Once I got into a DeLeorean, and a stone’s throw from me was Cristina D’Avena. No, I’m not joking, it was an amarcord event and that was really the situation. For those who lived through the 80s as a child or teenager, they know what we are talking about. And in the end, even if the DeLorean DMC-12 represents one of the major failures of the automotive market in history, after the car designed by Homer Simpson in the famous animated series, we cannot deny we wanted to take it for a spin. At least once in our life. Not so much for its performance – which at most can only make us travel backwards over time – but for what it helps to keep alive: that ineradicable nostalgia for the roaring 80s.
Designed by John Z. DeLoreanacclaimed and torpedoed executive of General Motors born in the symbol city of the US auto industry, Detroit, and with the precious collaboration Of Giorgio Giugiaro, the DMC-12 of the unfortunate DeLorean team has been defined over time as a “crazy” car. Futuristic and courageous as “defective”, partly inspired by the Lotus Esprit from which it drew more than a few pieces, it has gone down in history for being thesteel sports car heaviest stainless steel ever.
Announced in 1977, two years after the founding of the DeLorean Motor Company, it was advertised with anticipation on the brochures and catalogs browsed by all future yuppies of America, it was thought that the DeLorean she had been meticulously designed and elaborate but when it was presented to the public in January 1981Despite its flatline and super-luxe interior, its gullwing doors and the gleaming chrome that accompanied that wheel chock, someone immediately realized that it wasn’t exactly like that. At the same time someone else had to agree that maybeeven buy a copy gold plated at 24 carats, marketed for 85 thousand dollars at the time (over 220 thousand dollars today, ed), would definitely have been a mistake. At least until 1985.
When would it be time to ask yourself: “Wait Doc.. are you telling me you built a time machine out of a DeLorean?“. We’ve all wondered over time, not just the legendary Marty McFly played by the great Michael J. Fox. And the answer has always been simpler than we thought. Because the director Robert Zemechishaving to think of a car – not a household appliance as the original screenplay initially suggested – in the end he made the choice fall on a decidedly particular machine, with extremely futuristic lines and, as the first line suggests, on the first page, of the first chapter of each manual by skilled and ruthless connoisseur of showbiz: it was on everyone’s lips. Since at the time of the release of the first chapter of the successful saga, 1985, J. DeLorean was at the center of a chat judicial case.
The DeLorean Motor Company manufactured in Ireland only 9,000 specimens, between 1981 and 1982. Then, due to vicissitudes that we will not tell you here, it failed. Leaving each DMC-12 specimen to its fate as the four-wheeled “object of desire” of every 80s fanatic. It is no coincidence that Parzival, the protagonist of the truly futuristic – dare we say prophetic – Ready Player One by Spielberg (adaptation of the novel by Ernest Cline, ed), chooses a DeLorean among hundreds of thousands of rotated vehicles granted by a virtual world that should be the absolute sublimation of Metaverse.
In the goals of DeLorean, to which they also dedicated a film in 2018, Driven – The DeLorean case, there is always that of creating unique, extremely safe and durable cars; which is why he had “chosen” stainless steel for easy maintenance of the bodywork, a Wenkel rotary engine to lower consumption in a time of oil crisis, and the inclusion of the pioneering AirBag. All things that remained dreams from the initial project, unfeasible in the reality. Leaving the ideal as the only truly futuristic quality of that bizarre car, produced for just one year, in the unforgettable 80s.