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.”
Doc says the stainless steel bodywork is the reason he chose that car as time machine, when Marty is surprised to see it.
“Besides, the stainless steel construction made the flux dispersal…(watch beeps) Look out!”
I don’t care if the DeLorean is impractical. I think it’s one of the classiest and timeless looking cars out there.
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.
The DeLorean was also one of the first self-driving cars.
You just pulled onto the road, and it would follow any white lines.
Is this a joke/reference I’m not understanding?
The company’s founder was charged with cocaine trafficking but found not guilty due to police entrapment.
Also, it was the '80s and there was a pretty big overlap in the target audiences for the DeLorean and cocaine.
Oh, I follow now! Thanks!
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.
Stainless steel doesn’t rust
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.
It does.
Put it with the big spoons, not the little spoons.
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.
It also used a renault transmission, which could only barely take the power of the stock engine.
The stainless steel made it very heavy, and it was underpowered. That’s kind of a joke in Back to the Future, getting to 88MPH is non-trivial.
It sounded like a lot when I was 6. My mom told me 40 mph was really fast.
88 is fast. Faster than any highways in my country. Not that people don’t drive that fast here, but it’s not allowed. finger wag
It was faster than all highways in the country at the time. Highways were limited to 55MPH at the time.
88 is pretty fast, but not really time-travel fast. People frequently drive 80-95 on some roads in the US, especially now that speed limits are commonly 65-75 and as high as 85. I also recall when 55 was the standard.
