The Man Who Wrecked the Car

By Roger Rosenblatt

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.

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.

For whatever private reasons, De Lorean imitated the worst era of the industry he scorned. He made his car, he gave it his name, he said the public be damned, and he killed the thing. --By Roger Rosenblatt

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