Word: loreans
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ever accused De Lorean of lacking hubris. But from all the evidence, his life has been less devoted to piety than to speed and gutter. "I live on adrenaline," De Lorean said flatly 13 years ago, when he was a golden boy at General Motors. He was still grabbing for gusto last year: "A guy's gotta do what he's gotta do. We only pass this way but once." A few months ago, just when the FBI says he began planning his drug-dealing scheme in earnest, De Lorean told a group of sports car dealers: "We will...
...classic American success story, De Lorean's beginnings were appropriately humble. A Depression boyhood on the working-class east side of Detroit...
During his freshman year as a scholarship student at Detroit's Lawrence Institute of Technology, his parents divorced. John De Lorean was drafted into the Army a year later, but never served overseas. After his discharge, his engineering degree in hand, he became a company man in his company town: he took an engineering job with Chrysler. At 27, armed with a night-school master's degree in engineering from the Chrysler Institute, he switched companies to design transmissions for the Packard Motor Car Co. Shortly he was in charge of all research and development for Packard. He picked...
...decade ago, however, De Lorean seemed exotic. His high profile, in all of its manifestations, rankled some straitlaced executive colleagues. Others simply wearied of his professional swagger. "When John was at General Motors, people either loved him or they hated him," says J. Patrick Wright, a business journalist who wrote De Lorean's 1979 memoir, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors. According to the book, De Lorean's febrile management style, impolitic brilliance and impatience with bureaucracy worked against him. In a chapter called "How Moral Men Make Immoral Decisions," De Lorean makes much...
Despite his idiosyncrasies, De Lorean's progress through the ranks continued. Indeed, in 1972, on the eve of his second divorce, he was elevated to the command-post 14th floor as the executive in charge of all North American car and truck manufacturing (salary and bonuses: $650,000). He worked at the new job for six months. "I felt I was no longer playing in the field," he says. "I was the guy up there in the stands, and I missed the spirit of aggressive competition...