Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - This Genius Engineer is in BIG Trouble - The John DeLorean Story

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

John DeLorean was a trailblazing automobile executive who rose to prominence at General Motors by engineering iconic muscle cars like the Pontiac GTO and Firebird. In 1975 he struck out on his own and founded the DeLorean Motor Company (DMC), aiming to build a futuristic sports car—the DMC-12 with gull-wing doors and stainless steel panels. Unfortunately, despite early hype, DMC’s production launch in 1981 suffered cost overruns, delays, and poor market timing, and by 1982 the company was insolvent. In a desperate bid to save his enterprise, DeLorean became entangled in a high-profile FBI sting involving drug trafficking.

You know those Back to the Future movies? Well, that time machine is so iconic, partly because of this guy. And his story is connected to a whole lot of drugs. Now the guy's name is John DeLorean, and DeLorean is 48 when our story starts, and he's living in Detroit. And DeLorean, he's kind of a genius car engineer. And in his career, he's developed two incredibly cool popular cars, the GTO and the Firebird. And this is great and all, but DeLoreenie, Delorian, he wants more. In fact, he wants nothing more than to build something different,

a car that's even cooler than the GTO or Firebird. So one day in 1973, he quits his job at General Motors or he gets fired, depending on who you ask, and he starts his own car manufacturing company called DMC. And he gets all this financing and this is a huge project, so it takes him a long time. But Delorean's a rock star in the car world. and he's able to pull it off. And around eight years later, in 1981, his first car hits the consumer market. It's called the DMC 12.

Here's a picture of it in production. Here's a picture of John DeLorean with a DMC 12. And it's a cool car and people love it. However, there's a problem. Around this time, boom, the country and a lot of the world get hit with an economic recession. And to make things worse, this car is expensive. I mean, the average car during this time is about $10,000, but the DMC12 cost $25,000, which is like $83,000 in today's money.

Not to mention that the DMC12 immediately gets a bad reputation. A lot of them were having performance issues. 2,000 of them had already been recalled. They're also slow compared to the other sports cars on the market. The Gold Wing doors would often get stuck. So these cars are just not good quality. They're unreliable and they're not selling. They're sort of a cyber truck of their day.

And by 1982, more than half of the 7,000 DMC 12s that have been made are still not sold. So now DMC, Delorean's car company, is $175 million in debt. And production on his cars has essentially stopped. And he's looking anywhere he can for funding to get him out of debt. He even asks the British government for money, and Margaret Thatcher herself turns him down like, nah, bro. And so, unfortunately, that same year in 1982, the factory closes, 1,300 workers are laid off, and only 9,000 cars were ever made. So now, of course, DeLorean, he doesn't know what he's going to do. He'll do anything to save his company.

He doesn't care where the money comes from. Now, keep that in mind while we pause this story for a second, because we got to talk. about this guy. His name's James. And James is 41 and he's in the drug business. He's been smuggling cocaine for Pablo Escobar's cartel for years. But then one day, bam, he gets caught and he's arrested by the FBI. And so James, he's in jail, waiting on its trial, and he doesn't want to go to prison because, you know, who does? So he comes up with a plan to get an easier sentence. He tells the FBI, if you lighten my sentence, I'll become an informant and help you bust other people.

And the FBI's like, all right. And James, he wants to start by snitching on someone he knows is financially vulnerable. One of his old neighbors, Delorian. James knows Delorean needs money. He knows his company's in trouble. It's all very public. And so he gets in contact with him. And he's like, I know some people that can get $15 million into your failing company.

And Delorian's like, cool, let's do it. But then James comes back and he's like, actually, I can do better than that. I know some Colombians who can get you $30 million. And DeLorean's like, well, 30 is more than 15, so let's do it. And so Delorian agrees to work with these Colombians. Whatever they need him to do, he'll do. And he has all these phone conversations with James about all these shady plans.

But here's where it gets really bad for him. Over time, it's revealed to DeLorean that the way these Colombians are going to make this $30 million is they're going to sell and traffic lots and lots of cocaine. And DeLorean is expected to finance it. And DeLorean, he seems okay with this. He really wants to make this money so that he can get his company up and running again. So he really wants to sell more DMC-12s. Now, part of this agreement is that DeLorean has to put up $2 million of his own money

to sort of get this deal going. But DeLorean doesn't have $2 million of his own money. So instead, he offers these cartel mobsters $2 million worth of controlling stakes in his company. The problem with that is what he's offering them is pretty much worthless. So DeLorean, he's kind of trying to scam these Colombians back as well. But then, in the middle of the negotiations with James, something happens to DeLorean. He starts to have second thoughts. He's thinking, this is too much for him, and it may be better if he just,

abandons this whole deal. And so James, he starts getting the sense that DeLorean might be nervous. And he doesn't want him to back out because, you know, he made a deal with the FBI. So James gets super pissed off, and he freaks the hell out, and he tells Delorian, you know too much, you can't get out. And he also tells him, if you try and get out, I'll send your daughter's head home in a shopping bag.

That is very graphic. So now, DeLorean is stuck. He's too scared to back out of this deal. I mean, he doesn't want anyone to hurt his daughter. And so at some point he goes to Los Angeles and there he goes to a hotel room to meet with all these Colombian drug trafficker guys and some investors. And this hotel room is where this massive drug deal is about to go down. And so they're all hanging out there and one of the guys shows him a briefcase full of cocaine and DeLorean tries some of it apparently because, you know, I guess you got to do that. Here's the thing about all this though.

These Colombian cartel investor guys in the room with him, they actually actually. aren't cartel at all. They're actually undercover FBI agents working with James, and they're setting DeLorean up to bust him. And of course, Delorian doesn't know any of this, and they're secretly recording this whole meeting. So this is actual footage of the hotel meeting. And so they continue on. They continue on with this deal, and suddenly, boom, the FBI busts into the room, and bam, they arrest Delorian. And I don't have a mugshot, but here is a picture of him in real life. So now, DeLorean is charged with drug trafficking and in 1984, he goes to trial over all this. And at the trial, DeLorean's very expensive legal team argues that he was entrapped

into this drug deal, that he really wanted to back out of it early, but that James told him that if he does try to back out of it, that he'll send his daughter's head home in a shopping bag. And so they claim that he only stayed in the deal to protect his daughter. Meanwhile, while all this is going on, this is a huge media story. Like this trial is on the news every day. And a little movie is in the process of being written. A movie called Back to the Future. And as you know, it's about a teenager and an old man who time travel together.

And the director of this movie, Bob Zemeckis, suggests that for the time machine, they use a DMC12 because he really likes that car. Now, during this time, the DMC-12, it's kind of considered a joke. Like, they're slow, they're unreliable, a failure of a car whose maker is on trial for trafficking drugs. But Bob, Bob still thinks they're really cool. I mean, he really loves the way the gold doors open up and all that stuff. And so, that's what they use. That's what they use for the movie. And they shoot it.

Now, back at Delorean's trial, his defense of being afraid for his daughter's life, It actually works. The jury believes him and he's acquitted on all charges. And of course, the next year in 1985, Back to the Future comes out and it's a massive hit and it solidifies DeLorean's car, the DMC 12, in pop culture history.