Original subtitles

Hi, folks. Hank Dunham at Dunham Family Motors.

We're in the middle of our inventory reduction sale.

So many cars to choose from, and we're passing the savings

on to you. How about our--

Some cars are instant classics.

Some are here today and gone tomorrow.

But every once in a while, there's one that's ahead

of its time.

Stainless steel, gullwing doors,

an aggressive front end that screams performance.

Well, kinda.

It all began in 1955 with a car that was built in 1981.

Well...

Just watch my dad.

...at only $75 a month.

So come on down--

And we have-- this beauty just appeared on the lot.

They put the door on sideways.

Throughout time, humanity has been obsessed with getting

places using anything but their own two feet.

We've tried all kinds of things.

Until finally, the greatest invention of all time.

- The automobile. - Oh-hoo-hoo!

Moron!

These are the cars that drove us.

You know the names. Henry Ford.

Ferdinand Porsche.

Enzo Ferrari.

- And... - With me here, Mr. John DeLorean.

...John, who made this thing.

What is this thing?

This is the DeLorean, which John claimed was

an engineering marvel of pure power.

But things claimed by John DeLorean...

may not be quite what they seem.

He was a big spender who loved beautiful women.

To some, a white-haired maverick...

- John was Robin Hood. - ...driven by cars and...

well...

I have a reasonably strong sex drive.

John DeLorean had a nose for innovation.

- Or, if you ask some... - His history is super fraught.

...his nose was elsewhere.

It's a story of big business, big money,

and the crime of cocaine.

Whether John DeLorean was morally bankrupt is disputable.

Is he a good guy? Is he a bad guy?

However, his car company surely was.

The DeLorean was a failure.

But the DeLorean story had a bright future

and an extremely unlikely revival.

Are you telling me that you built a time machine

out of a DeLorean?

But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Let's go back to where this story starts.

- 1955. - Close.

Our story begins in 1952, a brief period of time

when John's hair wasn't white and he was fully clothed.

John Z. DeLorean

was an engineer in the '50s.

- John was an innovator. - He had presence and charisma.

He started his career with Packard.

But John was soon poached by the General Motors

Pontiac division.

And then he was made the head of strategic engineering.

And boy, was it time to strategically engineer.

Pontiac was referred to as the "old ladies" division.

When John got into Pontiac, he knew that

they needed a makeover.

Pontiac wasn't gonna be the old ladies car

division anymore.

It was going to turn its attention to performance.

It was him that said,

"Why don't we put a giant engine in this car?"

And boy, you step down the gas on that car, it shoved you back

in the seat and just rocket forward.

It was cool.

You know, that car helped kick off the whole muscle car age.

With the GTO,

John DeLorean earned his stripes.

Next thing you know, he's chief engineer of Pontiac,

becomes general manager of Pontiac.

For people like me, he was my hero.

He was the first rock star automotive exec.

Everybody wore a shirt and tie,

but then there's John DeLorean standing there

in his white jeans, deck shoes without socks,

and a T-shirt. He wanted to buck the system.

Did you have the feeling that the way you looked was rubbing

some people the wrong way? - Oh, I'm sure that was right.

I was told that a number of times.

Instead of cutting his hair, DeLorean cut ties with

the GM fuddy-duddies.

Leaving GTO skid marks on the road of destiny,

John DeLorean set out to engineer a car the likes of

which the world had never seen.

He knew art, he knew engineering, and he knew mass production.

The combination that would lead to something truly original.

And the DMC 12 was born.

A unique vision of beauty and elegance.

And a collection of ideas from other stuff.

From the doors...

John was inspired by the Mercedes Gullwing.

- What a bucket of bolts this is! - Oh, you like it?

Which in itself was inspired by this exquisite seabird.

But the DeLorean wasn't stealing your fries.

He was stealing its shape

from James Bond's submersible car of choice.

Isn't it nice?

The closest thing to the aesthetics of the DeLorean

is the Lotus from "The Spy Who Loved Me."

The DeLorean uses the same backbone-steel chassis.

Can you swim?

But very much unlike the Lotus Esprit...

It's got a liquid-cool V6 behind the rear axle.

And the only real car of note that was like that was

the Porsche 911.

A Porsche 911 is nothing like a Lotus Esprit.

And a Lotus Esprit is nothing like a Gullwing Mercedes.

And a Gullwing Mercedes is nothing like a Porsche 911.

But somehow, when you put all these together, you get...

...The DMC 12.

And why the 12?

Because John DeLorean wanted it to cost $12,000.

He wanted to make an affordable sports car.

But to mass produce a sports car of any price, John DeLorean

would need some things.

He needed capital. He needed land.

He needed a factory.

Think about the amount of capital that you would need.

An incredible amount of money.

And this Hollywood hunk knew just where to find plenty of it.

Johnny Carson, Sammy Davis Jr., and he relied on people

he knew-- engineers, builders, and designers to

create a prototype.

But there's a big jump from building that prototype car to

actually having a factory and being set up for

production-- that's when he started shopping around

the world to find support from countries and governments.

Well, to find those, he knew just where to look.

No, a bit to the east.

That's the one. Britain.

But then the British government sent him west a bit.

The British government offered them funding to put the factory

in Northern Ireland.

Seemingly a place of great merriment and gaiety.

The British government put in over $100 million

because Ireland needed something to create jobs.

The unemployment rate in some areas was as high as 50%.

The DeLorean sports car plant will create 2,000 jobs.

Filled by 2,000 untrained workers.

DeLorean needed a ringer.

I was the first recruit out of the British

automotive industry.

But when DeLorean offered Barry Wills the job,

he had good reason to be apprehensive

about the move to Belfast.

Wow.

The Catholics and the Protestants had been

in a civil war.

It was known as the Troubles.

The British Army were out there trying to keep the peace

between the two factions.

Yeah, sounds like a great place to start a business.

- But where some saw... - Wow.

...challenges, John DeLorean saw possibility.

He's thinking, I'll bet Protestants and Catholics could

work on an assembly line together.

Huh? Absolutely crazy.

2 John DeLorean had smooth talked the British government into

giving him a factory in Belfast...

Where all this sectarian violence is going on.

They put us in a battlefield between major Catholic

and Protestant developments.

And that was the radical thing to try.

But he'd need more than charm to navigate Belfast's

civil unrest.

British soldiers who helped provide security for

DeLorean's new factory.

Once the plant got going, they worked together

side by side, Catholics and Protestants.

Without any problem whatsoever.

Turns out the Catholics and the Protestants found one

thing they agree on.

John DeLorean is something of a hero because he's bringing

jobs to this city.

John was Robin Hood.

He'd taken money from the British government to

provide jobs. They worshiped him.

But soon Belfast would once again be split.

This time the employed versus the unemployed.

They literally burned the engineering building to

the ground with Molotov cocktails that had been

thrown over the fence.

Despite the troubles with The Troubles, John DeLorean

forged ahead.

Oh, this is gonna be a very successful project.

Whether it was confidence or ego...

He had the balls and initiative to swing

for the fences. - ...DeLorean doubled down.

John made a decision to double production from 40 cars a day

to about 80 cars a day.

He decided to bring in a second shift, which meant

hiring workers that had even less experience, and there's

no doubt that some of the cars were lower quality standard

than perhaps they should have been.

Every day, DeLorean went deeper into debt, which meant

it was time for the DeLorean DMC 12 to spread its wings.

The DeLorean is one of the most awaited automobiles in

automotive history.

Because after eight long years...

In 1981, John DeLorean hosted a small group of

automotive journalists.

And John made sure everyone was in a good mood.

Concord, when we got to the hotel in Belfast,

it was surrounded by barbed wire and fencing.

Five-star, still.

And some guys with some serious guns.

It was quite an adventure.

But we drove some of the first-built DeLoreans.

John DeLorean's masterpiece was on display.

It was a wonderful press trip.

It was a pretty dismally bad car.

Well, the DeLorean looked really sleek, but it just

wasn't that fast.

No thanks to the laws of physics.

The stainless steel construction of the car made it

900 pounds heavier than regular automotive steel.

Stainless steel. It's good for a lot of things,

but automobile's not one of them.

The car has a six-cylinder Volvo Renault engine,

so it's seriously underpowered.

Middling quality, middling performance V6,

but that was what he could afford at the time.

And the Renault was a nice car,

but it was an economy-based engine.

John DeLorean couldn't just snap his fingers

and develop a motor.

And most auto companies don't want to sell you one of

their engines because if your car gets a bad reputation,

their engine goes down with you.

So he had to take what he could get.

And if the blood didn't rush from your head...

from the speed...

Watch your head.

...the doors would finish the job.

Watch your head. Watch your head.

I'm sorry.

I don't want to keep banging.

And much like the exquisite Seabird itself...

Gullwing doors were a real pain in the ass.

Johnny Carson, he was an early investor,

and he got an early DeLorean.

The door got locked up, and he could not get out

of that car.

So he, of course, tells the story on TV.

Then the public thinks the car is junk and dies.

The real question was, is this thing gonna be viable?

Eh, well, about that.

Roughly, how much will it cost?

The car's price went from $15,000 to $27,000.

So that was big money.

In 1981, you could buy a house for $25,000.

But if the DeLorean was a house,

they all looked the same.

It was one of those cookie-cutter ones.

You can have the DeLorean in any color as long as

it's stainless steel.

They're all brushed stainless steel, and they either have

a black interior or a gray interior.

You can't have 30,000 cars all the same color and expect to

sell them all.

DeLorean's hopes for the DMC 12 were fading fast.

My name is on this. I'm not gonna let it die.

When they didn't sell nearly as many cars as they were hoping,

he was trying desperately to get enough money

to keep that car company going.

No matter where we have to steal the money to do it,

it's not a matter of something extra.

This is a matter of pure survival.

They needed a way to bring in some extra money

into the company.

As luck would have it, a golden opportunity would come

the company's way in the form of a marketing promotion for

the American Express Gold Card.

John would plate them in real gold.

These cars were about twice as expensive as a regular

DeLorean, and he thought that he could sell, you know,

maybe a couple hundred.

Who'd want to buy a gold-plated car?

Well, it turns out nobody was interested.

You can't take it anywhere. Absolutely crazy.

It seemed, for DeLorean, the luck of the Irish was

nowhere to be seen.

It took seven years from the inception of DeLorean's

dream to the first car.

In that time, the economy sagged

and car sales collapsed.

The recession hit, and things went south.

The company was too far gone.

You know, there was nowhere for the cars to go

because people weren't buying them.

And the Iron Lady herself was ready to cut ties

with this stainless steel albatross.

Margaret Thatcher said, "There will be no more money.

Tell the receivers to do their job."

And the employees receivered some terrible news.

They laid most all the people off at the factory.

But John DeLorean was truly desperate to keep his company

and had one last Hail Mary up his sleeve.

The buoyant auto executive said he was interested in

arranging a drug deal to raise $60 million

to save his failing sports car company.

2 Facing bankruptcy and ruin, John DeLorean had one last

trick up his nose--

Uh, sleeve.

John had been arrested smuggling cocaine.

A suitcase full of cocaine was put before him,

and he called it "better than gold."

Well, it would want to be.

They caught him in a hotel room with the drug dealers,

with the briefcase full of cocaine.

Overnight, John DeLorean went from automotive revolutionary

to suspected drug trafficker. - I was shocked.

I've never, ever seen cocaine, touched cocaine, used cocaine.

But I wasn't shocked

because I knew that he was capable of this.

What was certain was the fate of the DeLorean car company.

I was running what was left in Northern Ireland, and I was

taken to one side and told that we're announcing the closure

of the company.

DeLorean stays in prison until his lawyers come up with

a quarter of a million dollars in cash and a balance of

the $5 million bail money in stocks, bonds, or securities.

But hang on just a minute. Not so fast.

The issue is whether John DeLorean was unfairly enticed

by government agents into an illegal drug deal.

So did I do it? I don't know. Maybe I did.

The jury said, "No." This was pure entrapment.

But no acquittal could restore the name of the company,

the car, and the man.

The company is bankrupt, and the DeLorean name

is destroyed.

You're taking 20 pounds of sugar with you on a business trip?

Sure. You know how I love to bake.

His name was Mud after that.

It would seem the DeLorean was dead, and along with it,

the reputation of the white-haired man

who'd made it. - The DeLorean was a failure.

A sad crash.

But soon enough...

Look out!

...the DeLorean would reappear from the past, all thanks to

an even madder, white-haired madman.

Please stop.

No, not that one. This one.

I'm Bob Gale.

I'm the co-creator, co-writer, co-producer of

"Back to the Future."

That is one of my all-time favorite movie props.

Uh, DeLorean. You know those cars.

Oh, do I know those cars?

The DeLorean had gone from Hollywood punchline...

Your cars man.

They don't work and nobody gonna buy 'em.

...to being the hero of a billion-dollar franchise.

And nobody was more surprised than me.

Things have certainly changed around here.

Scientifically, it made perfect sense...

The stainless-steel construction made

the flux dispersal.

...to be the second most obvious choice for Bob's time machine.

The time machine in the drafts was built out of

an old refrigerator.

Well, that's essentially a DeLorean.

It's a stainless-steel car. With the same steel,

you'd probably have a refrigerator.

But that idea was put on the shelf

and lost behind the condiments.

Wouldn't it be better if Doc Brown had decided to build

a time machine into a car?

Are you telling me that you built a time machine...

...out of a DeLorean?

At the time that we were in pre-production,

the trial was covered on the news every night.

It's a story of big business, big money, and cocaine.

- What if we used a DeLorean? - Um, yeah.

Good idea.

But the universal product-placement guy...

Product-placement guy comes into my office one day,

and he says, "Bob, I've got a deal for you."

$75,000-- which is a day and a half's worth of shooting

back in 1984--

if you will change the DeLorean...

to a Mustang.

And I looked straight at him, and I said,

"Doc Brown doesn't drive a [car horn honks] Mustang.

Get out of here."

And with that, Bob changed the future.

After seeing the movie, it's like, I got to get a DeLorean.

And I did. This one.

But you don't really have a DeLorean...

...until you have The DeLorean.

I have a DeLorean, but everybody keeps going,

"Yeah, but there's not the 'Back to the Future' one."

If you thought finding a DeLorean was hard,

try finding a... - Flux capacitor.

Wow!

2 It's time to get serious, folks.

I'm gonna say we have like 30% brakes.

I don't own this DeLorean. And the shocks suck.

For its powerful engine...

Wow, is that all she got?

That's it right there.

...or soothing air conditioning. - It's like confetti.

I bought this...

This thing has good bones, except for the brakes.

...so I can go back to the future.

Yeah, we're going to turn it into a legit time machine.

It's time for me to collect my time machine from the folks

at DeLorean Motor Company.

Let's just say this car has the wow factor.

Wow. Wow.

Wow.

This is unbelievable, the amount of detail and work.

Because maybe, just maybe, it's me who's been converted.

This is so cool.

This thing's great.

It got all kinds of looky-loos--

people slowing down, taking videos and pictures.

Thumbs up.

There really is a heartwarming story that the car lived

well beyond and into the future.

On March 19, 2005...

Auto designer John DeLorean died Saturday of complications

from a stroke.

One of the best fan letters we ever got was from

John DeLorean, and he told us how much he loved the movie,

and he thanked us for keeping his dream alive.

The DeLorean goes from being a very famous flop...

to just being one of the most beloved automobiles ever made.

You know, if the DeLorean hadn't hit all the snags

and speed bumps that it did along the way,

you kind of wonder what would have been

the next iteration of this vehicle?

Because this thing is so different.

It's an '80s experience all over again.

The smells, the sounds, and there might be a little

cocaine in the ashtray. I'm not sure.

Yep, there's nothing quite like the DeLorean,

both the car and the man. - He really made a mark.

Whether it's back in the past,

back to the future, or just the future...

whichever way the arrow of time points for you,

just watch your head. - Whoops, I did it.