Word: loreans
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Very little of the money, it appears, was John De Lorean's own. It is conceivable that De Lorean put no mare than $20,000 from his own pocket into the company at the start. He has claimed to have invested as much as $3 million, but one man familiar with the operation says, "No one's been able to trace that money." Because it was his idea and his magnetism that made it happen, De Lorean was able to negotiate with the investors to keep a controlling interest in the business...
...Lorean paid himself about $500,000 a year, and he lived very well. He established a free-spending corporate style, flying the expensive Concorde on his numerous trips across the Atlantic and often insisting on being met at airports, just like the Detroit executive he used to be. De Lorean dabbled in a slew of other businesses, from snowmobiles to buses, and left a trail of corporations registered in Nevada and Michigan. In time, he seemed to lose interest in running the automobile business, and was seldom seen in Belfast. One Wall Streeter who observed the goings...
Indeed it did. By early this year, only twelve months after the first car rolled off the production line, it was clear that De Lorean's dream was stalling, and probably dying. More than 4,000 cars were unsold, and by February the factory was in receivership. In London, angry Members of Parliament were describing the project as a "rip off." Even then De Lorean was saying that the Belfast plant would need $70 million in new capital. The British government balked...
After that, De Lorean began losing his credibility, if not his cool. In an effort to get his plant back from the hands of British receivers, he appears to have invented investors he said were poised for the rescue. Sir Kenneth Cork, one of the two British receivers, said last week, "They were always shadowy people whose names we never learnt. There would be a telex saying businessmen would put up so much, but always on the condition they were not named. They never emerged into daylight...
Only hours before his arrest, De Lorean said in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp. that the money was in a U.S. bank, but neither receiver could confirm it. Said Cork: "Right at the bitter end I was receiving telexes saying the money was definitely available. We said, 'Fine, but let's see it in a bank account,' and that never transpired...