80s News Today

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — MARCH 2, 1980 You feel the money here before you even see it. It’s in the air—a subtle, aerosolized scent of alpine ozone, refined petroleum, and fury. You’re at the Geneva Salon International de l’Automobile. The Palexpo hall is a shimmering sea of European refinement, a hushed cathedral of velour and wood-grain. Forget the champagne—though, God knows, it’s flowing like the Rhône—forget the couture—every woman in the room seems to be made entirely of silk and diamonds—because what we have right here is a revelation. They call it the Audi Quattro . Now, look at it! It doesn't have the languid, serpentine curves of a Pininfarina dream. No, no! It is all V-form and flared arches, a squat, muscular Teutonic bruiser that seems to be gripping the carpet with its very soul. The engineers from Ingolstadt—men with slide-rule eyes and hearts of pure silicon—have brought forth a beast with four-wheel drive. The gathered gentry of the automotive press, the men ...

The joint was jumping at McCormick Place, Chicago, February 9, 1985, the 77th running of the Auto Show, where the air smelled of new rubber, fresh paint, and the faint metallic tang of ambition gone wild. The crowds moved in great herds, coat collars up against the February slush tracked in from the parking lots, eyes glazed from too many spotlights and too many promises. And then—there it was. Not just another car. Rotating on a raised altar like a secular god of the asphalt, it was the Chevrolet Camaro IROC-Z . Not just a car, you understand, but a Low-Slung, Fuel-Injected, Integrated-Spoiler Manifestation of pure, unadulterated Speed-Status. It wasn't merely yellow; it was a screaming lightning bolt of defying the beige doldrums of the seventies. It sat there, hunkered down on those 16-inch five-spoke aluminum wheels, looking for all the world like a predator that had just swallowed a wind tunnel and found it delicious. The crowd presses in. You can see the reflection of the str...

DUNMURRY, NORTHERN IRELAND — JANUARY 21, 1981 And there it was! The Thing Itself! Not merely a car, no, but a shimmering, unpainted slab of Tomorrow, squinting through the Belfast drizzle like a terrestrial UFO. Out of the hangar-sized gestation crates of the DeLorean Motor Company, the first production DMC-12—VIN 500—was whelped into the gray light of a Tuesday morning. Can you feel the sheen? Can you smell the ozone and the hubris? John Zachary DeLorean—the man with the silver-streaked pompadour and the jawline of a Roman consul—had done it. He had defected from the mahogany-paneled cathedrals of General Motors to build his own altar to the Great American Ego. He didn’t want just another "automobile." He wanted a Social Statement. He wanted a brushed-stainless-steel exoskeleton that screamed: "I have arrived, and I am traveling at the speed of the future!" John Z. himself, with his impeccably coiffed hair and movie-star looks, must have surveyed it with the pride ...

Detroit. January 11, 1989 Brrrrrr! The North American International Auto Show, that great glittering world exposition of horsepower and hubris, where the air hung thick with the scent of fresh wax, exhaust fumes, and the faint whiff of desperation from the Big Three, all huddled under the cavernous roof of Cobo Hall like so many mastodons sensing the meteor's shadow. The crowds! The flashbulbs popping like champagne corks at a debutante ball! The suits—oh, the suits!—strutting and preening, the German barons from Mercedes and BMW with their steely gazes and precision-engineered smirks, the American moguls in their pinstripes and power ties, chewing cigars and slapping backs, all convinced that luxury was their birthright, their domain, a fortress built of leather seats and V-8 thunder that no upstart could breach. And then—whoosh!—out of the East, silent as a ninja's blade, came the Lexus ! Unveiled that fateful morning: the LS 400, the flagship, the killer, a sedan so smooth i...

Los Angeles - August 16, 1984 A tremor ran through the land back in the dog days of '84! Not an earthquake, mind you, nothing so plebeian. No, this was a tremor of pure, unadulterated spectacle . The kind that tickles the very ganglia of our celebrity-besotted, headline-huffing, status-seeking souls. I speak, of course, of The Acquittal ! Yes, that three-syllable thunderclap that echoed from the hallowed halls of the Los Angeles courthouse, proclaiming one John Zachary DeLorean , the man with the stainless steel dream machine and the panache of a Medici prince, 100% Not Guilty ! Oh, the drama of it all! Here was a man, see, who had zoomed onto the American scene like a god Mercury on a skateboard. A titan of torque from the gritty, gear-grinding factories of General Motors, a man who dared to dream of a better car, a sexier car, a car that would gleam like a freshly minted dime in the suburban driveway – the DeLorean! A vehicle so futuristic, so now , that it practically hummed t...