It's Back To The Future day so let's celebrate by getting to know more about the legendary DeLorean, the unsung American-made sports car that became a pop culture icon thanks to the time-traveling adventures of Doc Brown and Marty in the Back To The Future trilogy. Man, it's been an honor to take this time-traveling hero for a spin even though it doesn't have the same gadgetry as Doc Brown's.
It all began when John Z. DeLorean, who was the vice president of General Motors in the '60s and the man behind the Pontiac brand, left the company in the late '70s to start his own car company. His car company, the DeLorean Motor Company, put up its own base in Ireland and their first mass-production model was the DMC-12.
DeLorean wanted to create a sports car that is reasonably priced and stylish to please the crowd but due to lack of originality, they have to outsource the DMC-12 from elsewhere. With handling by Lotus, styled by Giugiaro, and a wheezy 130bhp Renault engine mounted at the back, the DeLorean should have been the best of both worlds but the DeLorean gained a bad reputation for being one of the worst cars ever made, even worse is some numerous owners got trapped inside by the failing electrics.
In 1981, when production has reached 6,500 units, John Z. DeLorean was arrested for suspicion of drug possession. When pleaded not guilty, his company went bust two years later and by the time production ended, the total production of the DMC-12 was only 8,500. It was a disaster until 1985 when Steven Spielberg made it a time-traveling hero car in the Back To The Future trilogy. Thanks to the Back To The Future trilogy's success, the DeLorean became a pop icon and you can see one of these at major car museums or at Universal Studios.
In the mid-2000s a new DeLorean car company in the USA is in charge of the remaining inventory and updated it with this, the S2. It may look like the classic DeLorean but its 3.0L engine has been uprooted to 197HP of power and 211.9ft-lb of torque. It may not sound much by modern standards but Great Scott! It feels good.
In honor of DeLorean's pop culture stardom thanks to the Back To The Future trilogy, I guess it's time to send this time machine star a world tour it will never forget. That's right. I'm going around the world in a DeLorean that became famous for having Doc Brown and Marty travel through time and get things right. Besides, it's already October 21, 2015, after all, so let's get cracking!
After all of time and space later, its world tour has finally finished...
So, the DeLorean. How was it? At the start, it felt like a marketing disaster because of all the things that went wrong at the hands of consumers but when it became Doc Brown's time machine (with a hint of Mr. Fusion on it that turns garbage into power), it was immortalized to the hall of fame for star cars. Although I haven't seen the BTTF trilogy in ages, I was enamored by the DeLorean's star power that woos car enthusiasts for generations after generations, and making the year 2015 felt like it was the actual 2015 as seen in the Back To The Future films. With some of the 2015 stuff from the Back To The Future films becoming real, there's one thing I wish real at this moment in time...a DeLorean that can travel through time and space.
Happy BTTF day!
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