Even more importantly he was no longer making his numbers -

Even more importantly, he was no longer “making his numbers” – an unforgivable sin for the suits in Detroit.There was also a trail of fraud going back 20 years – mostly petty ones involving car dealerships and the odd inventor whose patent DeLorean had stolen and used as his own. There was a pattern to them which displayed a fatal character flaw – and which, when revealed, caused consternation in Belfast and London. Why, ministers muttered, had no one bothered to investigate properly? Instead of the engineering genius, a picture began to emerge of a vain and boastful man who talked endlessly about his successes and achievements which, although considerable in his younger years, could never match the claims he made for them.One reporter dared to voice what everyone was privately thinking: “Isn’t it a rather high-risk venture?” Not at all, replied DeLorean smoothly “We have orders as of now for 30,000 cars That is $300m of business. Mason presented it as the biggest coup yet for the ambitious plans to attract foreign investment to the province and fight the men of violence with the best weapon possible: jobs.Four years, £84m and four secretaries of state later, Belfast residents proudly watched transporters laden with silver sports cars trundle towards the docks and the American market which everyone believed eagerly awaited. In those years, the cracks in DeLorean’s reputation had begun to appear and, by the end, they were gaping holes. Journalists had begun to unravel the myth he had created around himself, of the man who had set himself, Ralph Nader-like (and the consumer champion was a friend and supporter), against the excesses and exploitation of the American car industry.DeLorean always claimed he had fired General Motors, but it was actually the other way around: GM had fired him, basically because power had gone to his head, and he was more interested in dating (and marrying) young blondes in California than he was in the boring business of making cars. The great John DeLorean, arguably the best engineer and automaker America had seen since the war, was going to build his “dream car” in Belfast.

The government of Puerto Rico had wanted DeLorean to go there (which was true); so had Spain and DeLorean’s native Detroit (almost true); and so had the government of the Republic of Ireland (not true – it had turned him down after due diligence had shown some of the flaws in DeLorean’s proposal). Gold weighs more than that for God’s sake”.How had he come to this? In asking that question, my mind goes back to August 1978 and the Labour minister Roy Mason, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, about to open a packed press conference in Belfast. The contrast between the two men on the podium could not have been more marked: Mason, squat, thick-set and beetle-browed, looking every bit the Barnsley coal miner he once was. Millions would later be traced through Swiss bank accounts, from the British government and private investors to dummy companies and back, via numerous transfers, to DeLorean’s private interests.The drugs scheme, by contrast, began to emerge only in the spring of 1982. But the two activities soon became dependent parts of the events which ended up in that hotel room with DeLorean, caught by half a dozen concealed FBI cameras, hefting a bag of coke and remarking, with a loud chortle: “It’s better than gold.

In all, a total of £84m had gone down the drain, money that could have been used to create serious long-term jobs in a province where male unemployment was above 30 per cent.Looking back after more than 20 years, it is difficult now to explain the hold that DeLorean had on the political and news agenda of the time. In my role as a City editor, I interviewed him half a dozen times over a period of five years, and attempted to unravel and expose what I distantly perceived to be a scam pulled on the British taxpayer. I was allowed by the receiver to drive the very last DeLorean car off the gleaming production line in Belfast just a week before the arrest. And, although DeLorean regarded me as an enemy, he had agreed to one final “clean-up” interview in New York which was set for a week later. When Bobby Sands had died in prison after eight weeks on hunger strike, Twinbrook had erupted and the rioting spilt into the DeLorean factory; DeLorean seized the opportunity to demand yet another tranche of cash – and Thatcher had to give it to him.Now, with his arrest, she could dismiss it all – and she did – as the madness of the previous Labour government which had given DeLorean an initial £54m and then another £10m when that ran out.