John DeLorean was indisputably a brilliant engineer. A flamboyant, aggressive business executive who burst out of the staid, yes-men culture of the 1950s, he would prove to be an early model of the modern American visionary—think Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerberg—who discarded convention in pursuit of a singular vision. In his case, that meant trying to create the greatest sports car the world had ever seen.
He also was accused of being a thief, a fraud, an embezzler, and a brazen con man who fooled everyone he ever did business with, from celebrities to superpowers, bilking them out of millions of dollars in the process. DeLorean’s longtime attorney and staunch personal advocate Howard Weitzman told the Los Angeles Times after the carmaker’s death in 2005 that “John DeLorean had one of the most warped views of right and wrong” he had ever come across… read more >
