Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Automaker John DeLorean dies

By wire services
Published March 21, 2005

NEWARK, N.J. - John Z. DeLorean, an automotive innovator who left General Motors Corp. to develop radically futuristic sports cars only to see that venture crash spectacularly as he fought federal drug charges, has died at age 80.

Mr. DeLorean was among just a handful of U.S. entrepreneurs who dared start a car company in the last 75 years.

While apt to be remembered popularly as the man behind the car modified for time travel in the Back to the Future movies, Mr. DeLorean left a powerful imprint in automaking built on unique, souped-up cars.

Mr. DeLorean died late Saturday (March 19, 2005) at Overlook Hospital in Summit, N.J., of complications from a recent stroke, said Paul Connell, an owner of A.J. Desmond & Sons Funeral Directors in Royal Oak, Mich., which was handling arrangements.

At GM, he created what some consider the first "muscle car" in 1964 by cramming a V-8 engine into a Pontiac Tempest and calling it the GTO.

Mr. DeLorean was a rising executive at GM who many believe was destined for its presidency before he quit in 1973 to launch the DeLorean Motor Car Co. in Northern Ireland. Eight years later, the DeLorean DMC-12 hit the streets.

Its hallmarks, such as an unpainted stainless steel skin and the gull-wing doors, have been ignored by mainstream automakers. The angular design, however, earned it a cult following, and the car was a time-traveling vehicle in the popular Back to the Future films of the late 1980s.

Mr. DeLorean's company collapsed in 1983, a year after he was arrested in Los Angeles and accused of conspiring to sell $24-million of cocaine to salvage his venture. Mr. DeLorean used an entrapment defense to win acquittal on the drug charges in 1984.

He is survived by his wife, Sally DeLorean; son and two daughters; three brothers; several nieces and nephews; and two grandchildren.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Thomas Mayne, the bad boy of architecture for years before reaping international acclaim in his mid 50s, was named Sunday as the winner of the Pritzker Prize, the field's most prestigious honor.

Mayne, 61, is the first American to win the Pritzker in 14 years and only the eighth U.S. architect to win in the contest's 27-year history.

The jury cited Mayne for creating a bold architectural style that reflects the "unique, somewhat rootless, culture of Southern California" through angular lines and an unfinished, open-ended feel.

He has won competitions and commissions for an array of major public projects, including the new Alaska state capitol, a new academic building for the Cooper Union in New York, and New York's 2012 Olympic Village, which will be built even if the city doesn't get the games for that year.

[Last modified March 21, 2005, 01:51:06]