‘I’ve Got a Lot of Things to Do’ : At 62, Exuberant DeLorean Plans a Comeback

DETROIT —  He’s been badly bruised but not beaten.

He’s spent time as a punch line for countless jokes nationwide, but has retained his soaring self-confidence.

And now that he has endured and won five years’ worth of legal battles, John Z. DeLorean says that, at 62, he is coming back.

“I wouldn’t trade my life and who I am now for anyone in the world,” DeLorean said in an interview Thursday. “My life is not over. I’ve got a lot of things to do. I’ve lost some time, and I’ve got to make up for it.”

In the afterglow of his apparent victory this week in the last of the court cases pending against him, DeLorean talked of ambitious new plans. He vowed that within 60 days, he will announce plans for his return to the industry that made him rich and famous--to build yet another exotic car bearing his name.

DeLorean asserted that he has at least two offers to build cars overseas--including one option to build an extremely high-priced model in West Germany.

Willing Investors

Despite the fact that his first car company collapsed amid widespread charges of fraud and embezzlement, plenty of investors are still willing to offer him financial backing, DeLorean insisted.

“The money is there, just sitting in the bank, waiting for me to decide what to do. We have investors in place,” DeLorean said.

“In fact, it’s much easier to get people to invest now than it was the first time around,” when he was starting DeLorean Motor Co. in the late 1970s, he added.

“I almost can’t take an airplane ride now without people offering me financing,” he said. “People know what I’ve been through, and they know I’ve been able to endure and come out on top.”

Indeed, the one-time General Motors executive does seem to have beaten the odds to come out on top in every legal challenge that has been thrown at him. He was acquitted in two criminal trials, one on drug trafficking charges in Los Angeles in 1984, and a second on racketeering and fraud charges in Detroit in 1986. And this week, he seemed to emerge a winner in his last remaining court battle, the bankruptcy case of his failed DeLorean Motor.

In a tentative settlement reached here late Tuesday with a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, DeLorean emerged with nearly $1 million in his pocket, the prospect of obtaining at least $2 million more by 1989, control of a Utah snow-grooming equipment maker worth $28 million and title to a $6.5-million New York cooperative apartment. In return, he must pay $9.36 million--or little more than 9 cents on the dollar--to his long list of creditors by January, 1989.

“The terms of the settlement I think are very favorable for me,” DeLorean said. “I’m pleased.”

Residue of Bitterness

Despite feeling vindicated, however, DeLorean remains deeply bitter at the prosecutors and other government officials--who, he believes, sought to destroy him through his two criminal trials, and at the financial collapse of his auto company. To this day, he insists that DeLorean Motor, which from the outset suffered from poor sales brought on by the wretched quality of his gull-winged, stainless-steel sports cars, was well on its way to becoming a success; it was brought down, DeLorean says, only by the British government’s decision to suspend its financial backing for his Northern Ireland factory.

Now, while couching his phrases in the loving terms of his born-again Christian faith, DeLorean makes it clear he plans to seek revenge.

I hold no malice against them,” he said, “but they are pretty small men who were trying to make a name for themselves by stepping on my carcass.

“The problem with fighting, even if you win the fight, if you are not careful it will destroy you. You become like the animals you are fighting against. Without my faith I could have become like that.

“I’m not bitter toward anyone . . . but when a government commits multiple dozens of crimes in prosecuting someone, they have to be held accountable.”

Now that he is out from under all of his legal problems, DeLorean added, he plans to meet with his attorneys in Los Angeles in mid-June to plan a lawsuit against the British government, seeking “hundreds of millions” in damages for the government’s suspension of its financial backing to DeLorean Motor. He also indicated that he is planning a suit against the United States for its failed efforts to put him behind bars.

“This (bankruptcy settlement) puts us in a position to become the aggressor,” he said.