Inside Room 501 at the Sheraton Plaza La Reina Hotel near LAX, the trap was waiting for John DeLorean. It was October 1982, and the maverick automaker had been hemorrhaging money. Ten years earlier, he’d left a $600,000-a-year job at General Motors to pursue the audacious ambition of starting his own car company.
The result was a futuristic-looking, stainless steel sports car with gull-wing doors, meant to compete with the Corvette. But it was beset by quality-control problems and, at $25,000, priced too high. His dream was on the verge of collapse, his company hurtling toward bankruptcy.
He had flown into Los Angeles for this clandestine meeting. He entered the hotel room and took a seat among men who had spoken of their underworld connections and had promised to help him. DeLorean appeared to be in a great mood.
One of the men opened a suitcase packed with cocaine, and DeLorean peered inside. DeLorean was an American original, the rare auto executive who cut a large public profile. He radiated glamour.
As a businessman, he was adroit at personal branding years before Donald Trump, a visionary carmaker years before Elon Musk. Profile writers frequently described him as “dashing,” “flamboyant” and “dapper,” a “jet-setter” and “swinger.” The son of a Ford foundry worker, he grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Detroit and rose rapidly at Chrysler, Packard and General Motors.
In 1961, he became chief engineer at GM’s Pontiac division and introduced.