Four Years Ago Tonight I Went to John DeLorean’s Funeral
Four years ago tonight I met John Z. DeLorean for the first time.
It was his funeral, in Royal Oak, Michigan. When I got home that night I wrote an email to my friends, those privvy to my strange and never-ending obsession with the story of the DeLorean Motor Company. Here’s what I wrote:
“Around the video player and all around the room hung oversized poster-like images of the man. There was a flower collage from a GTO car club and some other things indicative of his automotive connections, but most of the imagery was portraits and family stuff. I walked through the groups of people and made my way up to the casket, which did not have a kneeler but rather a velvet rope. There were a few flower arrangements and small photos of DeLorean, one in particular of him riding a motorcycle with his son in a Walt Disney World frame. I approached the casket and it hit me that this whole operation was art directed by the man himself. He was there just a foot from me, laid out dead in a black motorcycle jacket, blue jeans and a denim shirt. A pair of large, thick-rimmed Elvis sunglasses tucked into his jacket zipper. Styled, arched eyebrows and the fake chin and everything. The usual pulled skin of a corpse sort of made the whole thing fake, but still JZD to the core. It was the “rebel ethical car designer genius” look he’s taking to the grave, probably his best cover out of all
of them for his immortalization.
For better or worse he was Detroit’s child, a nefarious dealmaker and an engineering and marketing genius. I want to sit back and draw some Icarus or Macbeth comparisons, but I think he is going to develop his own legend and future egomaniac tragedies in this town or industry will take on Deloreanic nomenclature. Live the dream.”
Related: John DeLorean’s sketch for a sedan
