The GTO is coming back after a three-decade absence, and among its fans is the father of the original.
“GTO is the car that turned Pontiac around in 1964, and it is always a must to build a car for young people,” said John Z. DeLorean. By the late 1950s, Pontiac had become a make for conservative older drivers.
Bob Lutz, General Motors vice chairman for product development, announced the revival of the GTO at the New York Auto Show in March. It will be a version of the Holden Monaro, built by GM’s Australian subsidiary, and sold beginning in 2004. GM expects to import 20,000 GTOs, powered by a 5.7-liter V-8, a year.
“It will deliver the type of performance that made the original GTO famous,” Lutz said.
The GTO was born when DeLorean–along with Semon “Bunkie” Knudsen (Pontiac head), Elliot “Pete” Estes (Pontiac engineer) and Jim Wangers (who was on the Pontiac advertising account at MacManus, John & Adams)–allowed dealers to create a “factory” hot rod by adding options to a Tempest/LeMans from the Pontiac catalog.
At the time, the GM Engineering Policy Committee, following the industry prohibition on factories making race cars, refused to allow a car to be built with more than one cubic inch of engine displacement for every 10 pounds of weight. But that didn’t stop DeLorean and company from putting a 389-cubic-inch Bonneville V-8 into a 3,400-pound Tempest/LeMans as the GTO option.
Dealers initially ordered 5,000 LeManses so equipped, which forced GM to approve the car after the fact. First-year sales topped 30,000, at less than $4,000 a copy (a time when midsize cars averaged $3,000), and by 1966, the GTO was offered as a distinct model, rather than a LeMans option.
DeLorean says the revived GTO will do well, particularly with “guys who wanted a GTO when they were kids but didn’t have the money,” if priced reasonably (“not as high as $50,000”).
DeLorean, whose departure from GM in April 1973 was less than amicable, likes the potential of the carmaker for whom he worked for 17 years, now that Lutz, who is responsible for such Chrysler products as the Dodge Viper and Plymouth Prowler, is on board.
“The hiring of Lutz shows that the company leaders have to get off their [rear ends] and get some exciting products,” said DeLorean, 77, who rose as high as vice president in charge of GM’s passenger car and truck lineup. “The other factor is that they got into a total morass with the worst marketing that anybody ever saw.
“If I had suggested in my time that GM sales would drop from 50 percent in the ’70s to less than 30 percent of the market as they have today, I would have been considered insane,” he said.
The engineer traces GM’s problems to the post World War II period. “Harlow Curtice ran GM with an iron fist,” he said. “When Curtice retired, the financial guys vowed that they would never again allow a strong man at the top. Basically, they want financial people at the helm, and they got their way for many years–from 1958 until 1992 with some rare exceptions.”
He said serious mistakes were made, such as introducing a diesel engine in 1977 in some Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and Oldsmobile cars (it was dropped in 1985) and bringing out a rebadged Chevrolet Cavalier as a small Cadillac called Cimarron in 1982.
And though DeLorean doesn’t know him, he also had some harsh words for Ron Zarrella, who as head of North American Operations established a brand manager system for each nameplate. (GM recently dropped that approach for one using marketing directors.) “Whatever Zarrella did was wrong. You can’t sell cars like they are contact lenses [a reference to Bausch and Lomb, from where Zarrella came and returned]. To the average buyer, a car is second only to his home as the most significant purchase in a lifetime. A little guy carrying a payment of $400 a month has to spend a big part of his disposable income. The manufacturer really has to look at that part of the market.
“Big executives have a hard time understanding the market of lower-income people. Executives making a million bucks a year and never driving anything but a company car can’t comprehend the struggles of a poor working guy trying to buy a car and send his kid off to college.
“What Lutz needs to do is find a half dozen really bright young people in GM to carry on his tradition,” DeLorean said. “Now 70, he is not going to be there very long. That is the essence of what he is going to have to do. It’s the same problem with all of General Motors. They simply are not building the kind of car they should be. Both Toyota and Honda made record profits in 2001 because they stick to the fundamentals, mainly quality. Toyota will pass Chrysler in sales in a very short time.
“What Honda is doing should almost be illegal. They have been beating the federal emission standards almost voluntarily. Its Acura engine operates so smoothly you can hardly hear it, and they have become the finest engine builders in the world.”
In power at Pontiac
DeLorean ought to know. Pontiac hired him as director of advanced engineering in 1956, after his employer, Packard, folded.
DeLorean headed Pontiac from 1965 to 1969. In 1968, it posted a record 893,745 sales, topping the mark of the previous year by nearly 35,000 cars, a gain attributed to DeLorean. Edward N. Cole, GM president from 1967 to 1974, put him in charge of Chevrolet, GM’s largest division, in 1969. Chevrolet sold a record 2.34 million cars in 1972, his final year in that post.
“DeLorean did some good stuff when he was at Pontiac with the GTO, but remember when he went to Chevrolet, the Vega [’71] was brought out,” said Jim Hall, vice president of industry analysis for AutoPacific, Inc., in Southfield, Mich. “DeLorean was a man who instituted change at GM without really changing anything.”
His own car falters
After his parting with GM, DeLorean created a namesake car–a stainless steel, gullwing model built in Northern Ireland that sold around 9,000 copies in its five-year run. The company collapsed in 1982. DeLorean was arrested on charges of conspiring to distribute narcotics. He was acquitted in 1984. In 1986, he was acquitted on charges of embezzling $8.5 million from DeLorean Motor. But he is not chastened.
He chides GM for Chairman Roger Smith’s decision to form Saturn and begin selling the small cars in 1991. “Roger Smith was talked into an all-new car with Saturn. It was a total mistake. What should have been done when they wanted to show the world GM could build a quality car is start with Chevy or Olds or Buick.”
And the decision to drop Oldsmobile makes him bristle. “To announce that you are going to discontinue the oldest car line in America and announce it two years ahead of time is unbelievable. Now, GM is spending a fortune in advertising to convince people to buy that car. That was stupid.
“What I would have done if I had the problem is bring in GM’s foreign lines and call them Oldsmobiles. That would have created a whole new market and helped their other businesses. A great tragedy for a great old name.”
DeLorean drives an Acura NSX sports car and a Mercedes V-8. In 2000, he began an enterprise to sell stylized DMC 2 (DeLorean Motor Co.) wristwatches for $3,495, which would earn the purchaser a place in line to buy a high-performance automobile he envisions.
Still outspoken after all these successes, failures
John Z. DeLorean has had his ups and downs in the auto industry.
He was an engineer and executive at General Motors from 1956 to 1973.
He went on to form the DeLorean Motor Car Co. in 1974. It produced fewer than 10,000 stainless-steel sports cars with gull-wing doors in Northern Ireland before going out of business in 1982. (A gold-plated DeLorean is on display at the Snyder National Bank in Snyder, southwest Texas, and a production model remains the time machine in the “Back To The Future” movie series.)
DeLorean then went on to face federal charges of conspiring to distribute narcotics in 1982. In light of entrapment charges by federal investigators, he was acquitted in 1984 after a seven-month trial. In 1986, he was acquitted of charges of embezzling $8.5 million from his sports-car company.
He remains a pointed observer of the auto industry.
“One of the best American execs who ever lived was Ernest R. Breech of Ford Motor Co., who did what Jack Welch did for General Electric but Breech did it for many different companies,” he said. Ford hired Breech, from General Motors, in 1945 as chairman and tutor to Henry Ford II.
DeLorean tabbed his Pontiac colleague Pete Estes as a good engineer but “not a great executive.”
He called Thomas Murphy, GM chairman from 1974-1980, “a very wonderful human being but primarily a finance guy.”
And he offers consoling words for Jacques Nasser, recently ousted as Ford president and chief executive. “Nasser should not have been surprised. Ford has a long history of firing top executives–Ernie Breech [resigned as Ford chairman in 1960], Lee Iacocca [fired as Ford president in 1978], Bunkie Knudsen [fired as president and de facto chief executive of Ford in 1970] and Hal Sperlich [fired as Ford vice president in 1977].”
DeLorean admired Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca but never thought about working with him.
An executive who rates as “the best quiet leader in the industry” is Sperlich. DeLorean recalls that Sperlich invented the minivan at Ford.
“The Ford chairman [Ford II] vehemently rejected the concept and fired Sperlich, who took his ideas to Chrysler. The primary reason for Chrysler’s rescue after Iacocca took over an ailing corporation in 1978 was the minivan.” Sperlich, now 72, heads Delco Remy, an auto industry supplier in Anderson, Ind.
For many years, DeLorean and Robert Eaton were on the GM team together. He thinks the Chrysler sale to Daimler-Benz engineered by Eaton in 1998 was smart.
“I think Eaton realized that Chrysler was like a soap bubble and really needed help. It was brilliant for him to pull that off. Mercedes-Benz has no alternative now but to keep Chrysler alive and make it what it ought to be–a pretty good company. It’s a long-range program.”
— Al Rothenberg
