The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds - 374 - John Delorean

Episode Date: April 23, 2019

Comedians Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds examine the life of car genius John Delorean. TOUR DATESSOURCES REDBUBBLE MERCH

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this works is each week I Dave Anthony we destroy from American history. Oh nice. It's my boo. Oh boy. Wow Reddit's gotten you. Gareth Reynolds who has no idea what the topic is going to be about and called it quote is jam-packed. Jam-packed? I'm the fucking hippo guy. Dave okay. My name's Gary. My name's Gary. Wait. Is it for fun? And this is not gonna come to TigglyPod guys. Okay. This is like an ad on a five-part coefficient. Now hit him with a puppy. You both present sick arguments. No sleep down hippo. That's sleep down hippo. Action partner. Hi Gary. No. I see you've done my friend. No. Ronda. Ronda in the corner.

Uh that's us the dollop. That's right. That's a pretty good idea. And if you would like to watch this podcast you can go to the all things comedy YouTube page and just have a finger around. What? Finger around and you'll find us. January 6th 1925. Year of our Lord Jesus Christ. Actually this is the day of our Lord Jesus. This is the Easter episode. Yeah. So it better be the year of our Lord. This is the day when Jesus came. No this is where he comes from behind the rock and he's like you motherfuckers I'm here. I don't know. Did he push the rock aside? Did he come out? I think he pushed it. I think he pushed it. And memory serves he

pushed it. So he's like a strong guy. He's Jesus dude. He could have walked through it if he wanted to. Oh he could have walked through it. He's got that sort of skinny guy rip thing going on. So he comes out and he pushes it and he's what the fuck and all these rabbits come out from behind him. Yeah and then he's they're like Jesus if you want to know where we are follow the egg trail and then he had to pick eggs a whole way. Right. Anyway that's the dollop story of Jesus. John DeLorean was born into Detroit. Shit. Oh shit. Oh yes. Oh yes. His Romanian immigrant father Zachary worked as a union organizer at a Ford factory. Did not speak great English dad which kept him

from moving up. He liked to drink. John DeLorean's father liked the sauce. Okay. And getting into bar fights. Okay. Well occasionally punching his wife. Oh well no well not super light and fun any longer. No but it took a dark turn. Dark turn. Catherine was a Hungarian immigrant who worked for GE and when Zachary got violent she would leave with the kids. Start taking them for a long time. More than once she stayed a year in California with her sister. Wow. So that's a long. At that point it feels like it's over. Yeah pretty much. Right. She finally divorced Zachary in 1942. He moved into a boarding house and became a drug addict and John never saw his father again. Okay so he has a fun little

ending. Yeah he had a great. Yeah he had a great. He browns and then blacks out. Yeah good run. Right. That's cool. John Gropp lower middle class during the depression. He got into an elite public school. Cass Technical High School. Mmm. Cass Tech. It was basically a feeder into the three big automakers. Okay. He seemed sad right. That's a that's everyone was trying to get into it. Like if you got in then you're going to make money at the factory like you're right. You're killing it. And while those are jobs that will never go overseas. That's right. That's right. But he also played the saxophone in the school jazz band. Ooh. And that's what he decided he would be a musician. Sure. So he got into

to Cass Tech and then he was like I'm here for jazz. I like. I like the sax. I'm here for make a mouse. I just feel it man. It's in me. Sure. Jazz is in me. Yeah. Okay. After Cass he got a music scholarship to Lawrence Institute of Technology. And then he was like I want to make microwaves. That's what I want to do. Borega graduate. He was drafted in 1943. Okay. He came back three years later. Family was not doing well so he took different jobs to help them out. Okay. He finally finished his undergraduate degree and got a job as an insurance salesman. Interesting. He said he did this to learn how to talk to people better. Okay. Which yeah that's why you do that. Sure. For sure. Or you can just talk

to people but also. Yeah. But also you could just sell them insurance and really know how to be a natural conversationalist. John got into a post graduate facility called the Chrysler Institute of Engineering. Okay. So the way. What was their focus. They focus on Ford cars. Okay. Yeah. It's weird. I had a feeling. The name was weird. It's a bad name. Yeah. So the way that work is you would work and get an education at the same time. Okay. So you're basically getting a master's while you are working. Right. And you're making banks. So. Oh wow. Wow. So like a paid internship while you're going to school. Yeah. Could you imagine paying an intern. It's hard. It's hard to imagine paying kids in college

anything for their. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Work. John got a master's in automotive engineering. Okay. And then he went to school at night to get while he's working at the factory he's going to school at night gets an MBA from the University of Michigan. Okay. So that was why I said Chrysler. He's not a Chrysler long before he takes a job at Packard in research and development. Okay. So he was a Chrysler for like a year after going through the school and doing all the. Sure. The business. It's 1953 now. He's making the equivalent of $130,000 today. He's like 20. Yeah. He's super young. Okay. That's cool. He lived with his mom until he married Elizabeth Higgins in 1954. Okay. So he's living at home making 130. It's a

great move. Yeah. Great move. Yeah. John was then lured away by GM. Hmm. GM offered him his choice of a job in any of GM's divisions. Hmm. So they were just like whatever you want. You may have a job in any of our divisions. How many divisions do they have? Okay. But still it's a little good amount, but it's not like a thousand. But usually they're like we have a job available. Right. Well, right now it's like. Now it's just like you. Oh, you eat bolts. Are you in? Yes. All right. Stop crying. Stop crying. I also eat screws in my other job. Oh, you idiot. And I eat wood in my third job. Oh, Jesus. Well, get to eating the bolts. I still am on food stamps because the three jobs. Well, you don't have any room

for food in your belly. You're full of metallics. America's. And let's cry cry more munch munch. John picked the Pontiac division. Interesting. Well, we all know Pontiac. It's still a hot car. That's right. Every time I see a Pontiac now, I'm like unicorn. It's always turquoise. GM was the biggest car company on earth, but Pontiac was struggling. It had no identity. His boss, Bunky Knudsen. What just happened? I fucking said it. Bunky. The guy's name. Bunky Knudsen. Bunky Knudsen. Okay. The bunk. Sure. He starts to form a relationship with NASCAR. Well, a lot of bunkies have connections to NASCAR. Boom. That's right. It's one of the biggest names in NASCAR. Sure. Yeah. Bunky like to say, quote, you can't sell an old

man's car to a young man, but you can sell a young man's car to an old man. Hey, bunkie isms. I got bunk talk. Yeah. Bunky is pretty much the only guy in the car business thinking this way. Okay. No one was thinking about selling cars to young people. Cars were big and they drove smooth and Detroit guys could not imagine why anyone would want anything different. Right. So, right? They're just those big boats that just fucking feel like you're riding on glass. Right. This was known as the Detroit Mind. Okay. It became known as the Detroit Mind. John became successful at Pontiac in 1961. Bernie became Bunky. Bunky. He became General Manager at Chevrolet and at 36, John became Division Chief Engineer

at Pontiac. Okay. After work, the engineers would test drive prototypes that would never ever make it to a dealership. Interesting. Woodward Avenue became a drag strip. Okay. So they're just trying out different types of cars that are never going to be anything. That's pretty fun. GM prohibited the production of high performance cars that alluded to racing or high speed. Wow. Yeah. Different time. So they would not... The goal was really more stability and dependability. Yes, family car. Like something... Right. It's fun. Right. Yeah. Something you want to put flames on. That's right. Right. In January, 1963, a memo came out stating GM cars were banned from racing activities. So they must have heard

about the... Right. The after-hour racing. Drag racing. Right. GM cars had to weigh at least 10 or more pounds per cubic inch of engine displacement. So that would mean they would not be fast enough for racing. Okay. So they actually had a formula... To weight the cars down. So they wouldn't go... So they would not be fun. Yeah. Okay. So your parents designed cars now. That's right. Right. But John started to wonder, what would happen if you took a big V8 engine made for a full-size car and you put it into a smaller car? Sure. Sure. It turns out it's a super fast, very powerful, very drivable car. With the head-up Pontiac's approval, John snuck the engine past the GM Engineering Policy Committee by

selling it as a package for the 1964 Tempest. So cars are going out and then... Or you put in an order for a car and they don't notice that he's putting this engine into a smaller car. Okay. Which they're totally opposed to. So he's engine smuggling? Yeah, basically he's engine smuggling. I think they call it hide-in-the-engine in the business. Sure. He's pulling a fast engine. Oh, he's pulling a fast engine. So he calls it the GTO package. So you go to the dealership, you go, I want the GTO package, and they throw in a fast engine. Sit down, sir. We'll be a minute. He took the name from Ferrari. This is the first muscle car. Wow. They sold 5,000 before GM figured out what was going on. And they're

just thinking... They're just like it's a package for a car. They're not... No one's paying attention to the fact because it's an edict. You don't put that in the car. Muscle cars immediately became big sellers. The Chevy Chevelle, the Dodge Charger, the Barracuda followed. GM invented the muscle car and then Ford took it over. The Mustang came out and sold 1.5 million in two years. Wow. So it's the fucking thing. Right. For defining the company policy and creating a new car, John became the youngest division head in 1965. Right. Yeah, that is what you do, right? Yeah. We are fucking furious at your behavior, John. How dare you? Here's your new office and well done. Really, thank

you for not listening to our bullshit. Whoa, that's him, huh? I think that's Bunky. Oh, that's Bunky. Man in the tiger suit. What does that even mean? Although that could be him. That St. John... Well, that says it's DeLorean. Yeah, that might be him when he's young. Looks like he's in the CIA. He's going to change a lot. So that's why that'll throw you off. So he's young, right, for having all of this power. 24. And he's 36. But he's still young for the position he's in. He becomes the youngest division head in 1965. Okay. There was a lot of fighting between division heads at GM and it didn't help that the young guy who broke the rules was now an equal to the older guys who paid their dues. You can see

how... Oh, my God. The guys who just want the car to drive slowly down the road and then this fucker comes along, blows everything out of the water. Here we go. What does DeLorean have for us? No, he's an equal. Pontiac pushed GM limits on advertising. One campaign they came up with was to embrace tigers. So that's the tiger suit. That's right. Headline. But what does that mean? Embrace tigers. Dealers gave out orange and black license plates and tiger tails to be hung on in tennis or on the back license plate. Fucking cool. Yeah, it is. The first GTO commercial in 1965 featured a tiger jumping out from under a hood. Yeah. By the way, not a great gig for the tiger actor. Okay. Not an actor, an actual tiger.

And then to make this commercial, you have to get the tiger in the hood and close the hood. Right. Fun. So to do that, they ended up using 40 pounds of raw meat in the commercial. Wow. That'll get me in a car. So they throw 40 pounds of meat in and the tiger's like, all right, I'll do you goddamn commercial. That's the problem with the animals. They don't know they're filming me. No, they have no idea. They're just like, this is torture. I love the meat. Until you get 40 pounds of meat involved. Pontiac won the Motortran car of the year award. Next, the ad team had a GTO jumping a small goalie in an ad and the other... A goalie? A goalie. A goalie. Different. A goalie is very different. That's yeah. Weirder.

So now the other heads of the GM divisions are furious because they're showing like a fucking daredevil shit. Right. Yeah. And then John was told to find a more responsible way to sell the car. The GM chairman... Besides tigers and gully leaps? Well, the GM chairman said no more tiger comparisons because it's too aggressive. Right. Three years of tiger promotions were dead. They started calling the GTO the great one in ads. Okay. So back then... So now they get Wayne Gretzky. Now they get Wayne Gretzky. So now back then Detroit car executives are celebrities. Wow. Because it's the biggest company going. Right. And then if you get that position, you're a super powerful guy and you're just known. Yeah.

Yeah. Sure. And John... Just like now. Yeah. Exactly. We all know. We all name the GM heads. Oh yeah. Yeah. Nobody wants to put their heads on pikes. Well. Oh. John, so John's a big celebrity. He's a young guy. He invented the muscle car. He has access to 40 pounds of meat. 40 pounds of meat. He's a gully rebel. That's right. Gullible. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Magazines write articles about him. He became known as the exec who understood youth. Right. He gets the kids. He gets them. And he remade himself in that image. He quit smoking, lost weight, grew out of sideburns, dyed his hair black, wore turtlenecks, bell bottoms and a peace symbol on a necklace. Hmm. Okay. So he's a costume shop. Well, GM is a very conservative

place. So that's not him. That's a picture of somebody else. Okay. GM is a very conservative place. Oh, wow. So it's weird that he is doing that. That's him not dressed. Yeah, he looks... This is more what we're looking at. What is... And there he is just doing some chest. Well, this is something from a magazine. Some chest workouts. Oh. Wow. Okay. So he's just on a bench with a couple of dumbbells working the pecs. Without a shirt on. No shirt. So GM's very conservative corporation. Everyone wears a suit and then there's this guy. And then you've got this guy who's just doing peckwork. When John was out of the office, he had his shirt unbuttoned down to the middle of his torso. Hmm. He got a facelift. Whoa. That's

the shirt. And an implant to reshape his jaw. Jesus Christ. Yeah, he's fucking killing it. John, I don't know if he's killing it. Sounds like he's got some demons. Yeah. Well, this might be a middle life, middle life crisis situation also. Okay. He told Fortune Magazine he had reconstructive surgery after going through a windshield and a car wreck. I was hopping over a gully that had a tiger in the engine and smashed into it. And then when they checked on the racetrack he said he got the racetrack on, I was like, yeah, that didn't happen. Right. But that's what you got to do. Or at least that's what you had to do when you had plastic surgery back then, right? He kind of came up with a facial alibi. Yeah. Facial

alibi. All right. So reporters would come to his home. He would just invite reporters in. He wants to show everybody how he's living. He's very accessible to the press. He'd drive reporters to work while blasting Jefferson Airplane. Yeah. With his fake John facelift. Yeah. This is normal. He'd talk about the... You know, one hand makes you smaller and the other makes you large. Are you sure you're Jaws and... That's fine. I got into an accident as a racetrack. Yeah. You look normal. I look normal. I am normal. Yeah. One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small. Okay. But the one that might not give to you might not give anything. I don't want to talk to you anymore. So, he'd also talk about the

Beach Boys, quote, French philosophers, and talk about historian Peter Gay's writings on human misery. He told one reporter he was writing a novel about nuclear war. He also loved to show off his abs. So, he's a little alien musky, right? Yes. Right? I mean, he's just sort of like... It's very dilemma, especially the way the press is treating him. Yeah. And he's not... He's like... He's no longer behind the scenes, so now he's leading into the absurdity of the character that has sort of been developed. Yes, very much. Right? He said he didn't understand why auto-execs felt they had to vote Republican, and he studied FM rock radio to get intel on the love generation. What did he studied FM radio? Don't you ever study FM radio? No.

I'm trying to figure out what's going on with somebody. It's been a while. It's been a while. If you want to know the kids, you study FM radio. What do we fire up the old FM? Reporter has just sucked up what he said. The local press not as taken as the national. One paper ran a gospel article about an anonymous auto-exec who got plastic surgery. Who was it? I don't know. They never said anonymous. How's that to know? John Elizabeth's marriage fell apart in 1968. I can't believe he's still married. Oh, I was going to say, I can't believe they got divorced. No, I can't believe she hung in there with a new jaw, a new face, new attitude, always lifting weights. He's awesome. Yeah. He sounds a little... He's

pretty awesome. Okay. She stood in for cruelty and she got the house and she showed reporters bills from a plastic surgeon in Switzerland that kept coming in the mail. Oh, man. That's why you just pay right away. One lump sum. You got the money. You don't want these Swiss face bills chasing you for the rest of your life. That's right. I've been there. John then started spending time in California. Not good. Poppy the Mechanics, quote, John would descend the steps from the GM corporate plane with his sunglasses on and his coat over one arm. Ready to party is an accurate description. He dated Ursula Andrus, Candice Bergen, Nancy Sinatra, and Raquel Welsh. Wow. Jesus. Raquel

Welsh is fairly attractive. Raquel Welsh is an attractive person. She's Candice Bergen. The others I'm not familiar with. Really? Who is the other first one? Ursula Andrus. Who's that? I think she was a Bond girl. Nancy Sinatra? Oh, her I know. Yeah. Boots are meant for walking, right? Her dad did something. Yeah. So he's hanging out with big stars at executive members, only nightclubs. This is so Ellie on Musk. This is so GM. Classic GM. Yeah. Some weeks he flew out to California on a Thursday and went to head back to Detroit on a Tuesday. It's a pretty good sketch. One time he tossed a junior exec lipstick and said Nancy Sinatra wanted a firebird that color and to do it in four days. Oh boy. So

he's getting a little. Losing the plot a little. Losing the plot at the office to touch. So he falls in love again. Okay. 1969. Okay. This time with Kelly Harmon. Her dad was a college football legend, war hero and sportscaster. Okay. Her brother would become known as actor Mark Harmon. Oh, wow. Yeah. All right. So it's a family, right? It's a it's a Bel Air rich family. You didn't go to it yet. Oh, wow. Yeah, they are. Well, this is a better one. I think how stupid they look. Oh, God. With the dog. Yeah. He's got his turtle neck on. He looks like the turtle neck he's wearing is made from the dog. So she's 20. He's 44. Do you bring up that your wife got a house out of a cruelty suit to your new love? Hey, well, she's 20. How, you

know, what are you guys talking about at all? It's true. They married at the Bel Air Country Club. John wrote a song for Kelly that the Robert Mitchell Mitchell boys choir sang. Kelly told reporter quote, I like writing, skiing, water skiing, music, swimming, poetry, parties and dogs. She's 20. Yep. Yep. That sounds like a 20 year old list. John starts starts driving a Maserati instead of a GM car. It's an interesting move. I mean, you made a number of them. Why not? Okay. Yeah. I'm sure GM was like, cool. Hey, John, you know, Saturday and Sunday are the days off. Have we been clear? They adopt a son named Zachary. Okay. His dad had died the year before John's dad. Okay. He died the year before throat cancer. Are you getting emotional? Sorry. And after

the Ford factory called John and asked him to come pick up his dad's toolbox. Jesus. But that's also like Ford being. Yeah, who wins there? Yeah, I don't know who wins, but like you're calling like the head of a division of GM. Hey, come pick up your dad's toolbox. Hey, dad's tools are here. Hopefully you don't weep all over them. Both Kelly and John disliked Detroit social life. Okay. They told the reporter they'd rather go on a moonlight horseback ride than go to a Bloomfield Hills cocktail party. Kelly starts spending. There's other options. No, that's it. Oh, you either go on a nighttime horse ride, horse ride in the moonlight, or you go to the Bloomfield Hills cocktail parties. There's nothing in between. Okay, just seems like that's it. There's a movie. No, that's what we

got dancing. By the way, wasn't Detroit like the shit back then? Yeah. So they were just like now. Just a lot of money in Detroit back then. Yeah. Same as now. Right. Kelly starts spending more and more time in California without John. It's not a good sign. He's the gateway. Yeah. None of this slowed down John's career at GM. The new model Camaro was due out next year and it was behind schedule and redesigns for the Corvette and Nova were lagging. Okay, Nova. Yeah. So over the past four years, there have been a lot of bad publicity from recalls and other issues. So John was put in charge of the Chevrolet division. It's a big division bump. Yeah. By 1971, Chevrolet had sales of over 3 million cars. His division alone was almost as much as all of Ford. Wow.

That's how much he's selling. So he's good. Right, he's good. He's good at his job. Okay. But he's also party boy. And a bit of a douche. A bit of a douche. Yeah. Yeah. In between, he's flying to LA. And again, his ex-wife got a house because of his cruelty. That's a yeah, that's a bad word. It's not good. Yeah. So he's flying to LA. He's hanging out with Sam and Davis Jr. Johnny Carson. I love your crazy cars, babe. But take your eye out. Your cars are so wild. I can't believe you got a tiger in the hood of one of them. That's just nuts. Is that Carson? Yeah. He started looking for more ways to make money. He bought a piece of the San Diego Charges. A piece. I'm charging receivers. Just a little bit. And the New York Yankees. Okay. He was put on boards of startups,

getting involved with other businesses really did not go well at GM. He's supposed to only care about GM. He's like a one man shark tank. Like in GM world, they're like, this is all you would ever want to work at GM. By the way, I mean, he's killing it. He is killing it. So you would think that that would be true. He's making shitloads of money. Right. He's very successful. Yeah. But he still wants more. Kelly and John split in 1972. Saw this one coming. I did not. You wrote it. A magazine photographer came to his house and took pictures of John wandering around. Hold on. Let me get my dumbbells. Wearing nothing but jeans. Hot. I mean, let me get my dumbbells. Yeah. Yeah. So he's kind of making the divorce. Did he marry Kelly? Yeah, they were married. Oh,

okay. Remember he sang her a song? Oh, I didn't know that that was, I thought that was just like date six shit. No, that was the marriage. It's a big question. But he's like taking the divorce and making it into a publicity thing. Like for him, like, oh, I'm sad. I'm walking around without my shirt on. I can't even face my shirts anymore. What do I do? I got nothing. Just these jeans and a dream. Just the jeans and a dream. Oh boy. I couldn't. Yeah, I looked for him earlier, but I couldn't find any pictures of him just shirtless and jeans. So we've still got that dumbbell one. So he's sad, obviously. John won custody of Zachary. His friends in Hollywood treated him to a weekend in Malibu with three sex workers who looked like Kelly. That's a friend.

That's nice. That's nice. That's nice to get three Kelly's three Kelly's for a weekend for the guy. Yeah, that's sweet. That's great. That's friends. It's called being a nice guy. Yeah, some friends would probably just want to be emotionally supportive. But then, you know, if you can get three doppelgangers, we'll bang you. That's right. Doppelgangers. Yeah. Then you do that. That's classic GM stuff. That's in the handbook. Yeah, for sure. I'm sure they're happy to hear that. Hey, John, it's Wednesday. Where you been? Sorry, I was binging three almost Kelly's all weekend. Anyway, what new car do I need to put a tiger in? A friend, quote, he said it was the classiest thing anyone had ever done for him. So he doesn't know what class. That was his phrase. Classy. Classy. He also said no one

in Detroit had had enough class to do something like that. Nobody in Detroit is as classy as you guys. There's no way anybody in Detroit is going to buy me an escort that looks exactly like my wife. That's just classic behavior. That's just classy. Detroit would never do that. They're not classy. They don't get it. That same year, John was on a plane when he saw a model and actress Christine Ferrar in Vogue magazine. Okay. He tore the five page spread out and put it in his brief case. So if you're sitting next to him, you're like, oh, he's going to murder. Oh, he's going to murder that model for sure. So quote, I felt a bit sheepish like a teenager with a crush on a movie star. Yeah, you're a fucking weirdo putting pictures in your pants. Well, briefcase. My

briefcase is normally in my pocket. I'm sorry. I'm thinking of a wallet. It's classic me. So she's 22. He's 48. But he's like, this is the hot girl for me. Normal. It's normal stuff. Yeah. Well, by the way, that's now how dating apps are essentially. So he's got he's got a he's he's got a crush 40 year old guy with a crush on a 22 year old who he's taken. And by the way, it's not like you rip out one picture. Sure. You can get away with saying it's the perfume or something. You rip out five. You are a psychopath. You remember her. Oh, yeah. What do I know her from? She she's some movies, but you probably just know her from her modeling. Yeah, I know her from her max factor. That's right. So he's now john is now promoted again. He is now exec. Zara

of cars. He's now exec in charge of GM's North American car and truck division. So he's the fucking shit. Right. But with all the success, he still feels empty. Sure. He told his tanks on E. Yeah, man. It's tough. That's right. Tough business. He told author Gail Shee, quote, here I was spending my life bending the fenders a little differently to try to convince the public they were going to get a new and dramatically different product. I'm sorry, does he have car block? He has. Is that what we're like? Yeah, right. But he's painting this as like he's got some sort like it's not block. He's saying like he doesn't feel yeah, but I'm not creatively stimulated anymore. I'm just bending fenders. That's just pulling one over on the

public again. What gross excess. It was ridiculous. I thought there's got to be more to life than this. Am I doing the thing God would have me do here on earth? Excuse me, John, is it true you ripped out five pictures of a woman on a plane? God wanted me to do that. Okey-dokey. God wants me to jerk off when I'm back in the hotel. John, John, you're on mic. I know. Well, we're going to end the interview with you. I'm going to take off my shirt. Keep it on, you asshole. Oh, Jesus. Damn it. These jeans are tight. Are they not? Yeah, no, they're too tight for sure. Tight like a V8 engine in a tempest. You're an idiot. That's where's the door? Fella GM execs did not like John. Yeah. He talked too much in interviews. The way he dressed was

unprofessional. He made no friends at GM during his rise. One of his bosses at GM warned him now that he had made it to the executive floor. So this move put him on the power floor. So now you've got the guys like, all right. Literally it's the 14th floor. He made it on the power floor. Right. So this exec warns him now that he's there, he should quote, disappear into the wallpaper. Fucking play it cool, man. You made it. You made it. You're on the 14th floor, Johnny Boy. Play it cool. Go live in the wall. John was to give a speech at a GM conference about quality control and how it affects GM's bottom line. Okay. Days before the conference, the speech was leaked to the Detroit News. Papers across the country ran the story. The New York Times headline

was quote, GM warns its executives to improve auto quality. So it makes it sound like he's talking shit about the quality of it. Right. John screamed that he had been double crossed. So a GM hired a private investigator to look into it and into John. I think you're biting off more than you could chew here. Right? Yeah. Is this, you've asked for too much. I want to know who did it. Well, we're going to investigate the company and you. You know what? Let's call this all up. We don't need to do this. We don't need to do this. I'm just a guy. We were good. I'm a guy. It's just a speech. I'm a guy. I'm going to take my shirt off. I'm going to lose the shirt for sure. That's the first order of business of the shirt is coming off. In September, 1972,

John finally met the girl he had selected out of a Vogue magazine like it was a menu. He met Christine at a Gucci show, but she was dating another rich guy, it turns out. Someone had ripped her magazine clippings out a little too quickly. That's right. Luckily, that rich guy died when he crashed his plane near Santa Barbara. Boom. John waited a month or so, then asked Christine to lunch. For sure. You got to give that time period. And it's also a month and a lunch. Yeah. Swaff. Very. You don't want to do it two week and dinner. Dinner. Fuck no. You do a month and a lunch. You look like a crazy person. You look like a psychopath. Hide your psychosis. That's right. You do a month and a lunch.

John said he, quote, wanted Christine for Christmas. So he's now the devil? Is that fair? The PI delivered his 19 page report on John in early 1973. Hey, so GM's pretty fine. John's a psychopath. John's fucking crazy. John's crazy. John, put your shirt on. I can't. I don't have any. It contained, quote, certain allegations about John's personal life. Okay. And it said the person probably responsible for leaking his speech to the press was John. Was John DeLorean. Of course. GM announces John's resignation in April 1973. The company never said a word about why he left.

Even to this day, they've never said why he left. His bonuses were paid. He was put in charge of a non-profit GM ran. That way he could keep some salary. Okay. And given a Cadillac dealership in Florida. Okay. Three weeks after being let go, John married Christine. Jesus. Oh, sorry. Yeah. There you go. Sorry. Was that being too... Tappy? Was that... Oh, our fans don't care about the sound. Since GM never said anything about why he left, John was able to control the story. Okay. He became the guy who fired GM. Oh, yeah. Right. And walked away from a 600... That's how it works. Yeah. Employees fire the business. All the time. Right. He was the guy who walked away

from a $650,000 job. Because he wanted to move to Florida. Yeah. With his new magazine wife. And his CADs. He went on the lecture circuit and wrote opinion pieces. He was the car business guy and took the old guard to task for their refusal to change. Sure. It was perfect timing as the OPEC oil embargo hit and everyone wondered why America only made huge cars. Right. So he's the man of the fucking hour. Okay. John then connected with the former car salesman, Roy Nesseth, whose office was just a pay phone at a bar. Man, doing you long for those days. Oh my God. How you doing? It's Roy. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. I'll get it. Hold on. It's not for me. Hello, Roy's car business. Yeah. It's also a bar. Okay. Yeah. Now we're open to midnight. All right. Hello. Roy here. Car business.

He's getting a lot of calls. He's getting a lot of calls. They're none other for him. That's the beauty of this man. Okay. Yeah. We got a bunch of potato chips to sell behind the bar. A quarter each. Yeah. I'm also a car guy. Roy's car business. I wonder if we can find him. What's his name? Roy Nesseth. Yep. Oh, Roy Nesseth. Oh, whoa. Which one is he? Is he all of them? Oh, there it is. Huh. Yeah, there he is. Yeah, he looks like a guy who answers a phone at a bar like it's his. So they team up. They start working on deals together. Okay. A car dealer let John buy into his dealership and then he watched as John and Roy just ran up huge debts against the business. The dealer ended up walking away from his own business. These guys fired GM. Bullshit.

The dealer quote, DeLorean uses mystique to put the deal together and then he puts the rape in. The guy is a demon underneath. I tried to tell people but I gave up talking because nobody would listen. I mean giving up talking is frustrating. So that sounds like what the mob does. They come into a business then they load it with debt or take all the money out or a precedent. Yeah. That's correct. I'm a Carter Clinton. Everyone since Reagan. Christina and John were having trouble making a baby. So she visited a New York palm reader and advisor named Sonia. This is not a good idea. Sonia put a glass of tap water under Christina's chair at the beginning of the session. At the end of the session she retrieved it. It was full of blood. What just happened? Blood glass.

She put a glass. Sorry. That's the tap water. Put a glass. It doesn't matter if it's from the tap. She put it under her chair. Under the chair. And then when she was done with her session the tap water was. Blood. Blood. Okay. So. You can see. You can see. It sounds like Detroit's water. Is it from Detroit? No but you can see the what's going on. Yes. She's basically a doctor. Yes. For sure. She knows. Yes. The psychic. Yeah. This is a person who's a medically trained individual. That's how you know. Now drink the blood, Christina. Now drink the blood. You'll be pregnant with a baby. So okay. So obviously she's very good and. Yep. She's good at what she does. Christina went home and asked John for $10,000 to give Sonia

because she was going to help her get pregnant. Sure. So he did it. Right. And by the way, I'll let you know if any of this sounds crazy. You got it. Okay. And Christina, sure enough, got pregnant. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Great. Yeah. After they had a daughter, John started seeing Sonia privately. Oh boy. What's wrong? I feel like he's you know, being John. So burning people was a pattern with Roy and John. There were others like an investor in Phoenix or Rancher in Idaho. So they're just kind of sucking money out of people. While doing all this, John planned his big return to the automobile business. The chief stylist of the Lamborghini drew him up plans for the DMC 12. It looked like

nothing else out there. A rear engine car with wing doors and a stainless steel body. It still is the car that if you see it, I am like, oh my God, look at it. You still can't believe its existence. Yeah. Totally. It is like, it's like if cocaine made a car. That's right. Yeah. He also wanted to go. Not a lot of people know that actually what happened was he put a glass of water under his chair and when he got up there was a DeLorean. That's right. The DMC. And blood. And a ton of blood. A lot of blood. A lot, so much blood. He was also adamant that golf clubs would fit in the trunk. Great. So I've got a really good car designer. He told the designers. The engines in the back?

Yeah. Rear engine. Like a Porsche. Right. He told the designers, quote, this car is aimed at a particular section of the market. Me. The horny bachelor who's made it. Oh, God. Jesus Christ. Fuck yeah, baby. Starting a new car company, very difficult. No independent car maker had taken on GM and survived since the 1920s. Okay. So no bank would give him money because it's just a crazy idea. Okay. In September, 1978, DeLorean research got 12.5 million from investors. Okay. People like Santa Davis Jr. I'm in, babe. Singer Roy Clark. Hey, who am I? And the chairman of Pan Am Airlines. Bully. Come for the impressions, stay for the confusion. The money was moved through Swiss banks and a

company. Always not shady. And then a company based in Panama. Perfect. The two best. The best way to do it. Go offshore. Two best places for money. Get the Bahamas involved already. He was supposed to, the money was supposed to go to Lotus cars who were now helping design DeLorean, but only 137,000 made it. It's a lot that didn't. No one notices at the time that the money has disappeared because really who's keeping track of it. Investors gave money they wouldn't know. Right. So John turns to governments to try to build a factory. Okay. In 1978, he signed an agreement to build a factory on an old Air Force base in Puerto Rico. Okay. Yeah, and celebrated because this is a big fucking deal to get a car company to build a factory. Sure.

And then John announced that he got a better offer from the UK and Puerto Rico was out. Okay. Instead, he would build this car factory in Northern Ireland in Dunmury just outside of Belfast. Okay. The land that he was given was between two housing developments. One twin brook was mostly full of Catholics who were driven out of Belfast by sectarian violence. The setup makes me worry about the other side. Full of Protestants. So the factory would be right in between them. Perfect. And then sign that lease. Get the ink on the lease now. The deal was done by the Labour government along with the National Irish Development Agency, the company we get $150 million. Okay. So the British and the Irish are like, we're gonna

get people jobs because unemployment is fucking crazy bad at this point in Ireland, which is also great for IRA recruitment and just fucking troubles in general, right? Perfect. John told a fellow carmaker, quote, I'm starting to think that God stuck me here to be part of the solution to the crisis in Northern Ireland. Absolutely. Very healthy thought. Absolutely. Very healthy. Yep. God did that. The God. Yep. God wanted him. Hey, just build your crazy car. I think I'm here to help these people. John came to Dunmury, came to Dunmury to break ground on the factory on October 2nd, 1978. But they'd already broken the ground with bombs.

As he and a member of the Labour Party dug holes, a chain link fence held back protesters who chanted Brits out and Yankee go home. It's not, it's all fine. It's not welcoming. Yeah, it's good. Okay. Construction began soon after, but the Irish Labourers did not want to cut down a small Hawthorne tree because they said it was a fairy tree. Hmm. Who do we root for? You can't cut that one down. She's a fairy tree. We can't make the factory here. No, we've just harvested her. According to legend, if someone cut down a fairy tree, he would lose a limb. Okay. So that's a great reason to not do it. Let him do it. Lose the limb. So all the bulldozers, so they're building the factory, but all the bulldozers and trucks, everything's avoiding this one

Hawthorne tree. Okay. Then all the workers show up one morning and the tree was gone. And the Irish workers said, quote, bad sign. It's a dark day. You have wrecked everything we're building. The fairy tree will see to that. Sure. Okay. In January, 1979, the Wall Street Journal wrote a story out of the headline, taking on Detroit. John DeLorean says he'll show industry how to build cars. So the Dunmarie factory opened in 1980. It had separate entrances for Catholic and Protestant workers. Jesus. That's the best kind of factory. It just feels like it's ripe for problems. John was not a fan of Belfast and was worried he'd be abducted or killed. Well, he lost the fairy tree. That's right. Once he took down the fairy tree, all bets are off.

It's like a tales from the crypt. There were a lot of businessmen being kidnapped then in Belfast and he told them, he told his staff to get him a bulletproof trench coat because he heard Kissinger had one. Yeah, that's the guy you want to be following. What did Kissinger have? You give me that. He often flew and slept in London instead of staying in Northern Ireland. Oh my God. The company rented two floors and a Park Avenue building in New York. John's office had a view of Central Park. He hung a huge photo of himself. It's always a good sign. Big poster sized photo. That's good. He's shirtless in jeans. Oh, what a douche. Jesus Christ. Sitting on a rock with his son. Ah. Looking at the ocean. Jumping in. It sounded like the photographer just captured

him naturally with his son. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. All right. John took 78,000 from the company to move his family to New York from Detroit. They found a comfortable 20 room apartment on Fifth Avenue. Sure. Just sure. Not for three. No, 20. Yeah. Exactly. You got the bedroom. Just under seven per person. I think that's fine. Bedroom, bedroom, kitchen, dining room. Yeah. Spare room. Yeah. Weight room. Spare room. Shirt room. Shirt room. Jeans room. Uh-huh. Blood chair room. Pictures of myself room. Room of yourself. Pictures of things that I want to do. Yeah. Inspiration room. Yeah. Blood. Blood room. I already said that. I already counted the blood room. Blood glass room. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fine. Fairy tree. The place where you put all the fairy trees that you

stole from the land. The limbs. You limbs. Yeah. You lipored limbs. Yeah. Probably a den. Probably a den. Some of the bears can run. So accounting company Arthur Anderson was hired to audit the business and found nothing amiss. Well, it's time for them to go out of business. Well, Anderson would later go down as part of the Enron Enron implosion. Oh. Good. Stomping ground. The car company paid for chauffeurs, servants, cars for Christine and her brother and an art collection. And the British are paying for all of this. It's a part of that 150 million they put down. Oh, boy. But then Margaret Thatcher was elected. Oh, the iron lady. Thatcher had no interest in helping the working man and absolutely no interest in helping Belfast.

Right. John Hiredy. No, I'm a bit of a bitch. Oh, hi. Hello. Hey, how are you? Yes. We've never had you on the podcast. Well, I'm like Reagan, the lady. Yeah, I hate you. Yes. I hate everything about you. I hate you. I hate. I don't like shame chamber. It's not funny. I don't like the way you just killed entire towns of humans. No, stop. Enough. And the Falklands, really? Oh, good Lord, get over it. John hired a British secretary to try to smooth things over with the government. So he hired someone who's familiar with the processes. Hey, sweetheart, do me a favor. Don't get me a shirt. Hey, it's me, Johnny D. But William Haddad, one of John's execs, said John was losing it. John often thought an IRA hit squad was coming for him, and he asked Haddad to put him in contact

with Israeli intelligence because he had a plan to seize Saudi oilfield. Holy shit. Those dots barely connect. Good God. So he wants, he's worried the IRA is coming after him. So he gets involved with Israeli army people in order to take over Saudi oilfields. What would you do? It's called being a businessman. I just wanted to cut down the goddamn fairy tree. He kept asking, also asking about that bulletproof trench code. And where's that technology that we barely don't have? You guys watch the Bond guy, right? Right? One of them jackets. Come on. They're going to throw hats at me. They'll cut my head off if we're not careful. John talked to fewer and fewer people. There was only one person he really trusted. John. Sonya, the palm reader.

Oh, what? God damn. I think I thought my answer was crazy. He consulted her before he made every big decision. She took his money and told him everything would be okay. Great. What a great gig for like a psychic. Oh, the best. Yeah, yeah. Do that. Sign this and here and here. In 1980, the American Express Christmas catalog included an $85,000 gold limited edition DeLorean. So they send out there. Gold DeLorean? So they send it out in the catalog and say that you can get a gold DeLorean. Only 100 are offered. There's 100 people. Only two people bought one. Oh my God. What? But $85,000 back then. Like you get a Porsche for a Porsche for the 20s. Still, you would think 100 people would buy it. I mean, you're talking like that's like a

comparatively like a $250,000 car or something. Jesus Christ. DeLoreans began leaving the factory to be sold in the US in April 1981. The car did not live up to John's promises. Okay. It was not ground breakingly safe or as fuel efficient as he said it would be. Well, he hasn't put in the time traveling device yet. Give him time. I don't know what the time traveling device is. It's the flux capacitor. I don't know. It's the only way to get 1.21 gigawatts without a bolt of lightning. Do you seriously know this? Dude, that movie raised me. Okay. Come on. So there it is, obviously. It is quite a lump of shit, even though I would still love to have one. It looks like a bug. Yeah, it is. Like it must have looked old when it came out. People are

like, what year is that from? No, that's how awesome, that's how cars look back then. Like, that's like a modern looking car. So boxy. The doors are cool. That's how they all were. The doors are cool. I don't care what anyone says. All cars back then, they look boxy and lame and lame. Although you probably couldn't park it in like a grocery store parking lot. Why? Because the doors, right? No, the doors just go straight out. Oh, they do? Yeah. Okay. They don't come out sideways. It also doesn't have much power and it doesn't handle very well. Okay, so a lot of good things. A viewer at a Cleveland auto show got into the DeLorean and then got trapped for over an hour because the doors wouldn't open. Yeah, still. He's like,

better than being an outside Cleveland. There is a flaw that really hurt battery life. Jesus. Johnny Carson's car died right after he drove it off the lot. I couldn't believe it. I might be Sammy Davis. And for all this, the price is the same as luxury cars because it costs so much to make. Right. It's the exact same price is a decent Porsche. Okay. They sell okay. In the UK, the secretary, he hired to deal with the government, started to sour on John and think that things weren't right. In the middle of the night, she filled up two bags of office documents and skipped out. The documents painted the picture of a company mismanaging the British government's money. One memo accused an exec of spending thousands at Harrods on gold-plated

faucets. Jesus. So some Ben Carson shit. That's not good. But it's also very like dot-com boom shit. That's totally what people are doing in the dot-com boom era. The plan was to take the car company public. So that's just another documents. This would have made John 120 million and leave people with stock options like execs and dealers with close to nothing. I don't know how this shit worked. I don't either, but right. Yeah. It's like, you know, replacing a glass of tap water with blood. That's right. Right. The British government would lose the seats it had on the board, which meant it would not be able to watch what was happening with the money. Britain would get 3.6 of the company and 8.4 million for a $150 million investment.

So the secretary took the docs to a Tory MP in London, but nothing happened. Cool. Sounds like the Tories. The secretary waited for weeks. And then finally she talked to a reporter. And the reporter began investigating, but the news of the world killed the story. What year? It's 81, I think. Okay. Okay. The reason the news of the world killed the story was because Rupert Murdoch ordered them to. Oh, wow. It turns out Rupert lives in the same building as the DeLoreans. Oh, God. Rupert said he didn't know John, though. He sometimes saw Christina in the elevator. So the reporter sold the story to the Daily Mirror and stuff. He's like the forest gump of evil. Right?

Right. I would love to run a simulation where you see what the planet is like if Rupert Murdoch died when he was 15. Oh, man, imagine. We could probably all be shirtless. So he sells the story to the Daily Reporter. And Rupert, the guy who didn't know John DeLorean, then immediately gave John the name of a really tough libel lawyer, which is weird for a guy you don't know, but whatever. Yeah, whatever. Yeah. It's just being neighborly. It's like a cup of sugar in that building. John started working his press connections. He attacked the secretary of the reporter and anyone else who was saying anything. The press wrote what he wanted. That's right. The press loves him. Right. He said he would sue the reporter in the Daily Mirror for $250 million.

That's your cutoff. Any more funds? No, you're done. You're cut off. Just like all the coal miners in Scotland. You're not having any more. You don't get any. You eat your meat. If you don't get any put in, you can't eat your meat. No. No, that's not the song. It's something like that. No, that part was not at all. No, what is that? It's the sound of what the ambulance is to make in the streets. I'll voice them. There's an emergency. This is bad. This is not. It's me, Mags. Scotland Yard investigated. Look at my quaff. I'm like Queen Victoria, but worse. Scotland Yard investigated and found nothing. What is going on? But the damage was done. The stock offering had been delayed. Was everything on the up and up? I mean, no. Okay. The stock offering was delayed.

John's dream of making $120 million is gone. I mean, he is making cars. The factory is functioning. The company is now out of money. On February 19th, 1982, DeLorean Motor Cars was put into receivership. Which means that it's time for them to talk to the people who you've can finish who will at some point. It was still functioning while the government figured out if any part of the business could be salvaged. So they're still making cars, but they're, it's just the government's in charge basically and they're trying to figure out what the fuck to do. The government brought in an expert whose nickname was The Undertaker. Oh, good. Good, good, good. John talked to the New York Times and said he was, quote, delighted by the news. We came out

largely unscathed. The government has the problem and we have the fun end of the business. I trust The Undertaker. John said it was going to wipe $130 million off the company books. The Undertaker said that was, quote, codswallop. Oh, yes. Finally. Someone. Yes. Codswallop. That should be our spinoff podcast. Codswallop. That's bloody codswallop. So obviously this is huge news all over the place. Right. And a man named James Hoffman was paying attention. Hoffman was a federal informant who'd gotten about $32,000 in salary from the feds to make cases against cocaine dealers. Okay. He was now watching the news and seeing John DeLorean squirm. And he used to know John. He had lived near John's ranch

in California. Okay. One day, Hoffman said it was DA Escort that he was going to deliver them John DeLorean. The agent didn't believe him. Hoffman got mad and just kept telling the agent he would deliver John DeLorean. Over the next month, The Undertaker kept trying to set deadlines and John delayed him by saying he had found an investor. And it was always for the same amount, $30 million. At one point, The Undertaker said, quote, surely to God, you could find the grace to vary the figure every now and then if only for appearances sake. Don't fuck with The Undertaker. If you're going to lie to me, at least try to lie to me. John went to Sonya and gave her more money. She said to keep the faith. So he knew it would be

fine. Sure. Yeah. Because that psychic in Miami said so. John was now doing drugs. What? He was taking a Senegal to sleep and a painkiller that was only legal in Canada. Sure. Yeah, there's no problems there. He kept calling investors trying to get someone to bite. Then on June 29th, John got a call from James Hoffman. Okay. He offered to hook John up with investors. Hoffman later said they were good friends and John said they had only met once in a driveway. In a driveway. So the two men met in the Marriott Bar in Newport Beach. And after that meeting, the FBI opened a file on John DeLorean. It was called Operation Full Circle and involved

actual drug dealers. So he's now part of Hoffman's web where he's getting all these people convicted of an arrest. The FBI plan was to get John to buy Coke from a dealer to help finance the car company while at the same time getting the dealer to bring money into the US as a temporary loan for John. So that way they can get the drugs and the money that this guy has. Sure. That's a two-fer. It's a two-fer. John said he wanted... It's a little intratminy. John said he wanted nothing to do with it and just wanted everything to end. Oh no. Are you going to make him sympathetic? John said Hoffman then called and threatened to kill his daughter.

Quote, I'll send your baby daughter's head home in a shopping bag. Where's the bag from? Yeah, is it papers? I guess I don't have plastic then. It's a paper bag. It's like a nice Macy's bag. So if it's a paper bag, you got to wrap it in some kind of some tissue paper to soak up the blood. That's a cool call. I would do like a zoo bars. I don't even know what zoo bars is, but I'll do it. Yeah, I mean, or I mean, you could just do like a normal grocery store. I'd love an Albertson's one. Yeah. I mean, that'd be one of the classy ones that you reuse. Yeah, I'm with you. Oh, head. So the problem with this story that John says

is that the deal took a long time to close. And so these guys are meeting for weeks and months after the call where he threatened to cut off John's daughter's head. John hung out with them and they're friendly the whole time. Okay. So that's dicey. Yeah. The entire summer, John met with Hoffman and the drug dealer over and over and over. They began referring to cocaine as monkeys. Sure. Well, that's a good cover. Let's start a line of monkeys. That's still tracks. The conversations were all taped by Hoffman. No, by the FBI. The FBI is like in the other room. Oh, wow. Every fucking every meeting. Jesus. It's all in hotel rooms. The FBI is in the other room.

There were so many FBI agents in the next room that one time there's cigarette smoke set off a fire alarm. Oh my God. Also just too much smoke. I know. This is the worst part of the story. Just somebody crack a fucking window. Oh my God. An FBI agent posing as a banker was brought in to help seal the deal. He tried to convince the dealer to take stock or a seat on the board of DeLorean. But the dealer had read all about the car company. Even the dealer is like, I don't make shady investments. Is that even a thing anymore? I'm trying to keep my portfolio in the up and up. I don't like the undertaker. Yeah. Another issue was that John needed 1.8 million to buy the Coke.

Okay. That's how much the Coke is, but he has no money. Now, does he want the Coke to use or he wants the Coke? To take the Coke and sell it on the street and have more money. Jesus Christ. It's all a good idea. But he has no money. So he told the banker that he has no money and he blamed the IRA. He's likely the IRA. I cut down a fairy tree. They really just fleeced me. Even though John had no money, somehow the drug deal moved forward. That's the best way. Oh, great. I still get the drugs. The banker FBI guy offered to loan John the money to buy the Coke as collateral. So the drug dealer who is selling the drugs to John, the banker is now working it out where

he will give a loan. The drug dealer will give a loan to John and as collateral, John gives him what's left of DeLorean, Carpart's office shit. Jesus Christ. So the guy buying the drugs is getting a loan to buy the drug. This is what I'm with Manchester United when they got bought and the Dodgers. You just get loans and buy a team. But this is cocaine. Right. It's different. So John pushed the dealer to invest in his car company after the Coke was resold to rescue him from foreclosure. Okay. Jesus. In return, John would turn over controlling interest in the DeLorean car company. What? Somehow everyone agreed. What?

Yeah, none of it makes. It does not remind me. Like, especially if you're like, I'm building the comeback for the DeLorean. Do you want to run it though until then? I mean, literally there is no reason for John DeLorean to be involved in this. Right. Right. Yeah. Because the guy's giving him money and then he's buying cocaine with that money and then. Yeah. Yeah. He's going to Walter White a comeback of DeLorean.

Okay. So it did not dawn on John that he had really nothing to offer anyone in the deal. But I made it. But John was not handing over the DeLorean motor cars unlimited. Instead, he was giving up a dormant shell company with no value that was controlled by British receivers. John told the receivers money was coming into the accounts. Okay. So the night before the deal, John wrote a letter to his lawyer and gave it to someone to open. Oh, by the way, the deal he called them up and he said, okay, I'm ready to do the monkeys.

Let's do monkeys. The night before the deal, John wrote a letter to his lawyer and gave it to someone to open if he died. Oh, wow. It started, quote, I'm going to LA tomorrow to accomplish a minor miracle. I will have induced organized crime to donate 10 million to reopen the Belfast plant. And when they figure it out, they cannot do anything about it. Okay. Except kill him.

Sure. I don't know why that's not part of his equation, but as John flew from New York to LA, the deadline to deliver the money and save his company passed. So he's literally flying in the air when the deadline that the British have set comes and goes. Okay. And no money, that money he thought was coming the time it did not come. Okay. That's a stressful flight.

So no money is deposited. Okay. He lands, he basically has nothing now. He doesn't know that though, because it's 80, whatever, 182, he has no phone. He can't check his bank account. No, he's just got pockets full of hot women. Yeah, he has to go to his bank account. He can't because he's also with the two guys who's doing the deal.

It's, yeah. So they go to a hotel room on Century Boulevard. The banker takes out a suitcase of cocaine. Hoffman said it will make John at least four and a half million after it's resold. John lifts up a bag of cocaine, laughs, and says, it's better than gold. That's, is that for like the next Christmas, DeLorean? They're just gonna make it out of cocaine? Yeah, it's better than gold.

It's made out of cocaine. Three people bought it. Then an FBI agent walks in the room and says, hi John, this is all on camera. He's arrested on eight felonies, $5 million bail. While he's in jail, he finds God. Oh, Jesus, he was two cells down. I met him in the shower. Hey, what's up?

I'm God. Me and God had a weird thing. He's a top. So he ends up selling assets to make bail, including his part of the New York Yankees. Okay. He spent that Christmas in Vail. Sorry, jail? Vail.

Oh, interesting. Different. The following summer, Christina and John were baptized in the pool behind his New Jersey mansion. Oh my God. That's the best place in New Jersey to be baptized in our pool. I mean, that falls someone at one of his defense law firms leaked the surveillance tape of the bust to Larry Flint. Oh, shit.

Jesus. There's a lot of names. There's a lot of players. So Larry Flint gave it to 60 Minutes. 60 Minutes aired it October 23, 1983. So now everyone in the country sees John DeLorean. Buying cocaine, calling it gold. It's fucking devastating.

But then because everyone saw the trial was delayed because they didn't know they could get a jury. Larry Flint held a press conference at his mansion. Sure. He played a tape on a boom box and said it was Hoffman threatening to kill John's daughter. Oh, what? But the sounds very bad. Thank for Larry had transcripts of the conversation, which he hands out to the reporters. So then Flint gets called into court and he refuses to tell the judge who made the tape

or who gave it to him or to even turn over the tape. So the judge gives him a little time to think it over. So when Flint comes back to court, he is dressed in a bulletproof vest, a military helmet, wearing a purple heart and an American flag as a diaper. Oh, my God. How do I not know this part? What? Oh, my God.

He had 10,000 and crumpled up bills to pay his contempt of court fine. Oh, my God. And then. American flag as a diaper is quite a statement. So the judge ordered Larry to go down the hall and count the money in a room and straighten it out. Okay. Later, an FBI agent went in and found Larry sleeping on the floor in the room. What are these six?

Larry Flint and the judge. Larry Flint ended up pleading guilty to wearing an unauthorized purple heart in exchange for dropping the charges of desecrating the flag. Oh, my God. What a compromise. All right. So we're going to have to plead on the flag diaper, but don't worry about the other charges. So do I get away with making a boom-boom on the flag?

Yeah. You are in legal terms, you are going to be vindicated from your boom-boom. Oh, thank you. So then Larry admits the tape is a forgery. Okay. John's trial started on March 5th, 1984. The defense said all the tapes were produced and choreographed to make John look guilty. They attacked Hoffman as a paid informant.

Even the judge questioned Hoffman and Hoffman admitted he would get a percentage of the value of the bus. If the judge is cross-examining you, you are shady. The banker FBI agent admitted John was putting up no money for the cocaine. A DEA agent testified that Hoffman had made this all happen, and then he cried on the stand when it was revealed the government had ordered his mentor to testify and just try to discredit him. Wow. Christina sat behind John in support every day.

Once the judge admonished her for mouthing swear words at witnesses. That's how you do it. That's how you do it in the courtroom. The defense's closing argument was so good it ended up in a book called Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law. Whoa. They found John not guilty. John shouted, quote, praise the Lord.

Christina left John three weeks after the trial ended. Oh my God. What? Jesus. So she was rooting for jail. She was a go-to jail. Yeah, go to jail. Good Lord, go to jail.

The dealer in the hotel room with DeLorean flipped on everyone and helped take down Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel. Holy shit. A year later, John was indicted in Detroit on frat and racking tiering because of all that money that had disappeared from investors at the very beginning. Right. He was found not guilty on all 15 counts. In 1985, Back to the Future was made.

The DeLorean appears in the movie as a car that can travel through time. The movie was incredibly successful. And so the car is now more associated with Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox than John DeLorean. John declared bankruptcy in 1999. His new Jersey estate was bought by a group who then sold to Donald Trump, who turned it into a golf course. His daughter, Ivanka, was married there.

Oh my God. John kept talking about making another car. He created a watch line called DeLorean Time. DeLorean Time, they were motion powered and cost $3,495. Well, I mean, and you never see someone without one of those now. That's right. Imagine the world without the DeLorean Time. The motion activated watch.

Each purchase included getting on the waiting list for his new car. So. The watches were never manufactured. Oh. John died soon after of a stroke on March 19, 2005. He had been living in a New Jersey condo on Social Security for a decade. Morning. GM declared bankruptcy in 2009.

It was the fourth largest bankruptcy in US history. In 2018, GM announced it was laying off or transferring 14,000 workers and 25% of executive staff. Holy shit. So that's a normal story. I mean, I really thought I knew some of that. I knew he got in trouble. I knew he made the DeLorean, obviously. Everyone, I assume.

I thought and I assumed that he had gone to jail. Yeah. I thought he'd gone to jail. He didn't. It was just falls off the map. It was totally obviously entrapment. I mean, yeah. So it's total.

I mean, it's entrapment on like a few different levels. Yeah. It was a fucking disaster. You know, the thing he probably did reading through stuff. It sounds like he defrauded people and he got away with that. Yeah. Because that a lot of that money, like he ended up buying us like some sort of snow clearing company with like millions of it.

Like, shady as fuck with like the movement of money. But he got away with it. Wow. That is a wild little tale you've got there, David. I have tons of wild little tales. Shut up. Don't be that guy. They call me wild tale guy down at the club.

What club? The club where the history club. Yeah, idiot. I am part of a history country club. Hey, we should mention we signed DeLoreans. Happy Easter. Yeah. Yeah, we love you, Jesus.