DAVID ADAMS looks at where it all started for a pop-culture icon…
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A DeLorean DMC-12 with its signature “gull-wing” doors. PICTURE: Kevin Abato/www.grenexmedia.com/GDFL |
For this edition of Origins, we’re going back, Back to the Future!
In case you missed it, we recently passed a milestone when 21st October ticked over on the calendar. Why is that date so special? Because it is that date that inventor ‘Doc’ Emmet Brown (played by Christopher Lloyd) and Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) go to at the start of the 1989 Robert Zemeckis-directed film Back to the Future II, in a desperate bid to prevent McFly’s future son from starting down a ruinous path (and actually end up making this worse, but I digress).
Anyway, it’s for that reason we thought we take a look at where it all began for one of the other stars of the movie, the two door, brushed stainless steel DeLorean sports car that Doc Brown “built” as his time machine.
The DeLorean takes its name from John Z DeLorean, a one-time engineer at General Motors who decided to make his own sports car.
The project, which took almost a decade to get off the ground, was fraught with problems almost from the get go – some of the ideas DeLorean had included in the original concept didn’t prove feasible and several features had to be changed.
The first prototype appeared in the mid-1970s but it wasn’t until 1981 that it went into production in Dunmurry, a suburb of Belfast in Northern Ireland (government subsidies aimed at promoting jobs in the area had helped attract DeLorean to the country).
Designed by Italian automotive designer Giorgetto Giugiaro and engineered by Lotus Cars of England, the car’s most famous feature was it’s gull-wing doors (in fact, this was apparently a key reason why the movie-makers liked it for the movie – it resembled a flying craft which, of course, Doc Brown’s time machine became (as well as a train, but, again, I digress!)). The cars, which all came out of the factory in bare stainless steel, were available as either a five-speed manual or a three-speed automatic and interior colors of either black or grey.
While the model was reportedly called the DMC-12 because it was supposed to retail for $US12,000, spiralling costs during production meant the end price was more than double that – $US25,000.
The hefty price tag and a downturn in the US economy meant it didn’t drive off the shelves as DeLorean had hoped and, in early 1982, the company went into receivership. Production ceased in late 1982 after some 9,200 cars had been made (including some gold-plated models!). A few of the cars, which had been incomplete when production ceased, were later completed and sold as 1983 models.
DeLorean, meanwhile, was also facing other problems – in October, 1982, he was charged with cocaine trafficking. While he was eventually acquitted in 1984, the case had caused significant damage to his business. He died in 2005.
The Back to the Future franchise – which kicked off in 1985 – transformed the car into a pop-culture icon and in the mid-1990s, Stephen Wynne founded a new DeLorean Motor Company in Texas which resells DeLorean cars and parts and provides repair and restoration services.
It’s estimated that of the 9,200 made, some 6,500 are still on the road.
~ www.backtothefuture.com/delorean
~ www.drive.com.au/new-car-reviews/driven-delorean-dmc12-time-machine-20151020-gke97v.html
~ http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-34304612/
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