Motor mogul DeLorean has died

JOHN DeLorean, the American executive whose luxury car company wasted £77m of British taxpayers' money, has died aged 80. The Belfast-based firm went bust in 1983 with the loss of more than 2,500 jobs after he was charged in Los Angeles with conspiring to sell $24m worth of cocaine to help prop up the business.

A year later DeLorean, who had been arrested in an FBI sting operation, used an entrapment defence to win acquittal, despite a videotape in which he called a suitcase full of cocaine 'good as gold'.

Few of DeLorean's stainless steel gull-winged sports cars were sold, but the vehicle achieved lasting fame through its appearance as a time machine in the Back To The Future film

DeLorean's death in a New Jersey hospital on Saturday followed complications from a recent stroke. He will be remembered as the man who offered Northern Ireland thousands of jobs at the height of the Troubles.

Back in the late 1970s, the Labour Government of the Prime Minister James Callaghan was seduced by DeLorean's dream. The then Northern Ireland Secretary Roy Mason said a car plant in an unemployment blackspot would be a 'great psychological boost for Ulster'.

DeLorean, a former General Motors executive, was given £55m of taxpayers' money to set up. Later, Margaret Thatcher's Government handed over millions more.

But the grandiose scheme didn't work. Only 21 months and fewer than 9,000 cars after production started, the dream came crashing down. Receivers were appointed and the workers went back on the dole. DeLorean was cleared of defrauding his investors, but continuing legal action kept him from returning to business.