Kat DeLorean was about two or something when John DeLorean put a motorcycle on its kickstand and gave her the first instruction: learn how to fall off before learning how to ride. Her brother Zach was already learning to ride a little 50, and she wanted to follow him. John would teach her, but first she had to show that she could get away from the motorcycle safely. The machine was stationary. The exercise still went wrong.
Kat landed on the toothed kickstand and injured her knee badly enough that it bled through her jeans. It sounds harsh, but a falling motorcycle can trap a rider's leg between the bike and the direction the body is moving. Years later, Kat faced exactly that problem in an accident. Rather than hang on and let the motorcycle take her leg with it, she jumped clear. She had already practiced the response.
Rather than hang on and let the motorcycle take her leg with it, she jumped clear.
That was John DeLorean's method: he would "Mr. Miyagi me," as Kat describes it. He did not pretend careful people never fall. He made her rehearse the failure under controlled conditions before adding motion, speed, and the weight of a moving motorcycle. Anyone who has worked around vehicles understands the difference. Telling somebody what may go wrong is not the same as training their hands and feet to react correctly.
Before Kat DeLorean could ride, she had to learn to fall
Learning to fall is not permission to be careless. It prepares a rider for the moment control runs out. On a motorcycle, hesitation can leave a leg pinned beneath the machine. Kat's later accident gave the original drill a clear purpose: when the bike went one way and she went the other, she separated herself from it. That reaction helped protect her leg.
The unpleasant part is that the practice itself caused an injury. Falling from a parked motorcycle looked simple, yet the toothed kickstand cut through to her knee. If anything, that made the lesson more accurate. A controlled exercise can still hurt, and a stationary machine still has hard edges, weight, and places that can catch clothing or skin. A motorcycle does not become a harmless prop simply because it is parked.
John also taught the lesson in the right order. Kat did not get the exciting part first and the safety lecture afterward. She had to demonstrate the exit before she could ride. Once a machine is moving, a rider has less time to think and more force to manage. "Learn how to fall" was a practical condition rather than a slogan: show that you can get clear, then learn the controls.
Kat drew a broader lesson from the accident. Preparing to fail does not cause failure. It provides a usable response when something goes wrong. John did not promise that she would avoid every spill; he taught her a movement that could limit the damage. In a family where cars and motorcycles were everyday equipment, the lesson was direct: practice the difficult recovery before you need it.
Preparing to fail does not cause failure.
Waxing cars and watching other drivers were the real lessons
John DeLorean also paid Kat to wash and wax cars. On the surface, it was routine work: clean the vehicle properly, finish the job, and get paid. Kat realized only later that he was connecting the care of something she owned to a hard day's work and the management of her own money. The job had to be real for the lesson to work. A car plainly reveals missed sections, careless work, and unfinished wax.
His driving instruction followed the same approach. John taught Kat to watch the other drivers more closely than she watched herself. A new driver often stares at the immediate controls and treats everyone else as background. That is a common mistake. Drivers need to know what their own hands and feet are doing, but they must also read the cars around them. Those movements can change the situation before anyone touches a pedal.
Manual transmission offered another test of his method. Several people had tried to teach Kat how to drive stick shift, including one attempt in a 1987 IROC Z28 with what she called a 200-pound racing clutch. It was a poor setup for building confidence. A demanding clutch can make every rough engagement feel like evidence that the learner lacks skill, even when the car itself is creating much of the difficulty.
At 18, Kat asked John to teach her in the Acura NSX. They had been working out together when she made the request, and a man nearby reacted with disbelief that John DeLorean's daughter could not drive a stick shift. John packed up, took her home, and put her behind the wheel. She did not stall it or drop it. She simply drove.
She did not stall it or drop it. She simply drove.
The point was not that manual transmission is effortless. The wrong teaching car can conceal what a driver already understands. Kat knew the mechanics of shifting from motorcycles, but the 1987 IROC Z28 and its 200-pound racing clutch had convinced her otherwise. In the Acura NSX, with John beside her, the pieces worked together. She knew more than she thought. She needed a machine and an instructor that allowed her to prove it.
The Trans Am and Harley truck put his lessons under pressure
Kat's black 1998 Pontiac Trans Am WS6 was not an easy dealership purchase. She had seen an advertisement around 1997, 98 that quoted 320 horsepower and decided she wanted the car. She called every dealership on the eastern seaboard in search of a black example with a manual transmission. She found a silver convertible manual and a white car with a manual transmission and T-Tops, but not the black manual she wanted. She refused the white car and rejected the convertible because it was governed.
John contacted an old dealer in Akron, Ohio. Kat drove 500 miles from New Jersey to collect the Trans Am, though she ultimately had to accept an automatic. She then drove the 500-mile break in home at Fifty five miles an hour while her friends followed. It was the unglamorous part of buying the performance car she had pursued. Her first task was not to test its limits but to complete the break in correctly.
When she arrived, John walked around the Pontiac, sat inside, and told her, "I named this car." Kat had bought it with her own money, but she did not immediately recognize what choosing a Pontiac might mean to him. She later connected the purchase to his claim that Chevrolet took the Banshee and allowed him to rebadge a Camaro. She also said he gave the Pontiac better suspension. For Kat, the WS6 with its Ram Air hood and T-Tops became John DeLorean's Firebird Trans Am.
When she arrived, John walked around the Pontiac, sat inside, and told her, "I named this car."
She named it Babs, short for "badass bitch." The name suits her description of the car: mean, special, and worth recovering. Babs has been restored by the man Kat hopes will become her son-in-law, but restored does not yet mean road-ready. The car still needs body panels and brake work before it can return to the road. Brakes come before sentiment. Until the work is finished, the responsible decision is to keep it parked.
The Ford F-150 Harley Davidson Edition brought Kat into more direct conflict with John. She received an inheritance of less than six figures, and he warned that he would disown her if she spent it on a car. She took the check straight to a Ford dealership and bought the truck in cash. It had black-and-silver custom leather that matched the paint, custom taillights, a tonneau cover, and video players in the seats. Kat described it as a Ford Lightning pickup truck: fast, fully equipped, and exactly what she wanted despite her father's instruction.
The truck then carried her to her wedding. Kat and her husband did not want to begin married life in debt after paying for a large ceremony. His dream was a drive-thru wedding, so they drove the Ford to Las Vegas and married there. Kat said she would rather hold the celebration at 20 years than spend heavily at the beginning. Her wedding Polaroid shows her inside the Ford F-150 Harley Davidson Edition, wearing her seatbelt.
After moving to Texas, Kat needed a Ford F-250 and sold the Harley truck to Bill. This was not an ordinary sale. Their contract requires Bill to sell it back to her for the same price he paid if he ever lets it go, even though that price dates to about 10 years ago. The clause captures how Kat treats a vehicle she cannot practically keep but has not finished with. She lets it go while preserving a route back.
John DeLorean's lessons did not produce a daughter who always obeyed him. They produced one who understood the costs of ownership and made deliberate choices anyway. Kat observed the Trans Am's 500-mile break in at Fifty five miles an hour, then spent her inheritance on the Ford after John directly warned her not to. She kept his attention to machinery, responsibility, and preparation while deciding where his authority ended. That tension runs through every important vehicle she chose for herself.
