BEDMINSTER, N.J. (AP) -- John Z. DeLorean, the former auto industry wunderkind whose career collapsed after his arrest on cocaine charges, has been evicted from his 434-acre estate in the rolling hills of New Jersey's hunt country.
The three-story brick Georgian mansion, DeLorean's home for nearly 20 years, was sold at a court-ordered bankruptcy auction earlier this year for $15.25 million.On Thursday, the 75-year-old DeLorean watched as movers loaded furnishings into vans. The items are to be liquidated.
He said he hopes his adult children will prevail in their appeal to prove they had a lifetime claim to the property. He declined to say where he would be living.
DeLorean quit GM in 1973 as vice president in charge of North American car and truck operations and later launched his own car company in Northern Ireland. DeLorean produced nearly 9,000 DeLoreans, a stainless-steel sports car with gull-wing doors.
The company collapsed after he was arrested in 1982, accused of conspiring to sell $24 million of cocaine to salvage his venture. He used an entrapment defense to win acquittal, but wrestled with 40 other legal cases in the ensuing years, and his debts grew.
He declared bankruptcy in 1999.
A federal judge in January approved the sale of the estate to a golf course developer. The sale price was equal to about half of DeLorean's total debt.
"But for circumstances out of his control, he could have been one of the most successful industrialists this country has ever seen," said attorney John J. Trombadore, who represented DeLorean in his 1985 divorce from model Cristina Ferrare.