De Lorean

The De Lorean Motor Company was founded in 1975 by flamboyant automobile industry executive John De Lorean, to make the sports car of his dreams. The company was founded in Detroit, Michigan, and later moved to a Park Avenue skyscraper in New York City.

The car as he dreamed it, with its distinctive top-hinged gull-wing doors and stainless steel skin, was never fully implemented. The unfettered ambition of the prototypes designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro was whittled down at each stage closer to production, as deadlines and budgets were hopelessly overrun.

There were about 8,000 cars made between 1981 and 1983 in Dunmurry, Northern Ireland, of which 6,000 are still on the roads. Officially designated as model DMC-12 but known as simply the De Lorean, the vehicle garnered worldwide attention and recognition as the basis for the time-machine in the 1985 movie Back to the Future.

In 1982, De Lorean was charged with selling cocaine to undercover police. The Dunmurry factory closed with the loss of 2,000 jobs and taking over $100 million in British government subsidies down with it. De Lorean was later acquitted of all charges (due to entrapment) but went into retirement in New England. The dream with which he had mesmerised Britain's Labour government, of industry rising out of the ashes of Ulster's sectarian conflict, was shattered.

The name

De Lorean is more often seen spelled without the space: DeLorean. Typewritten company documents universally use the space, however, so 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. This use of a half space probably influenced many people to see no space there.

The company's founder originally spelled his name as John Delorean. At some point in his life he began using the more European-looking De Lorean instead. During the period the De Lorean Motor Company was operating, he used a space exclusively when spelling his name in the course of business.

De Lorean

The name

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