DeLorean Motor Company, famous for producing every time traveller’s favourite sports car, has given a first look at the new electric vehicle that will spearhead the company’s revival: a sleek coupe called the Alpha5.
Best known for producing the DMC-12 that starred in the Back to the Future trilogy, the original DeLorean was shut down when it went bankrupt in 1982. The brand has since been owned by Brit Stephen Wynne, who has run an aftermarket support service in Texas since 1995.
But the brand has now been sold to a US outfit headed by Joost de Vries, who previous held senior roles at EV start-ups Tesla and Karma Automotive. De Vries has big plans to turn DeLoran into a premium brand offering a wide range of models – the first of which will be the Alpha5, set to arrive in 2024 to rival the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-tron GT and Tesla Model S.
While the Alpha5 takes some design inspiration from the DMC-12, the new car is clearly not a nostalgic remake of its famous forebear. There’s no flux capacitor, for one thing, and the very Eighties angular lines of the DMC-12 have given way to a sports coupe with rakish, curving bodywork.
That said, there are several nods to the original, including the classic gull-wing doors, slim wraparound light bars at each end, chunky louvres over the rear window and turbine-style wheels.
Specification-wise, DeLorean claims the Alpha5 will have a battery in excess of 100kWh, giving a range of around 300 miles (on the US test cycle). It will also have a limited top speed of 155mph, and a 0-60mph time of 3.4 seconds.
The Alpha5 will make its public debut at Pebble Beach in August. Speaking exclusively to our sister publication Autocar, de Vries said the aim was to match “the AMG GT and maybe the higher-end Taycans – but it’s more catering to the internal combustion crowd than trying to become a faster Tesla Model S Plaid.”
De Vries added that the machine would be produced for DeLorean in Italy, and a UK firm was helping with the powertrain, although he declined to give specific details. He added that the machine would launch with a special track-only edition that would be limited to 88 examples (see what they did there?), before a low-volume run of road-legal models.
Beyond the Alpha5: DeLorean’s future plans
De Vries told Autocar that the Alpha5 would quickly be joined by a wide range of cars
He also noted that the exterior design of the Alpha5 has been done by Giorgietto Giugaro, who penned the original DMC-12. He said: “In Italy, they never really stopped designing DeLoreans, which was awesome”, and that in the firm’s archives they “found the sedan, discussions about the coupé, a city bus, an SUV. You would never know the firm stopped building cars.”
That long-abandoned line-up is similar to the range of models de Vries is planning for the new DeLorean. The first car to follow the Alpha5 will be a sports coupe powered by a V8 combustion engine, following by an EV saloon and a hydrogen-powered SUV.
“We need an SUV for volume”, de Vries said. “The business case is obviously an SUV which will be launched very quickly after we launch our halo car, but we need that halo car first.”
De Vries said that the hydrogen powertrain was likely because the firm “is not convinced batteries are the end goal”.
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