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John Z. De Lorean Biography |
John Z. De Lorean (born John Zachary Delorean January 6, 1925 in Detroit, Michigan) is a personality and executive in the U.S. automobile industry. He is most known for developing the De Lorean sports car, which was later featured in the movie Back to the Future.
His career began in the 1950s with Pontiac. He developed the Pontiac GTO, first introduced in 1964. By 1970 he was managing Chevrolet and was tipped to be president of General Motors. Flamboyant, he was frequently seen with some of the world's most beautiful women including supermodel Christina Ferrare whom he married. He chafed at GM's management restrictions and resigned to found the De Lorean Motor Company (DMC), whose sole product was a 2-seater sports car, the DMC-12, but generally known simply as the De Lorean. The De Lorean was skinned in stainless steel and featured gull-wing doors.
On October 19, 1982, De Lorean was charged with the crime of selling cocaine to undercover police (at the Los Angeles International Airport); De Lorean successfully defended himself with a procedural defense, arguing that the police had asked him to sell them the cocaine (and threatened him as a form of coercion); he was found "not guilty" due to entrapment on August 16, 1984. His attorney stated in Time (March 19, 1984), "This [was] a fictitious crime. Without the Government, there would be no crime." |
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