Media post: 1.21 Gigawatts?

Have you seen the 1985 movie Back to the Future? If so, you know what 1.21 Gigawatts is needed for. As Michael J. Fox finds out in the movie, it’s the amount of energy that a Delorean time travel machine needs to work. Back to the Future was a great movie but did you ever wonder what the story is behind the Delorean? The story behind this car is just as interesting too. With the help of Suburban Chrysler of Ann Arbor, MI, a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram dealer, we got the whole story concerning John Z. DeLorean and the car that bears his name.

John Z. DeLorean was born in 1925 in Detroit. He was the son of a Ford Motor Company employee so he grew up immersed in the world of car manufacturing. Young John DeLorean aspired to become a manufacturing engineer and he realized his dream when he graduated with a master’s in mechanical engineering from the Chrysler Institute. His first job post-college was working for Packard R&D developing new automotive technologies. After a few years, a more exciting position General Motors opened up and left Packard. In less than a decade, he was promoted to the head of the Chevrolet Division (1969).

The late 1960s were difficult times in Detroit. Delorean in his autobiography, DeLorean, wrote that he had ethical problems with GM’s management and, as a result, decided to resign. He had other ideas, though. Resigning allowed him to become an independent consultant with enough spare time to raise funds to design and build his own dream car. In 1975, he founded the DeLorean Motor Company to build this dream car. That same year, DeLorean created a separate company, Composite Technology Corporation, to develop cutting-edge automotive construction materials. This is what Delorean was working on at GM so he had background in the technology.

To build his dream car, the DMC-12, DeLorean hired the Giorgetto Giugiaro of Ital Design and Colin Chapman of Lotus. Both of these men were highly regarded in the automotive design world. Next he needed a place to build his factory. After looking into Puerto Rico and Ireland as sites, he settled on Northern Ireland. Delorean opened his factory in 1981 and soon started making the Delorean DMC-12. As the story goes, the early cars were a mess. DeLorean actually had to set up rebuilding facilities on the East and West Coasts of the U.S. to fix completed cars before they could be delivered to dealers.

Despite all the setbacks, there were orders on the books for thousands of DMC-12s. This isn’t surprising as the DMC-12 was a gorgeous car to look at and was receiving a lot of press. The result was that DeLorean tried to ramp production substantially. Unfortunately, this created cash flow problems that he had trouble overcoming. In his desperation, DeLorean pursued “questionable sources of funds” and ended up in an infamous DEA cocaine bust in 1982. His company collapsed shortly thereafter.

Today the DeLorean Motorcar legend is kept alive by a company in Humble, Texas. They have purchased the DeLorean trademark and most of the original parts left behind when the company went out of business.