DeLorean Motor Company

The DeLorean Motor Company was an American sports car maker that John DeLorean founded in Detroit, Michigan, on 24 October 1975, after his career as a senior General Motors executive. It built a single model, the stainless steel, gull-wing DeLorean sports car, known inside the company as the DMC-12, at a purpose-built plant at Dunmurry near Belfast in Northern Ireland, funded largely by the British Government with the aim of creating jobs. Series production began in early 1981, but sales of roughly 6,000 cars fell short of the 10,000 to 12,000 needed to break even. The company was put into receivership and went bankrupt in 1982, a few days after John DeLorean was arrested in an FBI sting operation on drug charges, of which he was later acquitted on grounds of entrapment. The factory closed, and about 9,000 cars had been made. The car won lasting fame as the time machine in the Back to the Future films. The DeLorean Motor Company (Texas), founded in 1995, is an unrelated business that services the cars.