Decked out with gull-wing doors and a sleek, shining, metallic body, the DMC DeLorean blasted into the eighties as the hot European sports car for all the yuppies to drool over. Unfortunately, not many kids had this car poster hanging on their bedroom wall, at least not until Back to the Future. Like Optimus Prime, this car was equally fake. Before the flux capacitor made it an icon, the DeLorean had a very different connotation for the car-buying public.

Dreamed up by American John DeLorean, built by the Irish, paid for by British taxpayers, it was designed by Lotus engineers. DeLorean would be disgraced thanks to his business failure and drug habit. Narcotics was one of the many things going to his head, as friends remember him boasting “he had the British government over a barrel.” Spoiler alert, this story ends just as badly as you think it does.

In two years of production, the company was dead. During the first and only production line run, roughly 9,000 of the flagship cars were built in the Irish factory, as rumors of John DeLorean smuggling drugs appeared on newspapers. If that seems minute, it is. DeLorean barely avoided jail, the U.K. was out $120 million in investment money, and the car became a joke that had a tendency to burst into flames. Owners were stuck with a disappointing car, trying to dislodge the coke-encrusted cassette tape of Huey Lewis from the tape player to little avail.

The Future of Automobiles…

Back to the Future movie
Universal Pictures

Initial drafts of the Back to the Future plot had our hero adventuring around time in a laser-powered refrigerator. Perhaps because that seemed a little too reminiscent of the police phone box from Doctor Who and could also be construed as encouraging small children to crawl into abandoned fridges that locked from the outside, writers Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis changed it to a car. Because if you’re going to get hit on by your mom, might as well live through that awkward experience with pizzazz.

The most eye-catching vehicle hitting the market was the DMC DeLorean at that moment of time, a car that was seemingly designed for movies. Doc Brown must have thought it was perfectly aerodynamic to hit the speeds he needed. Enthusiasm for the concept car was sky-high. It was impossible to hate the DMC pedigree. John DeLorean was the brightest mind at GM, brash, persuasive, and confident. He made deals like a globetrotting titan, securing funding from the UK government, while hobnobbing with celebrities in his spare time.

The specs for the prototype were produced by the designers of James Bond’s submersible car in The Spy Who Loved Me, Lotus. Lotus were best known for formerly working on Formula-1 cars. Design tweaks made it adaptable to many different climates, from the snow-clogged Midwest to the deserts of the Southwest. The look was flashy but practical, and DeLorean planned for DMC to sell the namesake vehicle at rates affordable for most average car owners to obtain.

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You Must Be This High to Drive

Back to the Future
Universal

It didn’t specify anywhere in the driver's manual that you needed to be crazy to own one, but it sure didn’t hurt. What was included in the driver’s manual was directions to properly clean the steel beast with a sponge and a bucket of highly flammable liquid. "Stains of tar and grease may be removed with gasoline or white mineral spirits," the instruction booklet stated. Never mind washing that fuel down the sewer grate, we're sure that will turn out just fine. Environmentalism was still decades away, as you might have guessed. Yeah, this is the type of car that screamed, "I am an insane, rich person living in the 80s." And some terrible timing it was, the eco-hazard hitting showrooms just as the recession of 1980-81 crippled Americans' thirst for gaudy imported toys. Doc Brown must have had a nest egg stowed away somewhere.

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Being made of a steel exterior, there was no need to worry about scratching paint. The steel body was built over a fiberglass hull, but the weight only presented another issue instead of solving it, adding more bulk for the undersized engine to overcome. It was fairly safe, but fragile. Low-impact collision tests demonstrate it crumples like a wet cardboard box at speeds as low as 40 mph. Repairs were so costly that a simple fender bender would likely total it. The stainless steel body resisted rust quite well, though it prevented any attempts at painting as the steel was not built for it. For a sports car, it turned out it actually lacked style.

Despite the century-old misconception, the Model T did not only come in black, however, the DeLorean only came in default bare steel. Though they wanted to avoid a fridge, that is essentially what the Back to the Future writers got, aesthetically speaking, because every bit of dust, grime, salt, grease, or mud showed up just like it would on a steel kitchen appliance. Good thing oil prices were low in 1982.

The Car of No Year

flaming DeLorean
Reddit

Oddly, the scene from the third film where a train is needed to push Doc Brown’s time machine to reach the 88mph threshold might be the most realistic depiction of the DeLorean in action. It was notoriously slow for a luxury sports car, and the promise of “evasive capabilities” rings hollow. The body resisted rust, but not the frame, the plastic exterior body parts warped over time, and it had a tendency to catch fire. The only flames this puppy was laying down was from the faulty wiring. Modern owners disappointingly report the doors sticking, bad visibility, and insanely-high repair costs. Driving a DeLorean is essentially like driving around in a Frank Gehry building. Robust it was not, nor was it any more reliable though loyal fans have remedied some of these quirks in the intervening forty years with obligatory modifications for safety.

When it hit the market, it simply did not compare to Italian sports cars or the more modest (and far cheaper) Corvette. The contraption ran into constant hiccups and boasted an anemic 130 horsepower engine. Worse still, it took DeLorean’s model considerably longer to reach 0-60. When factoring in the price adjusted for inflation of $70,000 (double what was initially planned), the problems with the car become apparent. In pristine condition, the car today is worth half of the price it was in 1982. Which, considering the skyrocketing cost of antique cars, tells how big a piece of crap it truly was, the most embarrassing flop built in Northern Ireland since the Titanic.

If you really wanted a high-performance sports car, the DeLorean was your worst bet. In 1984, John DeLorean laughed off the whole debacle with the sardonic quip: “Would you buy a used car from me?” And yet, despite all the known flaws, the DeLorean's appeal remains intact, the name rebooted for 2022, ready to ride the nostalgia wave.