Great Scott! Every time traveller’s favourite cult classic, the DMC DeLorean is coming back – and it’s being reimagined as an electric car for the future.
DeLorean has now revealed the new Alphs5EV. Click here to read the full story
The DeLorean Motor Company will show a ‘reimagined’ version of the rear-engined sports car this year, which will take the form of a Tesla-rivalling sports EV. The firm has now confirmed the launch will take place on 21 August at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in California.
The firm has now shown the first teaser image of the machine, with company boss Troy Beetz claiming that "Excitement is rising like the doors of our iconic sports car". See what he did there?
The revelation that the DeLorean was returning came earlier this year in a video also shared by design house Italdesign, suggesting that it is involved in the project. Last year, to mark the 40th anniversary of the DeLorean’s original launch, the firm showed a single teaser image of a reimagined electric DMC machine.
Now, you might be surprised to learn that DeLorean is still around in 2022, given that it famously went bust decades ago. So how did we get here?
British engineer Stephen Wynne acquired the rights to the original DeLorean company’s name and branding in 1995, which he used for a business in Houston, Texas that restores and services surviving examples of the original machine.
That firm has now become DeLorean Motors Reimagined Ltd, with Joost de Vries named as the CEO. De Vries has experienced in electric car firms: until last August he was the vice-president for global sales at American EV firm Karma Automotive. It appears that Wynne’s previous business is now the Classic DeLorean division of the new firm.
The new DeLorean clearly has big plans. According to a press release, the firm has committed to building a new headquarters in San Antonio, Texas. The firm claims that it will employ 450 people in executive, management and engineering jobs. It hasn’t yet set a location for manufacturing.
Not much else is known, but it seems likely any new DMC DeLorean would retain the general look and styling of the original machine, although likely updated for the modern age. We don’t yet know about the EV powertrain - but it’s notable that Italdesign has an agreement to use a bespoke EV platform developed by Williams Advanced Engineering.
Electric power is nothing new for the DMC DeLorean, of course: while most examples of the Northern Ireland-built machine drew power solely from an underpowered V6 engine, at least one modified example featured an innovative flux capacitor, which required 1.21 gigawatts of electrical power.
With battery electric technology in its infancy in the mid-1980s, the flux capacitor was initially powered by plutonium, although it was later adapted to draw electrical power direct from lightening and then to run on recycled waste. The handling left a lot to be desired, although it did offer unbeatable performance once it hit 88mph.
Outside of the cinema, the original DeLorean Motor Company was founded in 1975 by former General Motors executive John DeLorean. He secured government backing to establish a factory for the unusual stainless steel-bodied DMC-12 in Belfast, but there was limited demand for the cars, and issues with build quality. DeLorean was arrested following an FBI sting operation, and the company went bankrupt in 1982.
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