LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Automaker John DeLorean, whose venture to make a stainless steel-skinned sports car failed, says he will set up a plant in Ohio to produce a new high-performance car. DeLorean said in an interview he has been working on the new venture for about six months and that the assembly operation may be established soon in Columbus, Ohio.
"I want to be involved," DeLorean said. "It's inevitable that the company come back." He told the Los Angeles Hearld-Examiner that it has not been decided what part he might play in the company if it is revived.
Sources in Ohio and Northern Ireland said the 60-year-old former General Motors executive hopes to produce a car similar to the DMC-12, which was built by the DeLorean Motor Co. from 1979 until it went bankrupt in 1982, the Detroit Free Press reported Sunday.
"I've seen the design on the car, and it's beautiful," said Marvin Katz, vice-president of Kapac Co., a Columbus-based auto parts distributor. "It's all done." Katz, whose company acquired most of DeLorean Motors' parts inventory after it went bankrupt, told the Free Press he had an agreement to sell parts to DeLorean if the car goes into production. The new car would be "a modified DeLorean with a larger engine and transmission and wheels," Katz said.
DeLorean's lawyer, Howard Weitznam, said from Los Angeles that he had no direct knowledge of any new car-making plans by DeLorean. DeLorean remains under investigation by a federal grand jury in Detroit. The jury is reported to be looking into allegations by creditors that DeLorean misappropriated millions of dollars from investors and from the British government, which helped finance the Northern Ireland plant. 
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.
Twice acquitted of criminal offences, former auto maker John DeLorean says he is ready to start over with a new enterprise aimed at people who think of their cars more as toys than as transportation. "I'm looking to bring a high-performance, high-priced sports car into the market -- I guess you would have to call it the exotic market -- with a cost over $100,000 (U.S.)."
Mr. DeLorean said he has raised the $20-million needed to build the new automobile, but he would not name the investors who put up the funds, or the well-known West German designer he said would take part in creating the car. A federal jury in Detroit last week acquitted Mr. DeLorean of charges that he embezzled $8.5-million (U.S.) from investors in his previous enterprise, which built a stainless-steel sports car at a plant in Northern Ireland in 1981 and 1982 before failing.
It was his second successful defence against U.S. federal charges. A Los Angeles jury found him innocent in 1984 of trying to sell $24-million worth of cocaine. Mr. DeLorean, who turns 62 on Jan. 6, said he has lowered his ambitions since the collapse of his earlier project. "This is a much more modest venture," he said, adding the $20-million in startup funds is less than the $27-million profit posted by his Northern Ireland enterprise the first half of 1981.
Controversial sports car tycoon John DeLorean claimed late January that he was "very near" to finalizing plans to produce another car. He denied that his latest venture revolves around the Firestar 500, the ugly duckling previously linked to his own name. "What I am working on now," DeLorean told us from his $4 million apartment in New York, "is an entirely different car." The silver-haired 61-year-old stated that a "well-known" German designer will style a $100,000-plus sports car for him.
DeLorean, a "born-again" Christian, who last December was acquitted of major criminal charges for the second time in two and a half years, said, "Interest in investment is incredible. I'm getting letters from everywhere. We have a lot of opportunities." He read over the telephone one such letter, "just received this morning from one of the wealthiest men in Canada," offering assistance and production facilities in Alberta. "We have a couple sets of investments available to us," said DeLorean, "and at the moment, we're trying to decide which is the better of the two." He has reportedly raised $20 million.
The Firestar 500, trumpeted by one of its backers as "the fastest car in the world" while it was little more than a sketch on a napkin, was to have been based on the DeLorean DMC-12. A New Orleans businessman and self-proclaimed counter-intelligence agent, 48-year-old Gordon Novel, boasted partnership with DeLorean to produce the car. DeLorean told us that he had been introduced to novel by Marvin Katz, an entrepreneur who had bought surplus parts from the failed DMC-12 project, but that he had never agreed to involvement in the Firestar. "I just went along to listen to them," he said. Novel reassures us, "John and I are still close friends and business associates."
Meantime, about $20 million of DeLorean's assets have been frozen by court order pending the outcome of bankruptcy proceedings. The British government, as largest creditor in the case, would probably have obstructed any attempt by DeLorean to utilize in a new venture parts or patents belonging to the DMC-12.
The boom that has hovered over the head of John Z. DeLorean since his cocaine-trafficking trial has finally been lowered by a ferderal grand jury in Detroit. DeLorean was the only one named in the 15-count indictment that charged him with racketeering, mail and wire fraud, interstate transportation of stolen money, income tax evasion, and causing false income tax returns to be filed. At the heart of the matter is some $17.65 million of DeLorean Motor Company funds that allegedly dissappeared in an intricate investment scheme.
The indictment comes on the heels of an announcement that DeLorean intends to build a new sports car. Based on the staniless steel-bodied sportster marketed in 1981 and 1982, the new car will use substantially more powerful engine which, says one of its backers, will make it "the fastest car in the world."
Dubbed the Firestar 500, the gullwing's styling is similar to that of the earlier DeLorean, with wider front and rear fenders and an elevated rear wing not unlike that of a Plymouth Superbird. According to Gordon Novel, a New Orleans businessman and one of the backers in the venture, present plans call for the car to be powered by a 4-valve fuel-injected all-alloy V-8, expected to produce in the neighborhood of 500 hp. By lightening the previous DeLorean up to 500 lb, Novel expects the powerplant to propel the Firestar 500 from 0-60 in less than 4 sec and to a top speed of 220 mph with Boneville-type tires.
