Driven by greed: The surprising story behind that Back to the Future car

Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean ★★★★
Netflix

In Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 blockbuster Back To The Future, Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) builds a time machine by retrofitting a DMC DeLorean with a “flux capacitor”, a fictional device that makes the time travel possible. It’s a silly but cracking story. The story behind the real DeLorean’s inventor is just as compelling, featuring great talent, greed, hubris and even some drug trafficking.

Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd with their time-travelling DeLorean in Back To The Future.

Using archival footage from a 1981 doco by legendary Oscar-winning husband and wife team Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, as well as new interviews, Myth & Mogul charts the rise and fall of John DeLorean, who began his career as a motoring engineer in Detroit. He studied automotive engineering, working at the Packard Motor Company before moving to General Motors in 1956 where he became a rising star. When the car company struggled in the 1960s to connect with the youth market, DeLorean created the game-changing GTO Pontiac, pioneering the “muscle car”. It was a huge success and he swiftly rose through the ranks, becoming the youngest manager at age 40 – and then the embodiment of corporate greed.

After the popularity of the GTO, DeLorean reinvented himself: formerly a short-back-and-sides, three-piece suit guy, he went the rock-star route, wearing fashionable clothes, working out and divorcing his first wife. He also embraced the West Coast lifestyle where he was soon mixing with Hollywood types and dating models and actresses, among them Tina Sinatra and Ursula Andress. At some point, he even had plastic surgery to fit with his new lifestyle.

Emboldened by his success, DeLorean set up his own company, The DeLorean Motor Company, with a dream of creating his own “ethical car”, inspired not by concern for the environment but by the 1973 oil crisis. It was ambitious, but DeLorean, now married to model Cristina Ferrare who was 25 years his junior, and hanging out with the likes of Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis Jr, was nothing if not confident.

John DeLorean with a prototype of the first DeLorean car.Credit: Netflix

After seeking government funds, the money – $100 million – eventually came from the British government to build a factory in Northern Ireland. It was a huge amount, but DeLorean just couldn’t stop his spending. Soon his victims of fraud, embezzlement and defaulted loans would include the British, US and Swiss governments, an inventor he forced to pay half a million to buy back his own invention and talk-show host Johnny Carson, who invested $1.5 million in the car.

When the car itself was finally released in 1981, it was a disaster; there’s a great scene of a British TV reporter taking the first model for a test drive and having to be helped to prise open the gullwing door to get out.

And things went rapidly downhill from there. Especially after the major plot twist, when DeLorean was arrested in an FBI sting agreeing to a scheme to sell 220 pounds of cocaine, worth $24 million.

And that’s not even the end – Myth & Mogul features what must be one of the final interviews with Larry Flynt, former publisher of Hustler magazine, who testified at the ensuing court case that the FBI tape (grainy video footage seen in the doco) was a fake.

And still there’s more in this fascinating film, which also features interviews with his son, his ex-wife and a slew of others who speak of DeLorean as a true – if misguided – visionary, among them journalist P.J. O’Rourke and political activist Ralph Nader. And despite his dishonesty, DeLorean, who died in 2005, retains a legion of fans who consider his car a collectors’ item.

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