By the time John was born, Zachary had found employment as a union organizer at the Ford Motor Company factory in nearby Highland Park.

[12] She generally tolerated Zachary's intermittent episodes of erratic behavior; but during several of his more violent periods, she took her sons to live with her sister in Los Angeles, California, where they stayed for a year or so at a time.

He worked as a draftsman for the Public Lighting Commission for a year and a half to improve his family's financial status then returned to Lawrence to finish his degree.

While Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler had begun producing affordable mainstream products designed to cater to the rising postwar middle class, Packard had retained its prewar notions of high-end, precisely engineered luxury cars.

[22] In 1956, DeLorean accepted a salary offer of $16,000 (equivalent to US$179,310 in 2023) with a bonus program, choosing to work at GM's Pontiac division as an assistant to chief engineer Pete Estes and general manager Semon "Bunkie" Knudsen.

Shortly after the Firebird's introduction, DeLorean turned his attention to the development of an all-new Grand Prix, the division's personal luxury car based on the full-sized Pontiac line.

Sales were lagging by this time, but the 1969 model would have its own distinct body shell with drivetrain and chassis components from the intermediate-sized Pontiac A-body (Tempest, LeMans, GTO).

The new model offered a sportier, high performance, somewhat smaller, and lower-priced alternative to other personal luxury cars on the market, such as the Ford Thunderbird, Buick Riviera, Lincoln Continental Mark III, and Oldsmobile Toronado.

His frequent public appearances helped to solidify his image as a "rebel" corporate businessman, with his trendy dress style and casual banter.

[citation needed] Even as General Motors experienced revenue declines, Pontiac remained highly profitable under DeLorean, and despite his growing reputation as a corporate maverick, on February 15, 1969, he was again promoted.

At a time when business executives were typically conservative, low-key individuals in three-piece suits, DeLorean wore long sideburns and unbuttoned shirts.

The first was the San Diego Chargers, as part of a syndicate led by Gene Klein and Sam Schulman that bought a controlling interest for $10 million in August 1966.

[28][29] The other was the New York Yankees of which he was one of fifteen investors led by George Steinbrenner and Michael Burke who completed the purchase from CBS for $10 million on January 3, 1973.

He became friends with James T. Aubrey, president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, and was introduced to celebrities such as financier Kirk Kerkorian, Chris-Craft chairman Herb Siegel, entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., and The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson.

When he was appointed, Chevrolet was having financial and organizational troubles, and GM president Ed Cole needed a manager in that position to sort things out.

Redesigns for the Corvette and Nova were also delayed, and unit sales had still not recovered from the past four years of turmoil, much of that because of the bad publicity surrounding the Corvair and well-publicized quality-control issues affecting other Chevy models, including defective motor mounts that led to an unprecedented recall of 6.7 million Chevrolets built between 1965 and 1969.

However, the idea of him assuming that position was almost intolerable to GM executives, and on April 2, 1973, he announced that he was leaving the company, telling the press, "I want to do things in the social area.

[26] GM gave him a Florida Cadillac franchise as a retirement gift,[23] and DeLorean took over the presidency of The National Alliance of Businessmen, a charitable organization with the mission of employing Americans in need, founded by Lyndon Johnson and Henry Ford II.

DeLorean was sharply critical of the direction GM had taken by the start of the 1970s, as well as objecting to the idea of using rebates to sell cars: "There's no forward response at General Motors to what the public wants today.

"[26]After DeLorean left General Motors, Patrick Wright, author and former Business Week reporter, approached him with the idea of writing a book based on his experiences there.

A two-seat sports car prototype was shown in the mid-1970s called the DeLorean Safety Vehicle (DSV), with its bodyshell designed by Italdesign's Giorgetto Giugiaro.

This was compounded by unexpectedly lukewarm reviews from critics and the public, who generally felt the uniqueness of the DeLorean's styling did not compensate for the higher price and lower horsepower relative to other sport coupes on the market.

While interest in the DeLorean quickly dwindled, competing models with lower price tags and more powerful engines (such as the Chevrolet Corvette) sold in record numbers during 1980–81 in spite of the ongoing recession.

By February 1982, more than half of the roughly 7,000 DeLoreans produced remained unsold, DMC was $175 million in debt, and the Dunmurry factory was placed in receivership.

[3] In January 1982, the British government discovered that DeLorean had built just 8,500 cars and that the equivalent of 23 million pounds, almost half the funds received in 1974, had been transferred to a Panamanian account under the name of General Product Development Services, the company intended to subsidize Lotus.

After going into receivership in February 1982, DMC produced another 2,000 cars until John DeLorean's arrest in late October, at which point liquidation proceedings were undertaken, and the factory was seized by the British government.

Hoffman (whose name was redacted on the original indictment) also stated that he was aware of DeLorean's financial troubles before he contacted him, and had heard him admit that he needed $17 million "in a hurry" to prevent DMC's imminent insolvency.

"[42] On September 21, 1985, DeLorean was indicted on charges he defrauded investors and committed tax evasion by diverting millions of dollars raised for the company to himself.

[26] During his marriage to Ferrare, he and his family primarily resided in a 15-room, eighth- and ninth-floor duplex at 834 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan; this apartment was sold to businessman Reginald Lewis in 1992.

And I'm worried about the public being cheated out of $1 million in city and county subsidies offered to DeLorean Motors Reimagined, a pure startup with no track record entering an extremely difficult industry.