Who would bet money on an entrepreneur whose last company went bankrupt, who was tried and acquitted on charges of cocaine trafficking and who is being investigated for embezzlement? “An abundance of people,” says Walt Bratten, chairman of Castle Croup, a Newport Beach, Calif., investment firm. Bratten claims to be arranging financing for a new venture by John DeLorean, 60, the former General Motors executive whose first auto company collapsed in 1982. DeLorean has been working on the new project for about six months. He told the Los Angeles Herald Examiner that it was “inevitable that the company come back.” Tentative plans call for building a new sports car that would be similar to DeLorean’s previous model, a sleek machine with gull-wing doors. The new one would have an improved engine and transmission.
Analysts doubt, however, that investors in DeLorean’s comeback attempt will ever see any profits. “I think it would be more fun to just go out and throw your money off the Brooklyn Bridge,” says David Healy, an auto company expert at Drexel Burnham Lambert. DeLorean is still under investigation for allegedly defrauding investors in his last company of millions of dollars.
Time Magazine : June 17, 1985 : p63
