Kirkus评论

In Dream Maker (p. 746), Ivan Fallon and James Srodes, financial journalists with British connections, focus on how John DeLorean conned the British government out of 84 million--with some Wall Street backing--to build his dream sportscar in job-starved Belfast. Levin has a different, authentic, we-were-all-had story to tell--closer to the American pulse, if less polished in the telling. Dazzled by DeLorean as a New York magazine reporter, Levin moved to the Detroit Monthly and lost his illusions: ""outside the confines of General Motors,"" DeLorean was no manager or entrepreneur--his unscrupulousness, his youth-craze, his self-glorification apart. In this indictment, there is an element of he-bit-the-hand-that-fed-him: Motor City, Levin notes, ""took him as a boy and gave him an excellent technical education--free of charge--first at Cass and then Lawrence Tech. Chrysler Institute refined his training. Packard and GM rewarded him with promotions and big salaries."" He wasn't self-made like his two idols, Ford and Durant. There's also an element of reproachful he-was-no-better-than-the-auto-makers-he-denounced: ""if anything, he took GM's design duplicity [with the Vega] to a higher degree."" Partly, he was penalized by the relative powerlessness of the small businessman (""As president of GM, DeLorean could have produced his own airbags. . .""); but some compromises--like trying to pass off a ""bastardized Lotus"" as a car-of-the-future--he didn't have to make. To the believers he lured away from Detroit, he's given independent auto-makers ""a bad name."" The rest of the story is here too--with a dual emphasis: DeLorean's Motorland shift ""from the engineer wrestling with transmission to the stylist shaping fenders to the advertising man, lifting his product beyond mere substance to the realm of image"" (while he made himself over via diet, exercise, and cosmetic surgery); and the shady business deals he got into, during and after the GM years, with crude, volcanic Roy Nesseth. One key part of the financial puzzle, the Lotus/GPD/Swiss connection, eludes Levin as it did Fallen and Srodes. So does what-made-DeLorean run. (Levin suggests, vaguely and unconvincingly, that he didn't deliberately con anyone.) But the Motorland detail, and the automotive/anti-hero perspective, give this a particular lien on the American market--for now. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.