Jeremy from Sydney, Australia, Wikimedia Commons
26. It Flopped
With his flashy exit from General Motors, everyone had been waiting with bated breath for what kind of car DeLorean would produce without executive interference. The public was in for a huge disappointment. Those consumers brave enough to rejoice in the car’s unusual aesthetics nonetheless couldn’t get over its relatively low horsepower and hefty price tag.
Bitterly enough, while Chevrolet’s new Corvette, a direct rival, sold impressive numbers even in the recession, more than half the DeLoreans made went unsold. This wasn’t just a problem for John DeLorean’s ego, either.
27. He Was Bleeding Money
By 1982, DeLorean and his company were in huge financial trouble. DeLorean was hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, and his main factory was under receivership, essentially being held for financial ransom until DeLorean paid up. DeLorean, however, was used to finding money from nothing—but then again, that was just the problem.
28. The Government Was Onto Him
That January, the British government made a disturbing discovery about DeLorean. The British had poured incredible amounts of money into DeLorean’s endeavor, but they now found that much of those funds had been transferred into a Panamanian account and had never been heard from again. At least, they never saw it.
It was enough to raise alarm bells…but in a few months, DeLorean’s whole house was burning down.
29. He Was Insolvent
With DeLorean’s cars tanking and the money missing, the government began to make moves to declare his company officially insolvent. It was horrific news for the overachieving DeLorean, who had already dumped so many resources into the project, not to mention apparently partaken in some seriously shady practices.
His “solution” to all this ruined him.
30. He Received A Fateful Call
Around October 1982, an old neighbor of DeLorean’s, James Hoffman, approached him. His proposal was a bombshell. Hoffman asked DeLorean if he wanted to get into dealing—and he didn’t mean cars. He told DeLorean that if he put up a certain amount of cash for a deal on some white powder, he would receive an enormous sum of money, going a long way to paying off his debts.
For DeLorean, there were only two problems, and neither of them were his conscience.
31. He Was Terrified
DeLorean was eager for an influx of cash, but he had too little money available to put up for the initial investment in Hoffman’s “deal”. More than that, he was terrified that the authorities would catch him in the act of distributing, and asked Hoffman repeatedly to make sure he could never be connected to the deal.
Hoffman, ever obliging, allowed for a financing scheme, assured DeLorean he would never be caught, and invited him to fly into Los Angeles for a hotel meeting with his bosses. Then it all unraveled.
32. He Said Four Famous Words
John DeLorean walked into Room 501 at the Sheraton Plaza Le Reina near LAX and met the group of men who were set to make his introduction into the underworld. They took out a suitcase in front of him and showed the white, powdery wares inside, whereupon DeLorean uttered the now-infamous words: “It’s better than gold”.
These four words led to his doom.
33. They Busted Him
Within minutes of uttering this, FBI agents—who had been surveilling DeLorean this whole time—stormed the room and detained him. As DeLorean’s head spun, the agents charged him with trying to buy and then turn around and resell a massive 220 pounds of Colombian product. The charges carried a 67-year sentence behind bars.
It was only in the coming days that DeLorean understood just how badly he’d been betrayed.
34. He Was Double-Crossed
DeLorean had been so desperate for money that he’d never bothered to wonder if his former neighbor James Hoffman, who’d gotten DeLorean into this in the first place, was worthy of his trust. Well, he wasn’t—and he was hiding an enormous secret. Hoffman, who had his own charges for dealing, was actually an FBI informant who pegged DeLorean early on as someone who would be willing to blur a lot of lines to get more money.
But even more was about to come out.
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35. The Public Gloated
John DeLorean’s arrest and subsequent trial set the tabloids ablaze and made the public see the maverick motor executive in a new light. Everyone was salivating at it: Talk show host Phil Donahue crowed about how “the mighty have fallen,” while DeLorean’s own defense attorney admitted, “‘OK, I guess rich people can do this kind of stuff’ is what people were thinking”.
But DeLorean had an ace up his sleeve.
36. He Had Attack Lawyers
At his highly-publicized trial, DeLorean’s lawyers put up a defense that was worth every penny, arguing that DeLorean’s involvement in the FBI’s scheme amounted to nothing more than entrapment. Although James Hoffman claimed it was DeLorean who came to him, evidence showed the opposite was true. Even besides this, there were also Hoffman and the FBI’s attempts to pull DeLorean back in whenever he wanted to back out.
Yet it wasn’t all victories for DeLorean.
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37. He Was Immoral
During his court case, DeLorean’s most unethical side came out, as prosecutors examined his descent into the underworld in intense detail. Some of the stories were downright petty in their criminality: While promoting the failing DeLorean, John allegedly once changed his lunch receipt for his business expenses from $17 to nearly $200.
With all his folly on display, DeLorean waited on tenterhooks for the verdict.
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38. He Won His Case And Lost His Fans
In August of 1984, the court ruled in John DeLorean’s favor, agreeing that the FBI had committed entrapment. But it was a bittersweet outcome. He might have gotten off, but everyone knew the contortions of his conscience now. As one commenter put it: “Morally, John was corrupt. Legally, he didn’t do anything wrong”.
To add insult to injury, DeLorean’s auto company had completely collapsed by then. More consequences were to come.
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39. He Understood The Situation
Although DeLorean was acquitted of all charges, the damage to his reputation was already done, and it was irreversible. As a businessman, DeLorean knew his name was worth nothing anymore. When someone asked what his next automotive plans were after his acquittal, he answered dryly: “Would you buy a used car from me?”
And when it rained, it poured.
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40. His Wife Left Him
Throughout these troubles, DeLorean’s much younger wife, Cristina Ferrare, had stayed by his side as steadfastly as he could have hoped. But that all came to an end. Almost as soon as he was acquitted, Ferrare left him. After all, it couldn’t have been the Nouveau Riche life she’d been promised when she’d first married DeLorean.
She did leave him a parting “gift”.
41. He Had A Bitter Divorce
Ferrare ended up trading in DeLorean in much the same way he had traded in his first two wives: Just two weeks after their divorce, Ferrare married an entertainment executive who could keep her in the comfort she wanted. She also did much worse; in a later interview, she claimed, “I believe that John is a sociopath”.
He certainly did have eccentricities.
42. He Became A Zealot
Around the time of his arrest, DeLorean underwent unsettling changes. In 1982, after undergoing a “full-immersion baptism,” DeLorean converted to fundamentalist Christianity. This definitely affected his business affairs. He soon renamed one of his satellite companies from “Logan Manufacturing” to “Ecclesiastes 9:10-11-12,” though he likely also made the change to delay his creditors.
By then, those creditors were piling up.
43. The Wolves Were At His Door
With DeLorean’s brand in tatters, his power over his image crumbled too. More and more stories about his unsavory dealings and money-handling came out, with many bearing similar details to the shady Panamanian account scandal. Soon he was fighting over 40 cases against him, forcing him to sell off much of the valuable property he had accumulated over the years.
The drama didn’t help him keep the friends he’d once had—but then again, he hadn’t been a very good friend to them.
44. He Cheated His Friends
Amidst the swirl of allegations around DeLorean for everything from fraud and embezzlement to tax and loan evasions were accusations that he had cheated the people closest to him. Although DeLorean had allegedly breezily defrauded the British government, his one-time friend Johnny Carson was also reportedly a victim of his schemes, and lost out on over a million dollars.
DeLorean, meanwhile, kept doing what he did best.
45. He Turned To The Internet
These events slowed John DeLorean down, but he could never admit complete defeat, and kept trying to get back in the automotive world long after his trial and ignominious fall. He built plans for a monorail transport and a sequel to the DeLorean, but each of these ventures fell through, forcing DeLorean to increasingly support himself by selling luxury watches on the internet under DeLorean Time.
In the meantime, his family suffered.
DMC Watch - 1981- A Chronograph style watch for fans of the Delorean!, Videobob Moseley
46. His Children Were In Pain
DeLorean’s children, Zachary and Kathryn, were more affected than anyone by their father’s fall from grace. In the 2019 documentary Framing John DeLorean, Kathryn admitted that it took years of therapy to work through her father’s sins, while Zachary expressed still-simmering anger at John’s actions.
But there was a bright spot in all of this.
'Framing John DeLorean' Trailer, hollywoodstreams
47. His Car Was Immortalized
In 1985, with DeLorean’s comeuppance at trial still the gossip on everyone’s lips, the car maker got his last, and best, big break. The film Back to the Future featured a DMC DeLorean as its time machine, albeit using a mysterious “flux capacitor” as the central time-shifting mechanism.
Back to the Future was an instant classic, and gave DeLorean his first piece of truly, incorruptibly good press in years. He showed his thanks with a heartbreaking gesture.
48. He Wrote An Emotional Letter
DeLorean was so grateful for what Back to the Future had done—and continues to do—for his legacy that he wrote a personal letter to Bob Gale, the film’s writer and producer. In it, he thanked Gale profusely for picking the DeLorean as the time machine, rather than going with the other idea of a refrigerator.
49. He Found Stability
Incredibly, John DeLorean seemed to find some kind of peace near the end of his life. In 2000, he was living with his partner Sally Baldwin in New Jersey. Shortly after their marriage in 2002, Sally also gave birth to DeLorean’s third child, Sheila, when DeLorean was well into his 70s.
His end, though, was as explosive as his life had ever been.
50. His Funeral Was A Splashy Affair
In 2005, John DeLorean passed at the age of 80 from a stroke. His send-off was legendary. Not only did a motorcade of DeLoreans lead the procession, but John’s characteristically egotistical gravestone was also made in the shape of a DeLorean car, complete with open gull wings.
51. He Was A Contradiction
In the end, DeLorean’s legacy was mixed: Though a famous flop, the DeLorean can fetch six figures today. Moreover, those who do manage to get their hands on a DMC then have to brace themselves for one of two comments: “Where’s your flux capacitor”? And “What substances do you have hidden in your car”?
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