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Semon ("Bunkie") Knudsen was running the Pontiac division, and remembers that at first, De Lorean seemed cut from the standard, colorless GM executive cloth. "He wasn't flamboyant or anything," Knudsen says. "He was just a nice young man." But in the late 1950s, teen-age culture, with its rock 'n' roll and hot-rods, was ascendant. GM wanted to liven up Pontiac's fusty, family-car image. De Lorean began working on engineering innovations that were mainly stylistic, flourishes to appeal to the young. His touch seemed to be unerring. Pontiacs were given longer axles (the much copied "wide track" look), then sleeker radiator grilles and vertically stacked headlights. De Lorean is credited by GM with inventing or introducing such advances as concealed windshield wipers and radio antennas.
De Lorean's master stroke, the GTO, came just after he was made Pontiac's chief engineer in 1961. The idea was simple: put an enormously powerful engine in an existing mid-size car, the Le Mans. The result was just what the new youth market wanted: a virile street dragster perfect for revving up and peeling out. The company planned to produce 5,000 GTOs. In 1964, the first model year, 31,000 were sold, and over the next four years 312,000 more. A rock group named Ronny and the Daytonas recorded a song, GTO, and it sold 1.2 million copies.
De Lorean in 1967 had Pontiac build a special GTO convertible, the "Monkeemobile," for the Monkees recording group. "It was zany promotion," says Jim Wangers, who directed advertising for Pontiac during that go-go era. "But this was the sort of thing that John encouraged." During De Lorean's tenure, Pontiac's sales tripled. At the height of the GTO euphoria, he became general manager of the division. Says Knudsen: "John built an image of himself that put an aura around him as being someone who could do almost anything. Apparently he did a very good job of promoting that image."
After giving Pontiac its new style, De Lorean gradually transformed himself from a button-down conformist to a vain, middle-aged clotheshorse. He lost 60 lbs., began lifting weights and started draping his 6-ft. 4-in. frame in brightly colored shirts, turtlenecks and nipped-at-the-waist suits. He got a facelift (for a while he denied it) and affected longish hair, which he dyed black. He divorced his wife of 15 years, Elizabeth. He married gorgeous, California-blond Kelly Harmon, then 20 (half his age), daughter of Tom Harmon, the legendary football player.
After three years, John and Kelly were divorced, and he won custody of their adopted son, Zachary, now 11. He dated starlets, and, by now, every move had flair. In London, after just a single date he arranged to send one woman a dozen roses every day for a month. "I am myself," De Lorean said in 1969. "I get very tired of this swinger label. I am really a pretty conservative guy." Indeed, there is no evidence that he ever used drugs.