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Enter ecology, inflation. Exit infinite space. In no time flat the American automobile industry is reduced to a tragicomic opera, with Lee Iacocca as chief of the sad clowns, and a cast of thousands unemployed. Art imitates death. The Solid Gold Cadillac disintegrates pathetically into My Mother the Car, then goes nuts entirely. In 1977 Hollywood produces The Car, a movie equally moronic and spellbinding, in which a driverless sedan plays mass murderer. No Freudians necessary. The only medium to keep the faith is television, always a cultural anachronism, with the cop shows half consumed with cars chasing cars. Even here the four-wheeled protagonists carom off walls a lot and wind up as junk. The machine is dead, compacted in a bale. In full view of everyone, Detroit seemed bent on destroying itself.
Not that this was any fault of John De Lorean's. To the contrary. It was De Lorean who seized the invalid Pontiac division of General Motors and pumped it back to life. It was De Lorean (so goes the tale) who showed the corporate stuffed shirts the writing on the wall. Where was the fuel-efficient, practical, obsolescence-proof carriage for the common man? asked our ageless pioneer. No one looked up from the boardroom table. The point is that for all his boogying and Ursula Andressing, De Lorean actually understood what was
needed for the survival of his industry. When he broke from GM and made his errand into the wilderness, he could be expected to return with the answer to a dealership's prayers.
Instead, he returned with the De Lorean. Why? It was a pretty little thing, to be sure, but it cost a fortune, was only relatively fuel-efficient for a sports car, was hardly designed for the common man or his common family. With the American open road blocked by a 55-m.p.h. speed limit, John De Lorean comes out with
greased lightning. What's more, he makes too many of them to sell. And where does he decide to do that but in Belfast, which needs another high-risk enterprise as much as it needs one more car bombing. The decision is baffling. Oh, one can argue that here was Black Jack De Lorean going against the tide again, betting other people's money and his life on the American rich getting richer and flocking to their very own indigenous Mercedes. But from the viewpoint of business horse sense, of which De Lorean is said to have had plenty, it only looks as if the man was deliberately trying to fail. When the company is about to fold, the hard-nose founder with two master's degrees decides to deal dope in order to rescue it. Wild, man.
Of course, wildness may constitute the entire explanation. De Lorean may simply have spun out of control, following a bad idea with a desperate flail. Then, too, he may have actively been trying to destroy himself. He chose a symmetrical end, after all. To be nabbed in Los Angeles, the city of the car, and of his youth. To have the coke discovered in a Chevy, the All-American machine. Finally, to risk the ruin of his career by means of a drug that for a certain social set may be said to have replaced the automobile as the national narcotic. No one not inside De Lorean's head can say for sure why he did what he did, and except for purposes of psychological chitchat, it profits little to guess.