On this day, Oct. 19, in 1982, rebellious auto executive John DeLorean was busted in a Los Angeles airport motel with a suitcase containing cocaine that a government informant offered to pay $24 million for. DeLorean, the developer of the Pontiac GTO and the DeLorean DMC-12, a stainless steel sports car with the gull-wing doors, was attempting to raise money for his company, which had been hit hard by the 1981 recession. According to DeLorean, said he was trying to find investors. He didn’t know it was a drug deal until it was too late, he said, and he was afraid to back out. Despite a videotape of the drug deal in which the auto maker called the cocaine-filled suitcase “good as gold,” the jury believed that DeLorean had been entrapped and acquitted him.
DeLorean died from a stroke at the age of 80 in 2005.
— Scott McCabe
