I know it’s obvious from the picture, but I never realized DeLoreans were stainless steel, which is very rare for vehicles made in the past half-century. DMC DeLorean Wikipedia here
Other DeLorean oddities:
- The car did not vary design by year, but rather by production batch, making it hard to identify a DeLorean’s year from its design
- The car was expensive for its time ($25,000-$34,000 in 1982-1984) and sold as a GT style car, despite being relatively slow (0-60 in approx. 8.8-10sec)
- “A total of four recalls were issued by the factory to correct problems such as a sticking throttle, front-suspension issues and an inertia switch”
- “The original 80-amp Ducellier alternator supplied with the early-production DeLoreans could not provide enough current to supply the car when all lights and electrical options were on; as a result, the battery would gradually discharge, leaving the driver stranded on the road.”
I don’t care if the DeLorean is impractical. I think it’s one of the classiest and timeless looking cars out there.
As a sports car, it was a piece of crap, my Kia Forte could beat it in a drag race. You can’t beat that iconic design, however.
Stainless steel doesn’t rust
It does.
It doesn’t, but if I recall correctly there were a lot of owners complaining that the brushed finish would discolor if you touched it with your hand. Body oils and salt left finger marks everywhere from people touching the car.
For those of you that don’t know, the car was manufactured as cheap as possible so the owner could use them to traffic cocaine. The stainless steel was a design choice to make it easier to cut off parts of the car to retrieve the drugs. The Wikipedia states that the first prototypes were carbon fiber but supply chain issues caused the car to be too expensive. They basically made the cheapest thing passable as a drug mule, sold it for some crazy price, and packed drugs into it.
Doc says the stainless steel bodywork is the reason he chose that car as time machine, when Marty is surprised to see it.
Not only it is stainless steel but also it was directionally sanded so it has a “brushed” finish. If you have scratched it you had to use a specific grit of sandpaper and directionally “rescratch” it to return the original look.
By all accounts the DeLorean is a piece of shit. But the design screamed The Eighties. Back when we thought the future was a series of hard edges.
Put it with the big spoons, not the little spoons.
It also used a renault transmission, which could only barely take the power of the stock engine.
