John DeLorean was a General Motors designer who developed the Pontiac GTO, according to the New York Sun. Earlier in his career, he worked at Packard, per the Detroit Historical Society, before GM hired him in 1956.
He founded his own car company in 1975, per Britannica, to build the DMC-12, a stainless-steel sports car with gull-wing doors. For its factory, he chose Northern Ireland over Puerto Rico after the British government offered a deal to boost the region’s economy.
DeLorean arrived in 1978 to start work on a plant in Dunmurry, on the outskirts of Belfast, and production began in 1981, according to the Irish News. Britain provided about £77 million in assistance between July 1978 and February 1982, according to a report by the Northern Ireland Audit Office.
The plan called for a workforce of 2,000 and about 30,000 cars a year. Employment peaked at 2,600, and the factory built just over 8,000 cars, per the audit report. Auto Express put the total at around 9,000.
The company went into receivership on Feb. 19, 1982, after Britain declined to provide more aid, The New York Times reported, as reposted by DeLorean Directory. “Very considerable management and marketing mistakes have been made over the estimate of sales,” Northern Ireland Secretary James Prior said. The plant closed that October.
DeLorean was arrested in Los Angeles on Oct. 19, 1982, the day the British government announced the company’s closure, according to History.com. He was charged with conspiring to obtain and distribute $24 million worth of cocaine. A jury acquitted him in August 1984 after successfully arguing that he had been entrapped by the police.
Northern Ireland spent years trying to recoup the money. By January 2003, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment had recovered about £40 million, or roughly £19.7 million after costs, according to the audit report. Most of it came from a $35 million settlement with the company’s auditors, Arthur Andersen, in 1997.
The DMC-12 had a second act. It became a collector’s item and appeared in Back to the Future in 1985. In October, Claudia Wells, who played Jennifer Parker in the original film, rode in one again at a fan meet-up outside the McFly house.
The Dunmurry site is now owned by Linamar Light Metals, per the Irish News. In June 2024, 62 DMC-12s drove on the factory’s old test track after it was cleared of vegetation at a cost of £10,000.
DeLorean was not the only carmaker whose far-flung dream fell short. In 1945, Henry Ford sold Fordlandia, his Amazon rubber town, to Brazil for $250,000 after spending about $20 million.