How & Why John Z. DeLorean Played Both Sides of Ireland To Build a Car Nobody Wanted

Let’s look back to the 1961 Pontiac Catalina. A young engineer gave it perfect weight balance by mounting the transmission under the trunk. Connected to the engine by a torque tube, it was one of the world’s most advanced sedana and it was the brainchild of John DeLorean. The man was a pragmatist with an IQ that was off the charts.

After introducing the Super Duty Pontiac engines along with the GTO, he was promoted to run Chevrolet in the late '60s. Living the high life, he flew private to the biggest auto events around the world, always dressed to the 9s. GM had been ruled by Stooges put in power by the duPont family (until 1997). Therefore, he breathed fresh air into the world’s largest automaker.

What did he do with this newfound fame? He gave us the rust bucket Vega, Monza, and influenced the X-Chassis that should never be mentioned again. After running Chevrolet into the ground, he walked away with an idea to build a gullwing sportscar. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, so he sought the best designers and engineers to join him in Northern Ireland.

These power plays caught the eye of the Iron Lady, just as Margaret Thatcher sought to bring manufacturing back to the United Kingdom. Therein lies the dissention that ultimately killed the DMC-12. England and Ireland have hated each other since my Protest ancestors were given dominion over Catholic property. The war was sparked in 1606 in County Down, and by 1916, tanks and mail bombs were the weapons of the day.

The border between English lands in Northern Ireland has seen 500 years of blood, in the name of God. By the early 1960s, the Irish Republican Army built the best car bombs, often outsourcing their expertise to other nations (like in Patriot Games by Tom Clancy). Lady Thatcher gave DeLorean a massive loan to help secure the land for the factory, but Catholics across the border in Southern Ireland objected.

So, what is a great way to settle a blood feud? The only logical answer is to build a massive assembly plant with the border running through it. Listen, I give DeLorean credit for trying to be a peacemaker. But he didn’t know how dark the war would become. Catholics and Protestants would not work together, let alone speak to one another. So the new DeLorean plant was forced to rebuild with twice the employee support areas.

At the DeLorean plant, there were separate entrances, parking lots, bathrooms, and ancillary facilities. Any logical business model would fail at this tipping point, however JD had mortgaged everything to keep going. This meant sourcing a turd of an engine, the Peugeot-Renault-Volvo V6. Perhaps the most vile element of this story revolved around Colin Chapman.

The genius behind Lotus Cars had delivered a perfect chassis for DeLorean to form the backbone of the C4 Corvette. GM refused once DeLorean walked out, but Chapman’s brilliance prompted them to buy Lotus Group in the meantime. Because JD was bankrupt, the FBI entrapped him with promises of cocaine shipping to Northern Ireland.

Needless to say, Colin Chapman was never paid by DeLorean, and his mysterious death happened soon after. Was Chapman extinguished for knowing the gig was up? This hypothesis is sickening to say the least, but perhaps some of the adversity would have been avoided if the factory was placed anywhere else than a 500 year-old battleground.