John DeLorean
American engineer and executive in the U.S. automobile industry (1925–2005)
John Zachary DeLorean ( də-LOR-ee-ən; January 6, 1925 – March 19, 2005) was an American engineer, inventor, and executive in the U.S. automobile industry. He is widely known as founder of the DeLorean Motor Company, as well as for his work at General Motors.
DeLorean managed the development of several vehicles throughout his career, including the Pontiac GTO, Pontiac Firebird, Pontiac Grand Prix, Chevrolet Cosworth Vega, and DMC DeLorean, which was featured in the 1985 film Back to the Future. He was the youngest division chief in General Motors history and then left to start the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) in 1973. Production delays meant that DMC's first car did not reach the consumer market until 1981, when a depressed buying market was compounded by lukewarm reviews from critics and the public. After a year, the DeLorean had failed to recover its $175 million investment costs, unsold cars accumulated, and the company was in financial trouble.
In October 1982, DeLorean was charged with cocaine trafficking after FBI informant James Hoffman solicited him as financier in a scheme to sell 220 lb (100 kg) of cocaine worth approximately $24 million. DMC was insolvent at the time and $17 million in debt. Hoffman had approached DeLorean, a man he barely knew with no prior criminal record, and DeLorean was able to successfully defend himself at trial under the procedural defense of police entrapment. The trial ended in a not guilty verdict in August 1984, by which time DMC had filed for bankruptcy and ceased operations.
“John DeLorean” enters the record as american engineer and executive in the U.S. automobile industry (1925–2005). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what John, DeLorean and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q558510. VIAF identifies the subject as 94720895. The Library of Congress control number is n80012343. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 2005, 1985 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “John DeLorean” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.