A new Netflix documentary charting the rise and fall of John Z DeLorean shows how the iconic car featured in the Back to Future movies gave Belfast hope during the height of the Troubles.
And the three-part miniseries also gives a glimpse into the despair felt by many in Northern Ireland when the DeLorean Motor Company collapsed - and the DMC DeLorean factory in Belfast closed in 1982, just a year after its long delayed assembly lines finally opened.
That same year, Mr DeLorean would be charged by the US government with trafficking cocaine after he was recorded by undercover federal agents agreeing to bankroll a $24 million cocaine smuggling plot in an apparent bid to save his DMC company from insolvency. He was acquitted of all charges after he successfully argued that the FBI and DEA had unfairly targeted and illegally entrapped him.
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A decade later, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Michael Ancram would tell the UK Parliament that at least £77 million of taxpayer's money had been pumped into the failed car production venture in Northern Ireland.
However, before it all went so badly wrong, John DeLorean gave the people of Northern Ireland dreams of a prosperous future, built around what was hailed as the "most modern car factory in the world" . The Netflix Documentary 'Myth & Mogul: John DeLorean' says the charismatic car engineer was 'treated like a hero' in Belfast 1979, after the 'UK Government gave him $100 million to bring hope and jobs'.
In archive news footage, a voiceover says DeLorean "found himself cast as the saviour of the jobless in one of the worst areas of unemployment in Western Europe." And another adds: "Despite enormous efforts by British Ministers, few companies have been prepared to bring factories to this political minefield. But now DeLorean's plant is built here in no man's land [between the Protestant and Catholic communities]."
One local man, interviewed in 1979, said: "The people have got kind of a hope that, if they're lucky, they'll get a job in the plant."
Jeremy Paxman, who was the BBC's Northern Ireland Reporter between 1973 and 1977, said: "The whole DeLorean project did give the people a sense of optimism and hope and enagagement with the future. That it could be something new and exciting."
John DeLorean himself said he had "fallen in love with the people" of Northern Ireland - and he had "a very deep feeling that most social problems have economic solutions".
Gavin Esler, the BBC's Northern Ireland Reporter between 1977 and 1982, said: "The fact that there were protestant and catholic workers in the same building might not seem like a big deal to people who are thinking about it now, but it was a very bid deal then. Because those same workers would go home to houses where, between Catholics and Protestants, there was a wall maybe 15 feet high, called the peace line, to keep people apart.
"For most people in Northern Ireland at that time schools were not even integrated. So, if you didn't meet at school and you didn't live in the same street, but you could work together.
"That was, I suppose, an extraordinary social experiment that was at the heart of the DeLorean factory."
However, those deams of prosperity and peace were shortlived. And when the factory failed, those dreams were crushed.
Former DMC empolyee Sinaed Slavin said: "It was hard to get a job in Belfast anyway, so everyone was just back on the dole again. People who had taken out mortgages and then bought new cars... it was sad times. Very sad times... it was very hard."
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Before his death in 2005, John DeLorean himself said: "We were growing. We were prospering. We were starting to prove that Northern Ireland can be viable economically - and that may have been injurious to somebody's ideas about the country. I don't know.
"I'm only speculating. I'm just an engineer who builds cars. I don't understand these things."
- Myth & Mogul: John Delorean can be streamed on Netflix
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