Delorean Motor Co

He's been badly bruised but not beaten. He's spent time as a punch line for countless jokes nationwide, but has retained his soaring self-confidence. And now that he has endured and won five years' worth of legal battles, John Z. DeLorean says that, at 62, he is coming back. "I wouldn't trade my life and who I am now for anyone in the world," DeLorean said in an interview Thursday. "My life is not over. I've got a lot of things to do. I've lost some time, and I've got to make up for it."

John Z. DeLorean, the one-time sports car maker who has made little besides court appearances for the last five years, is finally out from under the American judicial system. Late Tuesday, DeLorean reached a tentative settlement here in DeLorean Motor Co.'s bankruptcy case, bringing to a close the last of DeLorean's controversial legal fights, which began when his auto company collapsed and he was arrested on drug-trafficking charges on the same day in October, 1982.

Indicted car maker John Z. DeLorean, his lawyers, and attorneys for the investors and creditors of the failed DeLorean Motor Co. will assemble before a federal district judge in San Diego Wednesday morning in an attempt to reach agreement on DeLorean's debt to the company he founded.

The trial of auto maker John Z. DeLorean, charged with defrauding investors in the bankrupt DeLorean Motor Co. of nearly $9 million, will begin on April 7, court officials said Sunday.