There’s palpable excitement about the rebirth of the iconic car, but critics say it’s another example of nostalgia over reality.
The wonder is that it hasn’t happened before now, but the revival of one of the world’s most recognisable cars, the DeLorean DMC-12, is apparently in train. It’s been 40 years since money changed hands for the last new ‘DeLoreans’ and the stainless steel-bodied coupé with the distinctive upward-opening doors sank into relative obscurity – obscure, that is, apart from its starring role in the Back To The Future film trilogy released between 1985 and 1990.
Now, with the rights to the name having changed hands between an aftermarket parts concern for the 9,000 or so original models built and onto a series of US investors, there are plans for a battery-electric tribute model. However, outside of the “gullwing” doors (which make parking so difficult) it’s difficult to see the resemblance between this new proposal and the sharp-edged original, even though they were both designed by Italdesign, the Italian styling house headed by Giorgetto Giugiaro.
John Zachary DeLorean, a former General Motors executive, conceived the idea for the two-seat DMC DeLorean coupé, an innovative stainless-steel design, which would be built at a factory in south Belfast bringing much needed investment and jobs to a depressed area. DeLorean received steadfast backing by the UK government’s Northern Ireland Office and at least £65 million of taxpayers’ money before the firm collapsed amid accusations of fraud, mismanagement and building cars without firm orders.
In July 1984, the Committee of Public Accounts at Westminster reported that “the DeLorean project represents one of the gravest cases of the misuse of public resources to come before us in many years”.
Only £17.4 million was recovered to Government in 2004 after a prolonged receivership of the company which collapsed in 1982. It should also be said here that the DeLorean was too slow compared with its rivals, not much fun to drive and suffered from poor build quality.
While the current DeLorean rebirth is not quite as controversial, many have accused it of being vapourware and like so many other high-profile reborn car projects which fail to materialise after the initial hype.
The internet and social media, which tend not to take these sort of doubts too seriously, however, has been alive with the possibilities for a DeLorean comeback, although all that we have so far is a series of pictures and stated ambitions from the US firm headed by chief executive Joost de Vries (formerly of Tesla and Karma).
In an interview with Autocar magazine, de Vries said that a series of new models is in the plan, starting with the Alpha5 (the actual model’s name for the “new DeLorean”), a battery-electric coupé which will make its debut at the renowned American classic car event at Pebble Beach, California, in August. He claimed the Alpha5 will have a top speed of 150mph, will accelerate from 0-60mph in 3.4sec and have a range of more than 300 miles. The Italian-built car is slated for production in 2024, although apparently the first 88 cars won’t be road-registered.
To follow will be a V8 petrol-engined sports coupé, then a battery-electric saloon followed by an SUV, with hydrogen fuel-cell power.
It’s pretty sketchy at the moment and like most of its contemporaries highly dependent on funding at a time when new technology stocks are falling out of favour. An Initial Public Offering (IPO) is being planned, possibly to coincide with the Alpha5’s launch in August.
Such reinterpretations of famous cars with modern drivetrains have been a growing theme in the car industry, whether that’s genuine classics with modern engines (known as restomods), or reimagined classic cars such as RML’s Short Wheelbase which evokes Ferrari’s famed 250 SWB, or even the Aston Martin model which appeared in the latest James Bond film No Time To Die, which was a DB5 body on top of a BMW sports saloon chassis and drivetrain.
These trends are coupled with the battery electric “skateboard” chassis that underpin a lot of battery-electric models, which enables a variety of bodies to go on top (Ford’s future, for example, will consist in part of building its own bodies on Volkswagen’s MEB chassis, which underpins the ID.3 and associated VW Group models).
We’ll just have to see whether this new DeLorean rebirth turns out to be a genuine Back to the Future moment or whether we should be as incredulous as Marty McFly when he says: “Wait a minute, Doc. Are you telling me you built a time machine… out of a DeLorean?”
