Great Scot! That’s a DeLorean.
Er…sort of.
If you want to have fun with it, what you see above is the evolution of a 1980s icon, reimagined for the electric era. If you want to be realistic, it’s a digital rendering and nothing more. In either case, it’s the product of a company calling itself DeLorean Motors Reimagined.
The new company plans to resurrect the DeLorean name and place it on an electric vehicle (EV) to appear this summer.
The Sketchy History
The DeLorean DMC-12 is a classic piece of 1980’s nostalgia. Known for its gull-wing doors, stainless steel body panels, and louvered rear window, it inspired the fantasies of millions. Its performance never really cashed the check its body wrote – it looked like a Ferrari from the future and drove like a Volkswagen from the 80s. But that didn’t stop it from gracing a million movie posters.
Automotive designer John DeLorean, the mind behind the Pontiac GTO, Pontiac Firebird, and a few cars that didn’t follow those two onto the list of classics launched his own company to build the silver-and-black car. It lasted just a few years, built few of them, and crashed in a jumble of legal problems.
But not before getting its signature product, the DMC-12, a starring role in the Back to the Future film series. Cast as a time machine, it spent several summers on every movie screen in the world.
The Uncertain Present
That company went under long ago, but a string of successors have claimed rights to its name and designs.
There’s a bit of a shell game involved in figuring out exactly who runs this latest successor. DeLorean Motors Reimagined is a new effort. Its largest shareholder is the DeLorean Motor Company – a company that restores classic DeLoreans. No one from the original company appears to be involved.
The new company hasn’t shown a car to the press yet. It has shown a commercial to Super Bowl watchers, and now this rendering. The new company says the full vehicle, which may be called the DeLorean EVolved, will appear in full at the Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance (read: fancy car show) in August.
It will be an electric vehicle. That is the total of all the mechanical details the new company has offered.
This digital rendering suggests that it will be a sleeker, curvier take on the classic DeLorean shape. The louvered rear window is here. Designers would be insane to propose heavy stainless steel body panels in 2022. But the CGI car’s body is painted the appropriate silver.
A quick head-on image of the car, heavily shadowed, showed up in the Super Bowl ad. It showed the classic gull-wing doors.
We’ll have to wait for summer to see it in person. It doesn’t seem particularly 80s inspired. You’d have to turn to the pixel-heavy Hyundai Ioniq 5 for that. The EVolved looks more like a rival to the Porsche Taycan, Polestar 02 concept, and other performance-oriented electrics.
Whether its performance lives up to the look is another question. Arguably, if DeLorean Motors Reimagined wants to pay homage to its inspiration, it shouldn’t. But we have a feeling that the first DeLorean to live up to performance expectations would be just fine with longtime fans.
