AN AMERICAN motor executive of undoubted vision and flair, John DeLorean is painfully remembered in Britain for the huge sums of money he managed to extract from the British Government in the late 1970s to build a dream car that was intended to give a much-needed shot in the arm to the ravaged economy of Northern Ireland.

After a highly successful career at General Motors in Detroit, in which he had introduced two models that became automobile icons in their era, John DeLorean left America and set up in Belfast to build the DeLorean, a sleek gull-winged car which was to create 2,500 jobs in Ulster’s industries. To the Labour Government of the day, desperately wanting to do something meaningful about the Province’s economy, which had been utterly blighted by a decade of civil unrest and terrorist activity, the prospect was understandably an appealing one.

As a result, in 1978 the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland was able to silence the scepticism of other government departments, with the result that around £80 million of British Government aid was handed to DeLorean in loans and guarantees. American investors also put their hands in their pockets to the extent of $31 million, with such famous showbiz names as Johnny Carson and Sammy Davis Jr contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to the DeLorean project.

In a heady atmosphere in which imaginations were caught by the notion that such a futuristic vehicle (actually its famous gull-winged doors had been featured on the Mercedes-Benz 300SL in the 1950s) might also become some kind of catalyst for social salvation, no one thought to ask whether the DeLorean car actually had a commercial future. And the fact was that the American market, to which Delorean looked, already had the proven Chevrolet Corvette, which sold at considerably less that the $25,000 price tag on the DeLorean vehicle.

More than 8,000 of the cars were built, but the project foundered when orders from the US simply failed to materialise in the required numbers. The collapse of the company, which was put into receivership in February 1982 and closed six months later, coincided with the disgracing of DeLorean himself. In October 1982, less than 24 hours after the receivers finally ordered closure of the Belfast plant, he was arrested in the United States on charges of possessing 220lb of cocaine for distribution.

Although he was found not guilty of the charges, largely thanks to the brilliant defence of his counsel Howard Weitzman, the rest of DeLorean’s life became a rearguard action — albeit a brilliantly conducted one — against a tide of claims and fraud cases, which always threatened to overwhelm him. Astonishingly, he managed for years to parry most of the claims against him, and was still in possession of his 434-acre estate in New Jersey until five years ago, while many of his creditors had had to tighten their belts. It was only in January 2000 that a federal judge ordered the sale of the New Jersey estate to pay DeLorean’s creditors, and the nimblefooted tycoon at last had to look on as a fleet of vans hauled away his possessions to be disposed of in settlement of his debts.

John Zachary DeLorean was born in Detroit in 1925, the son of a Romanian immigrant foundry worker at the Ford Motor Company. After school and two years at Detroit’s Lawrence Institute of Technology, where he studied engineering, DeLorean was drafted into the US Army for war service. Three years later he returned to the Lawrence Institute to complete his degree.

His first job after graduation was selling insurance, but De Lorean soon realised that his real interest was engineering and he enrolled at the Chrysler Institute on a sandwich course, graduating with a masters degree in automotive engineering in 1952. That year he moved to the Packard Motor Company where he worked in the research and development division on hydraulics and transmission systems.

In 1956 DeLorean was persuaded to leave Packard and join the Pontiac division of General Motors as head of advanced engineering. In the 1960s he introduced two Pontiac models, the GTO and the Firebird, which were highly successful among younger buyers — and have become American classic cars. Their success was instrumental in his becoming group executive for the North American car and truck operations which meant that he was in effective control of the five car divisions — Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Cadillac — the GMC Truck and Coach division and the Canadian car and truck operations.

As DeLorean rose to power in General Motors, however, his charismatic style and flamboyant behaviour caused tensions in his relationships with other senior colleagues. DeLorean himself made no secret of his growing disillusionment with the American car industry in general and General Motors in particular, which he regarded as hidebound and unimaginative.

In 1973 he resigned from General Motors. Such was the respect in which he was at that time held in the US automotive industry that he became known as “the man who fired GM”.

After a year as president of the National Alliance of Businessmen, an organisation of socially conscious executives, DeLorean began to work in earnest on his project for a stainless steel sports car. He believed that a small company of skilled motor engineers could challenge the motor industry giants at their own game and beat them.

DeLorean’s scheme caught the imagination of a British Government which was desperate to create new jobs in strife-torn Belfast. In 1978 the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Roy Mason, fought a long, hard battle with sceptical civil servants in other Whitehall departments to ensure that DeLorean was given a chance in the Province.

The reservations of the Department of Trade, that initially the company would be far too dependent on a single market, the United States, ultimately proved to be well founded. By early 1982, a year after the first car rolled off the production line, more than 4,000 vehicles were lying unsold. Receivers were called in in February 1982.

DeLorean, who had survived relatively unscathed the previous autumn from accusations of financial irregularities in the company, continued to insist that he could raise the money for a rescue operation. Indeed, such was the power of his personality that even the most hardened doubters would not have been totally surprised if he had pulled it off.

Then, on October 19, 1982, DeLorean was arrested by FBI agents at the Sheraton Plaza La Reina Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, having been videotaped by a hidden camera apparently examing a shipment of cocaine from Colombia with a view to buying and reselling it. Federal investigators who put together the cocaine possession case against him described him at the time as a desperate man who could not face the failure of his enterprise. The drugs deal was seen as a last-ditch attempt by DeLorean to raise money for the rescue operation.

But although two associates in the supposed deal pleaded guilty to the charges (and later received prison sentences), DeLorean maintained his innocence. At his trial, which began in Los Angeles in April 1984, the prosecution’s star witness was clinically taken apart by Weitzman, and was branded an admitted felon, perjurer and conman. The defence argued that the FBI had used the power of the US Government to ensnare DeLorean, and that he had been guilty of poor judgment, rather than malfeasance. DeLorean nevergave evidence, and in August 1984 the jury acquitted him on all counts.

This was certainly not the end of his problems. He retreated to his New Jersey estate, where he fought a gradually losing battle to protect the rest of his assets against claims for more than $4.7 million in unpaid bills, as well as mortgages whose payments he was unable to keep up. In 1986 Weitzman again defended him, this time against charges that he had stolen $17.5 million from the partnership that had founded the DeLorean car company. DeLorean was acquitted for the second time.

In 1992 his $9 million New York flat was the next major asset to go, and in 1999 he was forced, again, into bankruptcy. After that, the New Jersey estate was sold, and DeLorean moved into a flat nearby in Bedminster, New Jersey. In 2000 he started a new company DeLoreanTime, to market watches.

John DeLorean is survived by his wife Sally, and by a son and two daughters. Three previous marriages ended in divorce.

John DeLorean, car maker, was born on January 6, 1925. He died on March 19, 2005, aged 80.