Bruce McWilliams

Bruce McWilliams joined DMC in 1980. He had helped start Saab in the 50s and later worked for Mercedes Benz, before becoming president of Rover in the US. He was in charge of marketing until late 1980, when he joined DMC.

Bruce McWilliams joined as the Marketing Vice President of DMC. However, after DeLorean had made changes to the company, McWilliams was appointed acting president of DMC America - replacing Dick Brown.

After the company starting developing serious money problems, McWilliams turned his efforts to save DMC from the course of financial destruction it was facing.

One of the options presented to McWilliams was a deal by ‘Rent a Car’. Their offer was to buy 1000 DeLorean DMC-12 cars, and to use them as rentals cars around the US, before selling them back to dealers in the fall.

Wisely, McWilliams had his reasons for not going down this route. There sale of the cars would be fine, however the paperwork involved was tremendous for this type of package, not to mention that the DeLorean reputation and brand could be damaged in this manner with second hand DeLoreans flooding the markets at just the time that DMC needed to sell new cars.

Towards the end of the company, McWilliams was working 14-hour days, seven days a week, trying to save the company in his own special field of operations. This ranged from forming ‘exotic’ packages to DeLorean dealers to sell cars and trying make the company some money to reduce its debt, to approaching an Iranian multi-millionaire with the idea of saving the factory and putting his name on the car! Unfortunately, the lure was not enough and the Iranian investor dropped away.

When the receivers prepared to close the Dunmurry factory, Bruce Williams resigned, stating “the burden of debt in the company is so staggering and with the receiver deciding to close the factory I really felt that this was the kiss of death”. McWilliams had many criticisms of the car, ranging from dated design to problems with the window arrangement.

Don Lander later took over the ‘hot seat’ from McWilliams on the California side of the business after his departure.