Cars - De Lorean Motor Company

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	Cars - De Lorean Motor Company

The De Lorean Motor Company (DMC) was a short-lived automobile manufacturing company formed by automobile industry executive John De Lorean in 1975. It is remembered for the one distinctive model it produced – the stainless steel De Lorean DMC-12 sports car featuring gull-wing doors – and for its brief and turbulent history, ending in receivership and bankruptcy in 1982. Near the end, in a desperate attempt to raise the funds his company needed to survive, John De Lorean was filmed appearing to accept money to take part in drug trafficking, but was subsequently acquitted, on the basis of entrapment, of charges brought against him.

Although the company had ceased to exist before the first movie was made, the De Lorean DMC-12 shot to worldwide fame in the Back to the Future movie trilogy as the car transformed into a time machine by eccentric scientist Doctor Emmett Brown.

History

Beginning

John De Lorean founded the De Lorean Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan on October 241975. He was already well-known in the automobile industry as a first-rate engineer, maverick business innovator, jetsetter and youngest person to become a General Motors executive. Investment capital came primarily in the form of business loans from the Bank of America and from the formation of various partnerships and private investment from select parties, including The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson. Money was also gained later through a dealer investment program in which those dealerships offering De Lorean's cars for sale were made shareholders in the company.

De Lorean also sought lucrative incentives from various government and economic organizations to pay for constructing the company's automobile manufacturing facilities. To gain these, he looked to build his first factory in a country or area where unemployment was particularly high. One candidate was the Republic of Ireland, although the country's then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Des O'Malley, decided not to support the project. A deal in Puerto Rico was about to be agreed when De Lorean took up a last-minute offer from the UK's Northern Ireland Development Agency. As part of this offer, De Lorean was under the impression that the British government would provide his company with Export Credit financing. This would provide a loan of 80% of the wholesale cost of the vehicles ($20,000) upon completion and delivery for shipping.

Manufacturing Facility

In October 1978, construction of the manufacturing plant began in Northern Ireland. Officially known as DMCL (De Lorean Motor Company, Ltd.), the facility was located in Dunmurry, a suburb of Belfast. Construction of the 6-building, 660,000 square foot (61,000 m²) complex was completed by Farrans McLaughlin & Harvey in an impressive 16 months, and it was situated on the border between two communities with differing religious predominations; Twinbrook (Catholic), and X (Protestant). The facility had separate entrances for each side, but this was more of a geographic convenience than it was for religious segregation.

Unit production was scheduled to begin in 1979, but the engineering delays and budget overruns caused the first cars to start rolling off the assembly lines in early 1981. Workers at the factory were generally inexperienced; many had never had regular jobs prior to this. This may have contributed to the reported quality issues attributed to the early production vehicles and the subsequent establishment of Quality Assurance Centers located at various delivery locations. "QACs" were set up in California, Delaware and Michigan where some of the quality issues were to be addressed and resolved before delivery to the dealerships. Some of the issues remedied in these locations related to the fit of body panels, retrofitting the vehicle with higher-output alternators, and gullwing door adjustments. The combined efforts of quality assurance improvements at the factory and the post-production QA done at the Assurance Centers were generally successful, although workmanship complaints would still occasionally arise; as the 1981 De Loreans were delivered without warranty, this sometimes led to dealership-customer disputes. By 1982, many of the assembly problems were worked through, and De Lorean began offering a five year/50,000 mile warranty on their cars.

Vehicles

DMC-12

Reception by the car buying public and automotive magazines was mixed. Although the early vehicles had impressive waiting lists of anxious consumers, the MSRP sticker price of $25,000 was cost-prohibitive for the majority of the market - especially for what many considered to be an under-powered and impractical plaything. "It's not a barn burner," observed Road & Track, "(with) a 0-60 mph time of 10.5 seconds. Frankly, that's not quick for a sports/GT car in this price category." The stainless steel body panels were an attractive design concept and impervious to corrosion, but in practice the sheen surface tended to show fingerprints. It also meant that the car could not be easily painted; every factory original De Lorean looked virtually identical. Some dealerships painted their cars on delivery to help make theirs more distinctive. De Lorean Motor Company was testing the use of translucent paint to help provide different color options on the cars while also allowing the stainless steel grain to show through, but no cars were sold with factory painted body panels. The only factory option initially available was an automatic transmission. A grey interior was offered later in 1981 as an alternative to the standard black interior. Several accessories including pinstriping and luggage racks helped provide further individuality.

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