AUTO HISTORY:It was the stuff of dreams and a thing of beauty, but the DeLorean car entered the history books as a failure. Thirty years after the DMC-12 rolled off the production line, FIONOLA MEREDITHtalks to the people who built it in Belfast and discovers that, amazingly, their love for the car – and their respect for John DeLorean – hasn't dimmed
IF SOMETHING SOUNDStoo good to be true, it usually is. But when John Zachary DeLorean jetted into Northern Ireland in the grim year of 1979, trailing Hollywood glamour, and promising thousands of jobs building a state-of-the-art sports car, people were desperate to believe him. For a while, the DeLorean magic seemed to be working. As the then Northern Ireland secretary Roy Mason declared, it was "a great psychological boost for Ulster", and the hope was that the cross-community project would divert young men away from the paramilitaries.
The Labour government provided the requisite millions to get the vast project off the ground, and within two years, the factory at Dunmurry, near west Belfast – an area of high long-term unemployment – was up and running. On Easter Sunday 1981, the first consignment of DMC-12s, their sleek, stainless-steel bodies shining in the sun, were driven to the docks, ready to be shipped off to the US. The factory workers were bursting with pride: poignant photographs from the time show young men, with grins as wide as their bushy sideburns, holding the car’s famous gull-wing doors, or placing a proprietary hand on a gleaming bonnet. As one worker said: “This wasn’t just another Ford Escort. This was something completely different.”
Thirty years later, despite the painful collapse of the DeLorean Motor Company, and all the disillusion and disappointment that went with that, many of the workers are still entranced by those heady days. They treasure their mementoes of the time: corporate badges (grey ones for manual workers, blue for managers and foremen), driving licences, original job application forms.
Neal Barclay, whose job it was to drive the finished cars out of the factory and line them up for the transporters, says that Easter Sunday 1981 “was the proudest moment for all the work force, employees and management alike. For once this was a good news story to come out of Belfast and Northern Ireland.” DMC maintenance man Joe Murray – or worker number 65, as he habitually introduces himself – has a bulging file full of memorabilia, and a framed photograph from John DeLorean’s office now hangs on the kitchen wall of his home in West Belfast.
Murray’s whole face lights up as he recalls his time working at the plant: he was amazed by the style, the luxury, the innovation. “In the canteen, there were microwave ovens, vending machines, things you would never have seen before. We were used to working on building sites. You got clean overalls every week too. They sent them to the Waverley Laundry in Ballymena over the weekend, and when you got in on Monday, there would be a fresh set hanging in your locker, waiting for you.”
And then there was the enduring romance of the car itself, shaped by Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro. More than a vehicle, it seemed to embody all the hope and exuberance and glamour of the DMC project. “I loved it from the day I set eyes on it,” says Neal Barclay simply. “Oh, it was absolutely glorious, and it still looks the part today,” says Nick Sutton, who was a purchasing manager with DMC, responsible for buying parts. “For me, it was just wall-to-wall glamour: the car, the man, his wife.”
DeLorean was married at the time to the model and actor Cristina Ferrare, who was 25 years his junior, and workers describe how the entire plant came to a standstill when she walked along the assembly lines. Meanwhile, DeLorean himself, with his exotic charm and lantern-jawed movie-star looks – as one former employee recalls, “he didn’t look like us” – had the hearts of the workers’ wives and girlfriends a-flutter too. DeLorean made a big impression on Joe’s wife Eileen, who worked on the seat covers for the car: “He was just gorgeous.”
DeLorean had an established reputation as a high-living playboy: he dated a string of models and actresses, including Tina Sinatra and Bond girl Ursula Andress, and it became the stuff of urban legend that he presented each new girlfriend with a photograph of himself – clad only in jeans and resplendently hirsute chest – in a leather embossed frame. Joe remembers an occasion that seemed to bear this image out. The then secretary of state for Northern Ireland Humphrey Atkins was visiting the factory with his wife, who was invited to open the gull-wing doors and try the car out. Clambering in, she remarked that the low-slung steering wheel would make it a difficult car to drive if you were pregnant. According to Joe Murray, John DeLorean joked: “If you weren’t pregnant before you got in, I’d make sure you were before you got out.”
For some, the DeLorean Motor Company was more than a place of work, and there was an almost ascetic quality to their commitment to the project. “I was devoted to the company,” says Nick Sutton. “It wasn’t just a nine to five job. It was like an obsession: I worked a seven-day week, and I lost a third of my body weight in the time I was there. Everyone was against us: the press, the Conservative government, the automotive industry. When the first car came out and went round the test track, all I felt was relief that nothing had fallen off.”
For a short time, it seemed that DeLorean’s mad, precarious and wildly ambitious plan really was coming off. More workers were taken on and the production of cars increased. To underscore the culture of opulence, there were even a pair of 24-carat gold-plated DMC-12s made. “We had to have 24-hour security at the plant,” says Joe Murray. “I was given the job of painting out the windows, so no one could see what we had in there.”
But the biggest car crash in automotive history was approaching with inexorable speed. Costs were spiralling out of control, demand for the cars was not high enough, and the new British government, led by Margaret Thatcher, was ill-inclined to channel more funds to what was essentially a legacy project from the previous Labour government. Exasperated by DeLorean’s constant demands for more cash, Thatcher finally pulled the plug on the factory in 1982.
Some £85 million of British taxpayers’ money had been spent in pursuit of DeLorean’s dream. On the day it all collapsed, DeLorean was arrested by the FBI for cocaine trafficking, apparently in an attempt to raise funds for his struggling company. A video tape from the sting operation shows him with a suitcase full of the drug, remarking that “it’s as good as gold”. But when the case came to court he walked free, acquitted on grounds of entrapment.
When DeLorean died in 2005 – having married four times and become a born-again Christian with a full-immersion baptism in his own swimming pool – obituaries described him as a world-class conman, guilty of fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion and defaulted loans. But despite the deep disappointment and frustration that the DeLorean workers felt at the time of the project’s collapse – many of the men never worked again – some maintain an extraordinary loyalty to their boss.
“I think he was genuine. I think he was sincere,” says Joe Murray. “When he died, our house was packed,” adds Eileen, “I was making tea as if it was a wake.” Neal Barclay has a deep sense of gratitude: “John DeLorean came to Northern Ireland when no one else would invest in the province. He gave us hope for the future and in return we built his dream car for him.”
Barclay says that, for him, the DeLorean car was Belfast's other Titanic. "This is how I see it. John was the captain of the ship. We, the workers, were the crew. The investors – the Labour government, the car dealers – were the paying passengers. After the launch of the ship, the captain ordered full steam ahead. From that moment we were on a collision course, heading straight for the iceberg. But no one could see that until it was too late."
Mark Kennedy, road transport curator at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, which has a DeLorean in its collection, says that, like Titanic, the DMC-12 became a "shorthand for disaster, but there is a warmth and affection for the car too. It wasn't just Catholic West Belfast – everyone in Northern Ireland was behind it."
Barclay says that the Back to the Futuretrilogy of films, in which the DMC-12 was transformed into a ramshackle but ineffably cool time-machine, resurrected the car. "Seeing it in the film made me so proud, because it confirmed that the car was not a failure after all. For me, the DMC-12 was the real star."
Serious DMC-12 fans, however, will know that although 88mph was the mythical speed the car had to reach in order to travel through time, the speedometer of the original DeLoreans only went up to 85mph – relatively sedate for a sports car.
Today, the DeLorean DMC-12 is a collectors’ item, tucked away in garages across the world. These flawed beauties are a rare sight on the roads. But in May, Belfast citizens will get a chance to see scores of them on parade as DeLorean owners gather together to celebrate the car’s 30th anniversary. Among them will be proud DeLorean owner Thomas McAuley, aged 25, who lives close to the old factory. He wasn’t even born when the first cars rolled up to the docks on that bright Easter Sunday in 1981. But two of his uncles worked in the factory and, as he says, “since I was a child, the car has always been on my mind”.
McAuley bought his DMC-12 on Ebay for £5,000. It had been lying neglected in a Texas warehouse. McAuley shipped the car to Ireland and since then he has spent every spare penny he has earned on it. That’s the kind of unconditional love the DeLorean inspires.
“The car gets so much attention. Any time you leave it, when you come back, there’s a crowd around it,” he says.
It’s been 30 years since DeLorean urged people to live the dream. For some, that dream has never ended. For others, like Thomas McAuley, it’s only just begun.
THE CAR'S THE STAR Big-screen legends
MINI COOPER S
The Italian Jobmight be best known for Minis racing through the sewers but it's awash with gorgeous motors from the very start, with the opening sequence featuring a Lamborghini Miura racing through the Italian Alps. The whole movie is motoring porn with a decent plot, a format the makers of the
Fast and Furiousseries have yet to master.
For petrolheads, the real subplot is the battle between British and Italian motoring prowess, with the gold being robbed from Fiat in its hometown and one part of the chase scene taking place on the famous rooftop test track of Fiat's factory in Turin. But it's the race through the city's sewers that had every car fan looking for a manhole cover big enough to get their car underground. It was and is a Mini marketing triumph, the ultimate product placement, and a great film to boot. A 2003 remake was but a pale imitation, although BMW's retro-styled Mini range has won the respect of the car's aficionados, which is a major achievement.
FORD MUSTANG
The dominance of Hollywood means that most of the iconic movie cars are US models, and arguably the best is a long-time icon of American motoring. The Mustang has been a regular muscle car on the silver screen, most recently in the less than stellar hit
Gone in 60 Seconds. However, the movie that got the car on to the walls of film buffs as much as car fans was undoubtedly
Bullitt, where Steve McQueen screeches and slides a Mustang on a 10-minute race through the streets of San Francisco. The car of choice for one of Hollywood's coolest actors in one of the coolest movies, the Mustang was almost guaranteed a place in the motoring hall of fame for the chase sequence alone. The fact McQueen was a complete car nut only added to its aura among car fans.
VW BEETLE
Perhaps the best-known attempt to anthropomorphise motoring metal, the producers of the
Herbiemovies took the Beetle's cute looks and mass popularity in the 1960s and brought it to life. The car itself didn't need the fame; it had already been the flagship of affordable populous motoring for several decades by the time the movie was made. Volkswagen might have missed the mark with its more recent Golf-derived Beetle, but there's an eager audience for a proper homage to the bug-eyed VW if they can manage to build it.
FORD GRAN TORINO
Less respected than its blue-oval stablemate, this Ford is the James Garner of the motoring world, popular for TV and secondary movie roles. Perhaps best known as the most indiscrete undercover car in TV history in
Starsky and Hutch, more recently it gave its name to a Clint Eastwood movie. The car itself had something of a chequered history. Sold between 1968 and 1976 it was a more muscular version of the drab Ford Fairlane. And like the Fairlane, the car was fatally prone to rust and corrosion.
FERRARI 250 GT CALIFORNIA SPYDER
This is the motoring star of
Ferris Bueller's Day Off. In the movie we're told its owner loves this car more than life itself. When it comes to a 1960s 250 GT Spyder, it's understandable. Mercifully the car destroyed at the end was merely a replica, for an original version of the gorgeous Italian is worth a small fortune. In 2008, Chris Evans paid €6.4 million at auction for a black 1961 250 GT California Spyder that was previously owned by actor James Coburn. It's the Sophia Loren of the motoring world, deserving of its iconic status.
ALFA ROMEO 1600 SPIDER DUETTO
The soft-top motoring star of
The Graduate, this was Italy's answer to the MG, an affordable roadster and the ideal present for a young college graduate from his parents. After all, who didn't get a car for passing exams? It was meant to give the brand some street-cred in the US. Based on the more mundane Giulia, the open topped Alfa went into production in the mid-1960s, but only hit US roads in 1969.
The car's impish good looks worked well with Hoffman's character, yet again demonstrating the importance of car casting as well as choosing the right star. The movie might have lost some of its charm had he left Anne Bancroft's bedside and jumped through the side window of a Dodge Charger.
ASTON MARTIN DB5
James Bond has worked his way through a fine collection of cars since the Ian Fleming secret agent hit the big screen – and made a tidy sum from product placement in the process – but it's the DB5 from
Goldfinger, Casino Royaleand
Thunderballthat remains his most iconic motor. While Bond's car boasted ejector seats and machine guns mounted in the grille, the standard model wasn't short of impressive features for its time, including electric windows, chrome wire wheels and twin fuel tanks when it was sold in 1964. Bond has continued his love affair with Aston, most recently driving a DBS in
Quantum of Solace.
DODGE CHARGER
It was the only highlight in one of the dumbest TV shows to last longer than a pilot episode, but the Charger is best-known to daytime TV viewers as the General Lee from the
Dukes of Hazzard.
Between inane ham-acting by the rest of the cast, the Charger tore up the dirt roads and leapt canyons, landing with only the slightest bump. In reality, reports claim that more than 300 Chargers were used in the series and those that made the great leaps were destined for the scrapyard upon landing.
The car did, however, have a more illustrious movie appearance, cast as the chase car in
Bullittduring the greatest car chase scene of all time. Dodge also produced another movie star in its 1974 Monaco that became the Bluesmobile in the 1980s
Blues Brothersmovie. Unfortunately neither model lived up to the billing in real life.
- MICHAEL McALEER, Motoring Editor
For details of Eurofest 2011, the international DeLorean convention in Belfast on May 26th-29th, see eurofest2011.com
