Why Did DeLorean Motor Company Fail?
The Car So Iconic It Needed a Time Machine to Sell
📜 What Happened
John DeLorean — GM's youngest-ever division head, celebrity executive — left to build his stainless-steel gullwinged dream car. Everything was maximal: a factory in Northern Ireland (for government subsidies) with an untrained workforce, constant redesigns, a 1981 recession launch at nearly double the promised price. Quality was dire, sales a fraction of projections. Desperate for cash, DeLorean was arrested in an FBI cocaine-trafficking sting (later acquitted — entrapment). The company died; the car became famous three years later — in Back to the Future.
☠️ The Fatal Mistake
Celebrity confidence substituting for manufacturing discipline: every decision optimized for the legend, none for the assembly line.
🧠 The Lesson (Free for You)
A great story doesn't survive bad build quality. And desperation is the most expensive state to make decisions in — it turns founders into marks.
📕 The Antidote Book
The Entrepreneurial Myth: that businesses are started by entrepreneurs. Reality: they're started by TECHNICIANS having an 'entrepreneurial seizure' — the baker who assumes baking skill means bakery-running skill, the…
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