Talk:John DeLorean/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Leaked video

The article currently says "Before the trial began, the FBI's videotape of the sting was leaked to the media by Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt." But this can not be true. Only the FBI could leak the video to the media since the FBI had the video. How could Flint, a member of the media, leak a video that the FBI made to the media? It would be better to say "Before the trial began, the FBI's videotape of the sting was leaked to the media. Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt then circulated the video." If there is no discussion on this I will amend the article May 1st, 2009.Z07 (talk) 11:52, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

It's now May 13 and I'm deleting it. This story is a complete fabrication. The tape of DeLorean being arrested was shown on the nightly news the very day of his arrest and it shows a very vanilla arrest without any accusations being made by either party. The tape was openly released to the media by the FBI. It was repeated ad nauseam over the next few weeks on all three major networks and CNN. It is true the trial was delayed until 1984 because of pre-trial publicity. Also, Midtownfilms.com is not a source to be using for Wikipedia.--TL36 (talk) 04:01, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Bricklin SV-1

There should be some note explaining that DeLorean bought the Bricklin SV-1 design and adapted it to his stainless steal car.Z07 (talk) 11:52, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Notes About Cleanup

  • I'm not sure what the person who originally left the cleanup note was focusing on, but it seems like the remaining cleanup has to do with the inconsistent spelling of his name throughout the article (we should try to come to a consensus before making any executive decisions regarding that) and basic structural flow. Davemcarlson 11:03, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I also noticed that there are no ISBNs provided for the books listed in the "sources" section. Davemcarlson 05:34, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Delorean Time Topic

His website, www.deloreantime.com is listed as "under construction" and has not been updated in any recent time.

I'm unsure when this comment was posted. Perhaps we should just leave a note about how he was working on the company at the time of his death in the "notes" section of the main article, and then delete this section of the talk page. Davemcarlson 11:06, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
I added the note. I think it's fine to delete this section of the discussion page now.

Discussion on DeLorean's Background

I changed the father's place of birth to Romania based on the 1930 census, his WWI draft card, and his 1914 Ellis Island manifest. The mother was from Hungary and spoke Magyar per 1920 census and her manifest. I did not change other family stories in the article, however the records note some subtle differences. The father's immigration papers say he was 5-4. This contradicts his WWI draft card which said he was "tall" and of medium build. On the 1930 census he said he could speak English and read and write. He is listed as a foreman at an auto factory and they owned their $3,5000 home. Per the 1930 census, the mother had no occupation. Questors 04:59, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Just wondering and other Corrections Open for Discussion

I am wondering how accurate the information about Mr. De Lorean’s education is. My Father grew up with the De Loreans and remembers working with his bother (George) in the family’s garage when Mr. De Lorean got the job at Packard and came home to announce it. He boasted about how he actually landed the job, which was not offered to him but he bugged them for it and the joke was between all of them was Mr. De Lorean did not have the engineering degree at the time. Now this may be earlier than what has been published, I think it was before 1950 but I have no way to confirm it.

In the 60’s, my father told me the story which I thought it could be true with the stuff that went on in the 1940's and 1950’s. When I met Mr. De Lorean in the early 70’s, I was interested in his work at Packard (I just bought my first Packard) and I asked him to confirm the story I heard years prior. I found it funny that he said the story was true but we never, to the best of my memory discussed the date he was hired and I never looked for his name in the employee records from Packard that I had. He did tell me many stories about what he actually did to climb the ladder at Packard and how he got noticed at GM, which is not in any book and I won't share. I did have several conversations with him through his years about his history and auto history in general at Packard and GM.

I also have to dispute the comment about Packard Motor Car Company;” While brands like Ford, General Motors and American Motors had begun producing affordable mainstream products, brands like Packard, Ewing, and Marquette clung to their pre-WWII era notions of high end, precisely engineered luxury cars.”

The money problems that they experienced during the early to mid 1950’s were due to a number of factors, one being competing with Cadillac and Lincoln on the high end and competing with Buick, Oldsmobile, Chrysler and Mercury (to name a few) on the lower end, all of which had more manufacturing capacity and could flood the market in each of their price categories. Their reach into the lower price market was very limited and their leadership under Huge Ferry, Packard did not really have a plan to enter into lower markets which by the way sucessfully entered the low price market in 1935 with the 120. They did not stick with the luxury car market exclusively which was almost gone in the very early 1940’s with their shift to more mass produced vehicles and the slow elimination of the Packard twelve and larger custom chassis cars. Packard suffered from several issues, one being not being able to bring to market in time a new body style in 1949 as everyone else did and not exploiting the market when the 1948 body style sales increased but rather extended the 1948 body syle though 1950 and then changed over in 1951 with the introduction of a new body style. Packard post war car groups were 1946-1947, 1948-1950, 1951-1954, 1955-1956.

The two brands mentioned, both did not appear on the post war market and one, Marquette was a GM product. If there is a true comparison to Packard, it would have to be Piece Arrow and Marmon for prewar and but really did not have a comparative company post war. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Greg334 (talk • contribs) .

Unsigned user, feel free to edit to correct info to the best of your ability. I originally wrote this article (well, 95% of it anyway) based on info obtained from 4 biographies that I happened to dig out of my garage (next to my DMC-12), along with some personal knowledge of my own. I admit to having little direct contact with DeLoean himself, so if you are secure with your sources, please be our guest.Detriment 00:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

DeLorean vs De Lorean

All the references I have seen spell his actual name without the space. Evidently DeLorean Motor Company business was the only time he used a half space between them. Anynobody 01:42, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:DMC Logo.jpg

Image:DMC Logo.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 06:02, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Deleted irrelevant and POV information

There was far too much irrelevant information in this article. The address of the house John DeLorean lived in as a child is immaterial, as are the technical and mechanical minutiae of all the cars that DeLorean was involved in during his career. Also I tried to standardize the spelling of the last name (except in the "how the last name is commonly misspelled" section). BustaCapTx 17:05, 3 June 2008

Good call. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 22:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thatcher

Mrs. Thatcher was told by the American government to stop dealing with De Lorean shortly before the latter was arrested. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.151.253.210 (talk) 14:55, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Oral History

In ancient pre-literate societies the written word was looked on with suspicion. The surviving written word became "the story". Oral traditions began to have a smaller value and died out. Take a look at "Just wondering and other Corrections Open for Discussion" also on this DeLorean discussion page. I did not expect my information to be accepted in the John DeLorean entry. In the court room where your life may be held in the balance, oral testimony and physical evidence can have great value. Is it wise to place total confidence in only the written word?Kazuba (talk) 16:46, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Oral Histories may have there place. This just isn't that place. 842U (talk) 02:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I am aware of that. I am also aware that when items and statements are put in black and white they become truer? to the reader. Sometimes (lazy?) writers avoid original research; they just copy from each other. Kazuba (talk) 13:23, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Birthplace

Photo caption claims Nutley, NJ; Text claims Detroit. Which is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.201.148.4 (talk) 02:37, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:DeLorean Motor Company which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 03:00, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Copyright laws?

Someone who knows the subject should explain that bit in the introduction about DeLorean being unable to sell the DMC-12 after Back to the Future due to copyright laws. The article never returns to it, nor is it covered in the DMC-12's own article. ~ CZeke (talk) 17:48, 12 January 2012 (UTC) -- Yeah that part is total BS. Strange that such piece of blatant vandalism takes 2.5 week to get turned back. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.22.249.234 (talk) 22:28, 23 January 2012 (UTC)


DeLorean's name

Several of us did research on the topic and found that the bicapitalised form DeLorean is incorrect; the man (nor the vehicles) never used it. The discussion is mostly at Talk:De Lorean but may have been moved, since that article has been split. His birth name appears to have been Delorean; at some point during the 1970s he seems to have taken to using the more European styling of De Lorean (with the space). The car company De Lorean used the space, as has been confirmed with company documents. When typeset, the space was normally represented by a half-space, which encourages some to leave the space out altogether, but it was always there.

If anyone wants to make this change again, please do some research and show this to be wrong, rather than going with the gut instinct that it shouldn't have a space. —Morven 03:03, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)

I note that almost every top hit for 'John De Lorean' on Google is Wikipedia or a clone, and that name version only gets 533 hits. Searching for 'John DeLorean' gets us 8,440. I suspect we have his name wrong and that there is not supposed to be a space. Anyone agree/disagree? —Morven 07:56, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Since nobody said anything, I moved both man and company to the without-space version. —Morven 17:58, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
looking at delorean.com, it's clearly without a space. i guess it could be that his name and the company name differ, but i doubt it
After posting the above, I researched further and found that the facts are more complex. The situation laid out in De Lorean, I now believe, is correct; the man and the car company used the space in official documents, although when typeset this was often laid out as a half-space. Originally John De Lorean was but John Delorean, but he decided the alternate capitalisation and spacing was more to his taste, I guess. —Morven 22:11, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
It is generally accepted that John DeLorean's name is spelled without a space. I cite this from the fact that DeLorean Motor Company literature has no space anywhere. All historical documents from the original company spell DeLorean without a space. I'm a bit surprised that how to spell his name has been such a topic of discussion when there are so many other facts to list about John DeLorean's history.

I went through and corrected the spelling to be consistent. Brian083071 06:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)Brian083071

Why does the article use different spellings of his last name throughout the entire article?! That makes no sense. Whomever is in charge of this article should make a decision on which way is correct then use it that way everywhere (other than, of course, the section about the spelling controversy itself).

I know a bit about the subject and based on what I have read on the person DeLorean and also on the spelling of his name: the confusion has its origin in the fact that DeLorean used a space when things concerned De Lorean Motor Company. Privately he always used the original spelling of his name. The book he published in 1985, after his company closed, is also without the space: John Z. DeLorean. As this is his auto-biography I think we could call it a reliable source. I will read all posts on this page this weekend to see what improvements are required (and maybe have already been done). I am not very experienced when it comes to wikipedia and couldn't fully understand what was meant with the need of inline citations. The citations that are made, I checked a few, refer to DeLoreans autobiography, the pages are correct, so what is it that should be done? Should there be more citations on other parts of the text? Maybe someone can explain it to me. I'd be happy to improve the quality of this page.
Miss Lizzy (talk) 10:39, 3 December 2010 (UTC)


DeLorean's name is correctly spelled without the space, as DeLorean, the same goes for the Company. Only if the use of lower case letters was not possible (or not wanted), for instance on typewritten documents of the DeLorean Motor Company, the use of a space is correct.
This appears to have been the company's chosen form. In typeset documents, a half space, not a full space, appears between the two portions, and the same is visible in more stylistic representations, as on the automobiles themselves.

Here you can read his biography (or rather search it): http://books.google.com/books?id=6S1PAAAAMAAJ&q=dmc#search_anchor
Here's the cover: http://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/0310379407/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0
Here's the Book on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310379407/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_g14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=00G0FRYS4ECA6DWTAQP3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

The man who founded the company should be a good source for the question how to spell it correctly. Amblin new (talk) 17:18, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

The original Romanian name is "Delorean" (if you do a search on .ro domain, you will find many Romanians with that surname). I'm presuming that it was changed at some point (before or after John DeLorean was born) to make it seem more French. 91.85.44.231 (talk) 22:07, 7 August 2014 (UTC)

Military service

'DeLorean was drafted for military service and served three years in the U.S. Army and received an honorable discharge.'

Rather a short statement, to cover three years of his early career. In what kind of unit was he serving, and where was he posted? Also that reference to an honourable discharge sounds distinctly odd. Did someone suggest that it was otherwise? Almost every soldier received an honourable discharge. It is hardly an encyclopedic statement, unless it is denying an accusation. Valetude (talk) 13:27, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Working on the prototype

Assuming this article is about John Delorean this may be of interest to those who have a value of oral history. I worked on the prototype DeLorean automobile at Creative Engineering in Detroit, MI. The DeLorean was a complete disaster. Its main selling feature was the stereo system. The metal panels were glued in place. You could not lower the front driver's window except by pulling it down with the palms of your hands. The fiber glass body absorbed the gasoline from the tank which sat under the driver! It stinked! John DeLorean used to run his hand through his thick black hair and the dye would come off on his fingers. He was supposed to be very sharp. The people I met who had invested in the car knew absolutely nothing about automobile design. They were suckers. One saturday or sunday I showed my small son the full size clay model. He asked me how a person could drive a car made out of solid clay! I bailed out. This project was nuts! The feds should have nailed John DeLorean for the Coke deal. From what I saw he was a dork. Oh, I forgot, he found Jesus. Don't they all?.. Kazuba (talk) 20:11, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Right, and have you read WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:RS by any small chance? Your story is extremely biased and inaccurate, according to the dozens of books and other printed content about DeLorean and his car. The main faults I know of were problems with the gullwing doors and the general build quality (Indeed, the first DeLoreans off the production line were terrible in terms of quality). However, details of the car are not relevant here, because this article is about the man, not the company or car. — Wackymacs (talk ~ edits) 06:50, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

In essence, your story is interesting, but anecdotal. Wikipedia is a reference site; the information here is not supposed to be conjectural or anecdotal... rather it is intended to convey verifiable information from reliable, previously vetted, third parties. Now if you were quoted in the New York Times, saying exactly the same thing, your story might find it's way into the article. Good luck getting the NYT to write "they were suckers" or "it sank." 842U (talk) 14:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

The Delorean vehicle has a strong resemblance to a prototype, or limited edition, Corvette that I saw in an old book on corvettes. Although I suppose all new cars are rip-offs of somebody else's design. Marc S., Dania Fl 206.192.35.125 (talk) 18:56, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Editorializing...?

With regards to the following text:

From its launch in 1964, sales of the car and its popularity continued to grow dramatically in the following years. DeLorean received almost total credit for the success of the "first muscle car", which is probably due in large part to his talent for self-promotion. As with any new vehicle development, scores of individuals are involved with the conceptualizing, engineering, and marketing – but John DeLorean became the singular golden boy of Pontiac, and was rewarded with his 1965 promotion to head the entire Pontiac division.

I think this text reads as biased (especially given it is unsourced). It reads as if written by an engineer on the 1964 Pontiac staff who was overlooked and forgotten... thoughts? //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 03:24, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, it is hard to validate those claims also.--Monstermike99 (talk) 22:00, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

LMC

According to Logan_Machine_Company this company was owned (unclear until when) by Mr DeLorean. If this is true it should be mentioned here considering other commercial activity is mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 143.210.72.153 (talk) 21:22, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

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DeLorean as "Designer"?

Cited in the article as having "designed" several cars such as GTO, Firebird...is this not a gross overstatement? Not to take away from his accomplishments, but...not really a designer...96.227.131.146 (talk) 06:56, 14 February 2017 (UTC) [[1]] and [[2]] So- maybe "helped to design, with two other Colleagues..." would fit better.05:14, 5 December 2017 (UTC)~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:6000:BFC0:39:7567:DBD4:509F:9C78 (talk)

  • He was an engineer that made decisions, so he was "a designer". Dennis Brown - 2¢ 22:34, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Why no religion ?

Ok so was he catholic or not?

We know what he isn’t. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.94.233.228 (talk) 19:04, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for speedy deletion:

You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:21, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Family disputing claim about Ty DeLorean

Is there a source for this? It seems plausible, but I've been unable to find anything but the lawsuit, which does not rest on questions of paternity and doesn't contain any quotes from the family. "Whilst our client notes your claim to be the son of John DeLorean, being the son of John DeLorean does not give you the right to use our client’s UK registered trade marks without its permission, or to pass your business off as being in some way connected to or endorsed by our client’s business" is the closest to commentary I could find. Rusalkii (talk) 17:39, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Given the mediocre sourcing, content concerning this alleged 'illegitimate son' almost certainly doesn't belong in the article at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:50, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
Since there has been no substantive response here, and since instead further unsourced material has been added to the article, I have removed the entire section regarding this alleged 'son' and his Reliant conversions. I would strongly recommend reading WP:RS, WP:BLP, WP:UNDUE etc before restoring any content on this matter, since nothing I have seen so far suggests that it even remotely belongs there. If and when there is evidence that credible reliable sources are actually taking the claims of this individual seriously, it might be appropriate to add a section on the matter, but until that happens, it remains mere tabloid fluff about unverified claims being made long after the death of the subject of this article, and therefore off-topic. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:19, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
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