When in October 1982 the Flamboyant auto executive
John DeLorean was arrested for possession of over sixteen million
dollars' worth of cocaine, the world was aghast and fascinated. Seldom
does real life furnish so bold and precipitous a personal downfall. Until
then, his career had been the stuff of legend. Until now, no one has
entirely understood the man behind the legend.
Few stars have shone more brightly than his: he was an
"A" student who didn't have to crack a book, a brilliant
engineer who single-handedly saved Pontiac, a visionary entrepreneur
who shot to the top of GM and then left it behind, a reputed Hollywood
swinger, and a charismatic millionaire who seemed to care about the
little people who worked for him. But there was a darker side to the
DeLorean story, a side that more and more clouded his life, until he
was forced into what most people believe was a last desperate attempt
to save the two-year-old factory in Northern Ireland and its startling
gull-winged products. Like everything he did, DeLorean's fall was
larger than life - but the reasons for it were at work just as
powerfully in his ambitious rise as in his dramatic downfall.
From the scattered fragments of DeLorean's acts and
dreams, investigative journalist Hillel Levin - who began to look
closely at the truth behind the image a year before anyone lese did -
has pieced together a fascinating picture of the man behind his
contemporary myth. From the beginning, DeLorean's flight was
fueled by a remarkable talent for financial legerdemain and corporate
intrigue. Through meticulous research and interviews with the players
in DeLorean's inner circle, Levin tracks the court cases and the lawsuits
that accompanied his ascent, disentangles his convoluted and bizarre
business schemes, explores the labyrinth of holding companies and
paper corporations that channeled huge sums of other people's money
into his personal control, and reconstructs the saga of the
gull-winged car that, until the last, DeLorean believed would rise,
Phoenix-like, from the ashes.
Authoritatively researched from Detroit to Belfast,
packed with new information, Grand Delusions is a
riveting, uniquely American story, and a cautionary tale of genius
misapplied in the service of a runaway ego.
