Imagine two separate realities: in one, the Back to the Future movie trilogy doesn’t exist, while in the other, it does.
Either way, John Zachary DeLorean’s legacy is the DMC-12. But in the first, he’s remembered as over-reaching, creating a car that wasn’t anywhere near as good as it should have been and ultimately destroying his credibility and character by attempting to smuggle drugs to save his company.
In the second, which might be familiar, he’s the larger-than-life character behind one of the most loved pieces of automotive pop-culture in history.
Neither are entirely fair, because what DeLorean really did was (arguably) invent the muscle car. He was a hugely talented automotive engineer and clever marketer, eventually becoming the youngest-ever division head at General Motors – aged 40.
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As chief engineer of Pontiac in the early 1960s, DeLorean set about giving the brand a performance image.
He masterminded a project to put a 242kW 6.4-litre V8 engine into the mainstream, mid-sized Tempest (replacing the standard 5.3-litre) and call it the GTO, with apologies to Ferrari.
GM had a strict corporate policy about oversized engines (the limit for the “A-body” Tempest was 5.4l), but DeLorean found a loophole that allowed the larger engine to be listed as an “option”. Customers could even uprate to a 260kW powerplant.
Suddenly, Pontiac had a youth image and the initial sales projection of 5000 for the first-generation GTO was overwhelmed by the final figure of 32,450. With so many more to come in future generations.
No, the GTO wasn’t the first US car to offer an excess of V8 muscle in a mainstream package, encouraging bad behaviour at the traffic lights. But DeLorean understood the appeal, and knew how to package, market and mainstream it. Which is why many argue he invented the muscle car as we know it.
