Why have the adventures of John Z. De Lorean attracted so much notice? Recklessness? Yes, recklessness is always fascinating, especially when the reckless driver is notorious for being cocksure of himself. Desperation? Certainly. A fall from high place? That too. All the more gratifying when such a fall is self-generated and occurs to a hot-shot of American business who thinks he can get away with murder.
For symbolism enthusiasts there is also the array of stark American icons: sacks of dollars, sacks of dope, Los Angeles, rugged individualism, General Motors; the Mob, the FBI, a world famous fashion model, wheels and deals, movie stars, an All-America's daughter. Any graduate student in
American studies who could not make a dissertation of all that deserves to work for a living. As for De Lorean himself, there is an oversized, modern soap-opera quality about him (Who shot J.Z.?), enough at least to make us wonder where the plot hops next. All of which satisfies normal, healthy prurience, but hardly seems reason for De Lorean to have grasped the public imagination so strongly. The case is oddly troublesome, like a low buzzing in another room.
What interests us is related not so much to De Lorean the individual as to his objective in life and the way he destroyed it. John De Lorean not only wanted to make a car, he wanted to be one, like Ford and Chrysler before him.
Watching him take himself and his dream apart is like
watching the replay of a national catastrophe. They say that De Lorean sort of resembled a car even before he built the De Lorean. His name sounds as much like a car's as a man's.
He sought to be judged by performance. He changed his physical appearance, his "model," from time to time to suit the fashion. His dyed hair was once described as "limousine black," and now that it has been restored to a steel-gray is the color of the De Lorean itself. One can carry such stuff too far, but the fact is that De Lorean's whole life has been so closely associated with automobiles that he can barely be thought of without one's hearing an engine whir. It would probably please him to know that. America itself can hardly be thought of without one's hearing an engine whir; and to go by his various patriotic if silly pronouncements, De Lorean would like to think that he is quintessentially American, as American, say, as the automobile. The trouble is that the automobile is not quite so American any more. Like most of
us, John De Lorean grew up in a nation where the two-car family was a moral institution. The speed and power of the things. The style. The freedom they bestowed. Kerouac and Agee rhapsodized about the great American road, the arteries of the body politic. Kids made love in their cars and made love to them, in spite of a few dark heretics like Social Critic John Keats (The Insolent Chariots), who warned that someone was about to shoot the beast, and Robert Lowell, who, in the poem "Skunk Hour," tied cars to the sickness of the nation. On the whole, in the late '50s the U.S. would sooner have driven a 1957 Chevy than ridden in the chariot of the Lord. What happened since then is too
familiar history. Enter Germany, Japan, Sweden. Enter OPEC.