1981, Earl’s Court Motor Fair. DeLorean posed with his steel dream. Reporter asked: “What if it fails?” John smiled: “Then kids will still dream about it.” Company collapsed. Prison. Bankruptcy. Lost everything. 2015, dying in hospital. Nurse’s son visited, carrying toy DeLorean: “Mr. D, because of you, I became an engineer.” John touched the toy: “It worked then.” Boy confused. “The car?” “No – the dream.” That boy now designs electric cars. Keeps DeLorean model on desk. Tells his team: “One man’s failure became millions’ inspiration.” Some dreams outlive their dreamers. Follow for more.
n 1981, at the Earl’s Court Motor Fair in London, John Z. DeLorean stood proudly beside his revolutionary creation—the stainless-steel DMC-12 with its iconic gull-wing doors. A reporter, skeptical of the bold new venture, asked: “What if it fails?”
John smiled confidently. “Then kids will still dream about it.”
He was right—but in ways he could never have foreseen.
The DeLorean Motor Company collapsed spectacularly in 1982 amid financial turmoil, scandal, and John’s highly publicized arrest (though later acquitted). Bankruptcy stripped him of everything. He endured prison time on unrelated charges and lived out his later years in relative obscurity, passing away in a New Jersey hospital in 2005 at age 80.
But the dream endured.
On his deathbed in 2005, a young boy—the son of one of his nurses—visited, clutching a toy model of the DeLorean. “Mr. DeLorean,” the child said earnestly, “because of you, I became an engineer.”
Weak but moved, John reached out and touched the miniature car. “It worked then.”
The boy, puzzled, asked: “The car?”
“No,” John whispered with a faint smile. “The dream.”
That boy grew up to become an automotive engineer designing modern electric vehicles. On his desk sits a scale model of the DMC-12—a daily reminder. He often tells his team: “One man’s failure became millions’ inspiration.”
Though the company failed and the car was produced in limited numbers, the DeLorean captured imaginations forever—immortalized in films like Back to the Future, cherished by collectors, and sparking countless young minds to pursue innovation.
John DeLorean’s business may have crumbled, but his vision soared beyond failure. Some dreams don’t just survive their creators—they outlive them, inspiring generations to reach for the impossible.
